WKO hunter info meeting ??

[boxhitch]

Did anyone attend?
Was this good news from the MOE?
Setting the stage for Reg. Changes ?
Elk and Deer are over Social Carrying Capacity Levels. Time for something to be done ?

GG, need not reply:)

[boxhitch]

Not many young hunters care enough to show, i guess.
Too busy at the SoundOff next door, competing to see who has the most insanely loud car stereo. Now thats intelligent.

[4blade]

only about 40 people in attendance.garth mowatt and some jerry guy talked about mule deer and whitetail biology as to how they use that to set seasons for each .jese zeeman talked about how we should remove limited entry hunting to bring hunter numbers up because without them were toast,lots of number graphs and charts.garth also talked about point restrictionsbeing able to get you some older bucks but dont really help the herd .as far as social carrying capacity,as an outdoorsman i kinda have to laugh at that one ,has nothing to do with healthy herds or game populations its about what the majority of people find as an acceptably {society}number of animals to harvest ,not based on actual land based carrying capacity.my 2 cents fairly accurate ,i hope .let the games begin,also why i read lots and post very little here.ps was told at the start was pretty much info session only,you could ask questions though.

[boxhitch]

as far as social carrying capacity,as an outdoorsman i kinda have to laugh at that one ,has nothing to do with healthy herds or game populations its about what the majority of people find as an acceptably {society}number of animals to harvest ,not based on actual land based carrying capacity
Kind of a catchy phrase. But the context is when talking about Agriculture or Private lands, so the acceptable numbers are for sure different than habitat capacity. The way I see it ?

[boxhitch]

Where was this meeting???Castlegar. Notices were up for a couple of weeks, clubs were invited.

[6616]

Social Carrying Capacity relates to several things: Depredation on private landscaping and agricultural land being one of the most discussed, but also includes safety (re bears, cougars, etc), loss of human life and damages due to highway collisions (deer, elk), also relates to the social desireability of food competitive species,,, generally speaking is the maximum animal density that the human population can live with, and of course this varies inversely with the human population density of a specific area.

The concept of the public meeting came about as a result of the social inability to reach a decision regarding the LEH elk hunts even if they are biologically sustainable. Did there appear to be any resolution to that question 4blade?

[4blade]

i left the meeting thinking,garth mowatt ,the regional biologist, in his talk seemed pro LEH as far as deer were concerned, than jeesse zeeman ,pilot, who did a thesis on recruitment and retention said its a major contributor to low hunter numbers. no direct discussion on removing elk from leh.

[boxhitch]

The talks were mostly about deer biology, effect of hunting antler-classes on population structure, Differences between M.D. and W.T.D. and management differences, description of Species Zones vs. M.U.'s.
And then J.Z.'s talk about hunter numbers.
Mostly an info feed meeting, not opened up to debate. I am surprised that the next meeting isn't til December, I thought there were more pressing issues to be discussed by the clubs.