Hey everyone,

Im not sure if this is the right area for this post so please move it if need be.

I want to get an idea of your hunting experience in BC as the years go by. Everyone I have talked to, and from my experience, hunting in BC gets less productive every year. You talk to hunters who were fortunate to hunt in the 70's and 80's and the stories they will tell you about ungulate numbers and what they were as opposed to now. Most people had the opportunity to see Boone and Crockett class animals on opening day and everyone got a chance to fill their tags during a season. Ive seen some mounts of world class mule deer that came out of the Creston area and the last year I lived there (3 years ago) there wasnt even a mule deer entry into the yearly Rod and Gun competition. Everywhere in BC, excluding a few pockets that still hold decent game numbers but are dwindling as well, game numbers are falling year after year. I barely see animals near roads at night when I remember seeing them frequently growing up. I remember this site used to be loaded daily with people posting their kills. Are people just not posting or is there nothing to post? I know Ive had nothing to post since 2013 and I used to fill all my tags. I hear of more and more people hunting in other provinces because of the low opportunity here. Something needs to change or else we are going to watch BC turn into a baron wasteland. I want to start a debate on what needs to change.
Debate topics:

Predators - In my experience this is seems to be about 80% of the problem. Wolves, Cougars and Grizzlies have all increase greatly since the peak in ungulate numbers. Wolves are becoming a huge problem with ranchers in the cattle industry as well as effecting game numbers. I personally have seen more and more wolf sign in particular in my 8 years of hunting. I have even started to hear them howl more frequently. New studies are coming out talking about the impact that cougars have been having as well. Cougar conflict is rapidly increasing in urban areas and Ive seen videos on this site with 5 or more cougars together on game camera footage. Ive even noticed more cougars on my game cameras. Grizzly sightings are way up and government numbers are clearly very low. I know in the Creston valley the government only recognizes one grizzly in the valley but I know farmers who can show you 3 or more on their property alone. Predators are currently not being managed due to pressure to BAN predator hunting all together. Small amounts of control come from hunters and trappers but this is currently not enough. Here is a really good article talking about the "Predator death spiral" that some US states are facing.
http://blog.eastmans.com/the-predator-death-spiral/
Predators are hard to hunt so we need to share information with each other on hunting tips for predators. Its probably going to come down to hunting them because the gov will never control predators especially with BC leaning more left each day.


Over hunting - Personally I see this to be only 20% of the problem. I dont think over hunting has got us to this situation but I do think it needs to change until we get our game numbers back up to GROWING levels and not steady/dwindling numbers like we have now. I do believe our hunting seasons are too long and can only be feasible at these levels if predators are kept in check. Hunting can only effect a percentage of the numbers because there is a lot of area that is un-huntable for humans but remains accessible to predators. Hunters do have a lot of access to areas and the more animals get chased around the more they are likely to abort their young for next year, whether you shoot them or not.

Habitat loss - I dont see this as an issue at all for the most part. There are so many areas available in BC that have everything that animals need, and there are no animals there. Ive been to areas that used to be flooded with deer/elk/moose sign that are now completely void of any sign other than a couple doe tracts and predator tracts. Anyone who thinks habitat loss is the leading cause of all of this has obviously never left the city limits IMO.

Liberal hunting seasons and poor regulations - We have the longest hunting seasons in North America, most states dont even allow hunting during the rut because they know what it does to game numbers. It makes no sense to take out all your breeding males before they get to breed IMO. Most places across North America have gotten rid of "4 point" type seasons because it leads to poor genetics and eventually worse game numbers. Numbers go down every year and in the 8 years I have been hunting the regulations have changed minimally in some places and none in other places. You can still go shoot an elk, a moose and 3 deer a year. From your experience, does this seem sustainable when you have 100,000+ hunters in BC? And thats not even including the guides who get almost as many LEH opportunities that the rest of BC gets and the natives that get their amount too. This seems like the BC gov AND the BC wildlife federation know they are in a animal death spiral and have their heads in the sand. They need that tag income even though the opportunity isnt there. I wonder what kind of feedback they are getting on their "random game survey's" because all the ones Ive done in the last 3.5 years have been "Yes I hunted for the animal. No I didnt get one." The numbers that they seem to want are drastically low as well. In the Kootenay valley they estimated the elk population at about 16,000 elk when they started the cow season. Their goal was to bring that number down to 4,500. They got that number by allowing hundreds of cow draws every year. The problem is that as the elk numbers are being lowered in that valley, other elk from outside the valley are going to be moving in to fill those spots. If they got to their number of 4,500 they have also lowered the sounding elk numbers by a lot as well, all while ignoring the predator and hunting pressure increases. Even with the terrible moose numbers in the Chilcotin region they still have cow and calf draws. This makes no sense, even if 80% of the ones that were going to be "winter losses" any way survive, thats still more animals for next year!
I had a moose draw in 7-03 last year near McBride. I got one of 54 tags. The guides get 30% of LEH numbers so they would get about 16 draws for that area.That means if they are allowing about 70 tags and thats 10% of the bulls in that area, then they estimate there are 700 bulls in that area! There is really only 2 valleys to go down in that area, and one is a road closure. We were there for a week in early October when the rut should be almost in full swing. We saw 1 bull, 1 cow and 1 calf and 2 gut piles. One was from a guy who lucked out and got a spike moose after he left the baron wasteland of pink mountain. We saw hardly any tracks or fresh sign. We walked as far up the mountains as we could and walked in the grassy meadows of the valley bottom and we found hardly anything. We did see a pack of 8 wolves running down the river and we heard them howling almost every night. 70 bulls a year is RIDICULOUS for that area. They are nowhere close to those numbers yet they still will sell you the tag!! Im sure its becoming the same for a lot of areas in BC.


What do we do about this? We wont have any hunting in BC at this rate and we dont even have to wait for the NDP to make it a law! Where is the BCWF? What are they using our money for because I dont see a lot of conservation happening at this point. Lets get some discussion going because we all need to do our part to make sure hunting can survive this mess we are in.