Muskwa/Tuchodi Grizzlies

[Macgregor]

I've seen that thier are a few guys that have hunted the Muskwa and Tuchodi rivers on this site. I was wondering if anyone was lucky enough to get a draw and connect on a grizzly in that neck of the woods. As usual any pictures and stories would be appreciated.

[Maxx]

grizzlies are almost extinct in that area, I heard they are planning to reduce the numbers of tags to 1,

[daycort]

yeah what max said. it is running low on moose and elk too. If you beleive that i got a magic rock to sell ya.

[browning]

extinct in that area, I don't think so...

[30-06]

i was going to say the same thing.lot sin that area iv heard

[Deaddog]

I did get a tag one year, but didn't connect, only saw 10 or so grizz, all in family units though. That said I was not actively looking for them, more if I came across one (as we usually do) while elk hunting. There is absolutely no shortage of those **** up in that country:lol:

[mntman]

the last bear was shot in 1920 something and I also have timeshares in a new bridge for sale, all the areas around there are good for grizz

[daycort]

shooting your rifle is just like a dinner bell. if you leave to go get horses packs or what ever you need to get him almost guranteed to have agriz or twoo on your critter.

[Macgregor]

Almost extinct in that area? I assume your joking.

[Dirty]

A guy I know has had a couple of Spring draws and not connected. They only saw 1 or 2 bears each time and they were either 2 miles away or high tailed it.

[boxhitch]

shooting your rifle is just like a dinner bell. if you leave to go get horses packs or what ever you need to get him almost guranteed to have agriz or twoo on your critter.

Will have to save this quote, to cut and paste on all G Bear posts. It seems to repeat lots.

[tuchodi]

There are lots of Grizzlies in the Muskwa Tuchodi area. TO MANY. We have never had a tag for one yet since they introduced the draw but we could have shot at least 2 or 3 each year and thats not family bears. We always loose at least one or part of an elk each year. Gun shots now are just like a dinner bell.

[Macgregor]

I think I know someone that may have been with somebody that got a griz up there. I think I might have even seen a picture along those lines. You're not holding out on a story are you dead dog:lol:

[Maxx]

I was joking, but the real joke is the number of tags given in the fall season for 7-50. When I asked the Biologist about this, he said it is due to the amount of Sow kills, that means 3 bears off the next years quota,

It is a vicious circle, more problem bears killed, less bears that are hunted, the more Grizz that are around, and the more problem bears that are killed,

It is a joke,

[Deaddog]

You got me:lol: one member of our party did take a boar a couple of years ago, I was not with him when he got it but he was part of our camp. As tuchodi stated earlier, if you leave your elk overnight in the bush you are pretty much guarenteed to have a grizz on it overnight.

[Macgregor]

Maxx. I hear Ya! I'm going into that country for three weeks this year and I hope I get a draw, but the odds are heavily against it. The odds are not so heavily against me of having an altercation with a grizz as these guys who have been in there for years and know have said. All the other seasons are getting opened up and hopefully the big bears up there are next. It's another touchy subject but one that deserves some discussion.

[mapguy]

i've met people who have given up hunting moose in some areas up there cause the bears beat them to the kill and you need a lookout to gut it

[SHAKER]

For the record the biologist up in there is retireing early:cry: I know I won't miss him, and second our large carnavour expert in Victoria is also on the early retirement plan:cry: Definitly not going to miss him (he wouldn't know what a cougar was if it bit him the ass). Hopefully we can get some Grizz tags where they need them and deal with some of these misserable *******s. I see too many tags going to areas close to civilization (some region 4 area's. not that I'm complaining) or No reasonable access (Liard river,north end of Wiliston lake ect.). But I see next to no tags where their is an abundance of o'l long claw with access to the average guy. It might be nice not to have our province run by a bunch of Daisy-sniffers, who have the balls to deal with real problems and not just make charts and graffs to show what a great job their doing??????

[bruin]

Hunted with a guy with a tag a couple of years ago, he never took a bear but we saw alot of bears in that country over the years. Some really nice blonde boars too, all fat and sleek from eating elk and moose guts! They were really active just prior to the first snows in the fall. Hard to find a trail without their tracks already on it. Good bet is some of the burned areas and river flats.

[Dirty]

I am not trying to stir the pot or hijack the thread, but I hear a lot of comments about Biologists not knowing what they are talking about. Also, I hear a lot of talk about not being able to hunt big game in the area because there are too many Grizzlies. 1) Does anybody on this site have a Biology degree and study Animal Populations and know the amount of harvest that can be sustained by the population up there? 2) How can it be justified to shoot more Grizzlies so that you won't have encounters while hunting game in the area? They were there well before you started hunting there. If you are going to hunt in an area that is inhabited by bears then deal with it. If you don't like it find another area without bears. I personally am all for bear hunting but I don't see the point of killing more bears to make hunting other game a more pleasurable experience. It just seems like the mentality being put forth by some is the type of mentality that gives ammunition to antis. If a population can sustain hunting at specific levels then so be it but I do not think we should jeopardize future hunting sustainability by increasing draws to appease a few people. Just my two cents.

[Gateholio]

If more tags are given out, there will be a higher harvest of grizzlies, which will result in fewer "negative" contacts between humans and grizzlies...Which will result in fewer bears being shot in confllict situations...At least that is my thinking on the topic...

[Dirty]

Gatehouse,
My understanding of a healthy population is a population where deaths are equal to births and so forth. Therefore, the population maintains a healthy and constant level. If extra bears are being shot to decrease the population than this would be an unhealthy population from what I understand. I see your point about having less negative human/bear encounters, but is this not what one should expect when hunting in bear country. Prepare for the worst and hope for the best. Why should we change the number of bears in an area just to stop hunters from making contact with bears. The bears territory is in the area where you are hunting so that should be taken into consideration. Maybe a program to learn how to deal with bear encounters or safety in bear country would be a better solution.

[alremkin]

Hm, I was lucky enough to be hunting the late summer in '04 up in 7-50 for 3 weeks, a 10 mile horseback ride from the hiway. We had two dogs in camp to warn us of the approach of bears. We also had five different grizzlies at different times within 100 yards of camp. Which would bring everyone out of the tents rifle in hand. I'd never seen a grizzly in the wild before that trip and I came to realize that in those type of situations alot is determined by what the bear decides to do. This lead to me buying a 338/378 and a 416 Remington.

So yes, I'm in favor of greatly increasing the numbers of limited entry tags in that area. The biggest bear we saw was a HUGE blonde sow that must have weighed to 600 lbs live weight.

[Maxx]

Dirty,

In 3 calendar years in a row, I saw a different sow with triplets, among many other bears seen. The problem as I see it is that the "problem" bears are being killed, and reported- hence the quotas are being lowered to the point that problem bear kills are in double digits, are all of these reported????

that is a waste, why not "allow" these bears to be killed under the LEH, and actually have the hide go to a purpose,

as for the biologist, at the sheep banquet, he told me from his own mouth that the Grizzly tag "system" is flawed, it needs to be solved at the Victoria level. I am sure that the problem is somewhat political, when some city journalist learns that the LEH tags for the province have been doubled, let the protests begin,

[Dirty]

I am for Grizzly bear hunting, but I am against people who complain about bears when they are in bear country. You are in their territory so you have to deal with them. The bears that are problem bears as you said are problem bears because of the human interaction in the area. If there was no human interaction they would not have to be destroyed. Now I think it would be acceptable to increase LEH in the area as long as it will not have future impacts on the population. If the amount of bears that are being harvested allows the population to sustain future harvest and success then I am all for it. I just think that a scientific approach must be taken instead of trying to immediately solve the problem for the users of the area. If every hunting party that enters that area suddenly gets a LEH to shoot "problem" bears the future of Grizzly hunting in that area will become limited.

[youngfellla]

Maybe a program to learn how to deal with bear encounters or safety in bear country would be a better solution.


There is. It's called Rigby 101.:lol:

Seriously though Dirty, I don't think anyone here is actually complaining about hunting where there are lots of G bears. A few have pointed out that there are lots of bears in this specific area and that hunters need to keep an extra eye out for them. No reason to get the panties in a knot.

Just my 2 bits.

[RoadKing]

Well said Dirty. I do have a Biology degree (sorry, I'm not Tinney reincarnated...), and see/hear of far too many people willing to chuck the science in favor of what they saw, or experienced while in a certain area. While personal experience can be of some value in hunting, it's not of much use to biologists trying to manage an entire population. For someone to say that because they've always seen bears in an area on elk kills, or that there's always been bears in multi-member family units really means nothing to the bilogy of the situation. That said, I'm in favor of bear hunting, and I'm sure that there have been bilogists who have messed up in the past. It's definitely not an exact science - especially when dealing with the remoteness of the area being discussed...

[SHAKER]

Like I said Graphs and charts are nice for pesentations but don't mean a whole lot unless you get out of your cozy office and see whats out their. I understand it's pretty hard to figure out how many critters are running around but, hunter success data and conflict situations are a few ways to get data. But what about these poor o'l Gizz's that get wacked for being a problem and never get reported??? What about the amount of sign around in an area? I'm sure theirs not many Grizz running around in Burnaby but in 7-50, 7-42, 7-22, and others I've visited their is an abundance of o'l long claw. 7-50, 6 tags with what you bio-guys figure should be 50% harvest sucess? Well maybe my maths wrong but I'm sure we can surplus more that 3 bears??? The real slap in the face is 7-22 1 tag???? you would have to be blindfolded and hunting with your wieny roasting stick not to get your Grizz in that area. Sorry to get on a rant but I have a hard time listening to people who don't get out and see whats there. I've really had enough of Charts and Graphs and people who try to feed me things that their doing a good job.

[Schmaus]

I hear a lot of talk about not being able to hunt big game in the area because there are too many Grizzlies.

I think that there are too many people reading these types of stories and then they head up there hear something in the bush and think they just had an encounter with a grizzly. As we learned on prior posts there are a lot of people that can't identify a grizz track from a black bear track. I laugh at the number of people that come up for one weekend a year and every year some sort of close call bear encounter occurs. I go out all the time and have rarely had incidents and even less was there a grizzly around.

[SHAKER]

If you cant ID a Grizz track from a Blackie theirs something very wrong. If it was a Blackie that was tracking me last year then I would have loved to have seen him. When you got feet like a dinner plate and you got claw impressions 3 inches infront of the track I'm pretty sure It's a Grizz. And if you don't think people don't hunt areas because of Bears...I can show you some area that would give you the willies and let you talk to some of the locals that WILL NOT hunt that area period!

[Dirty]

Youngfella, It doesnt say anywhere in my post that people were complaining in this thread. I used to work in a Sporting Goods shop and guys used to come in all the time whining up a storm about not being able to hunt because there were so many bears around etc. etc. Maybe the areas where hunters are hunting are population dense areas and as you migrate further into the territory there are less bears. If you moved out further into the territory I bet bears would be more spread out. If you shoot a majority of them in one concentrated area with most of the population there then there goes most of the population. Where is this going to leave sustainable hunting opportunities for Grizzly Bears in the future? This is all I am saying. I agree with Grizzly hunting and someday hope to apply for a draw but I only hope that the draws are managed to create sustainablity of populations.

[tuchodi]

I am wondering why so many opinions are voiced with out ever being in the area at all, or at least for a very short time so they could get a better idea of what was really happing. As one who has spent most of my life in the Ft Nelson area and have hunted the Muskwa/Tuchodi area every year now for 35 years I can say for sure that the Grizzly's have increased way beyone a healthy level for them to live with out dying of natural causes or from being killed by one of their own becasue they have become to populus for that area. As I am sure the Biologist on this site will tell us that Grizzly's are very territorial and they each command domane over quite a large area. I have always seen Grizzly's in that area each and every year but ever since we put a moritorium on Grizzly hunting for the entire province instead of just the areas that needed it we now have a small problem of to many Grizz in some areas to sustain a heathy population there. I also know as being part of the elk habitat enhancement in the 60's,70's and 80's in that region we now have a much larger elk herd than we did a few years ago which would mean an increase in preditors like Grizzly which is acceptable to me. I have witnessed a grizzly kill another over an elk killed buy a hunter and I dont think they just kill each other for fun. I am all for a balanced animal population but I believe they have missed on their calculations on that area, whereas maybe they have succedded on many other area's. I do not blame the Biologist but the Government for not funding more biologist so they could spend more time in the field so they can get it right.

[Maxx]

I am wondering why so many opinions are voiced with out ever being in the area at all, or at least for a very short time so they could get a better idea of what was really happing. As one who has spent most of my life in the Ft Nelson area and have hunted the Muskwa/Tuchodi area every year now for 35 years I can say for sure that the Grizzly's have increased way beyone a healthy level for them to live with out dying of natural causes or from being killed by one of their own becasue they have become to populus for that area. As I am sure the Biologist on this site will tell us that Grizzly's are very territorial and they each command domane over quite a large area. I have always seen Grizzly's in that area each and every year but ever since we put a moritorium on Grizzly hunting for the entire province instead of just the areas that needed it we now have a small problem of to many Grizz in some areas to sustain a heathy population there. I also know as being part of the elk habitat enhancement in the 60's,70's and 80's in that region we now have a much larger elk herd than we did a few years ago which would mean an increase in preditors like Grizzly which is acceptable to me. I have witnessed a grizzly kill another over an elk killed buy a hunter and I dont think they just kill each other for fun. I am all for a balanced animal population but I believe they have missed on their calculations on that area, whereas maybe they have succedded on many other area's. I do not blame the Biologist but the Government for not funding more biologist so they could spend more time in the field so they can get it right.


Very well said, on all points,