Required Harvest Reports
 

Proposed change for 2019. Wondering why mandatory harvest reports? I'm guessing the short answer is greater quantity of reporting on wildlife numbers. Problem is there is no way to gain information about total population of wildlife from a harvest report and there's no way to keep those reports accountable to what hunters value ie hunting opportunity and sound wildlife management.

Here's a few issues

- non hunters can access and use our stats to influence wildlife management for their purposes.
- in Caribou ranges the stats are already used for over harvest of ungulates in an effort to disperse wolves. Apparently 23% of AB is Caribou range.
- Trophy hunters often will see game but pass and thus report zero harvest. This implies a lack of game and skews the stats. Likewise those unlucky meat hunters who see plenty of game but still fail to connect on their tag.
- it still doesn't offer hunters any further knowledge or say on quality of hunts. Example is a 15% success rate on a priority 1 good? What about a 5% success on a priority 4? Or 75% on a priority 12? Give the bios all the harvest reports you want and the hunting community still has no idea how the bios will choose to use the info.

Reports are far from accurate as it is ... mandatory reports will make it worse and

Mandatory reporting is part of the proposed "opportunity" based allocation distribution between Residents and Outfitters.

Vaseline....

Don't mind the idea. Many of the States do this as well. More information is better, especially for Wildlife bios, who are managing seasons.

I see no issue with mandatory harvest reports.

Under the current voluntary system, I would suspect harvest is under reported. No doubt the bios have "correction filters" for that, but statistically there is a wide margin of error.

Under a mandatory system, that margin of error should be smaller resulting in more accurate estimates. At the end of day, hunter success rates are still one of the best tools wildlife managers have to determine wildlife population status.

I have no faith in the Governments proper use of info. The reporting on the draws is often wrong, showing things like lowest priority drawn 5, when I know for sure people were drawn with a 2 or 3. Have had it happen personally.

Second problem is, if people believe density info is going to be published for their favourite WMUs they are well incented to lie about how much game they have seen and whether they were successful harvesting or not. Also, mandatroy reporting does not ask about all the game aniimals you saw just the one you had a tag for.

I know lots of people who have hunted 5 days around Spirit River and never saw and Elk. Does that mean there is now a shortage of Elk there.:thinking-006:

Surveys, submitting harvest, are just methods that the government uses to try and appear to be doing something positive for wildlife/bird/fish management. If they were truly serious they would commit the money needed to do aerial wildlife counts every year but they do very very little of those.

I don't believe they use the info at all or very little, that has been proven in WMU where they have increased or decreased harvest numbers when the game numbers do not justify their decisions.

If it makes you feel better to do the surveys and submit harvest numbers, go ahead but you are fooling yourself if you actually think they have much value or are used for anything other than appearance.

Online biology because not enough money is allocated by the government to do proper field studies/surveys with enough staff.

Bio's lol what can I say........
I'll bite my tongue this time.....
Gov't managing wildlife in this province need to give their head a shake....
These Harvest reports are a total joke and can be interpreted any way they want which will be negative for hunters as usual.
If you guys think that hunters will be honest about their reports then give your head a shake as well.
I got to laugh when they ask how many days you hunted a species as well lol
Especially when I do them for birds.....

I've hunted all 107 days of the season and only shot 8 birds because I care for conservation and leaving the birds for everyone else. I love that question as well though haha. I go whenever I don't have work or school, I don't keep the days in my diary unless I see something cool or shoot something.

to me there is a big difference between a "survey" with very general questions and a mandatory registration of harvested games including data collection.
the first one is cheap, but not accurate and appears most of the time to produce "bad" regulations for hunters. the second one, is expensive but give a better picture of herd numbers and health status (generally, this creates contact between hunters and biologists and CO and give more confidence in the data from the hunter point of view).....

This ^^^^.

recommendation
 

If they insist on mandatory harvest reports I would strongly recommend that the reports not apply to general tags, not apply to WMUs that fall under Caribou management ie: around fox creek, Valley view, not apply to undersubscribed tags, and that all reporting must include not only recreational hunting but treaties as well. Also my recommendation would be that reports would not be required in WMUs that had aerial surveys older than 3 years old. Of course this is a pipe dream. They will have mandatory reports but the recreational hunters will give everything and get nothing in return. Be nice to think that greater reporting would mean greater hunting opportunities but again that's a pipe dream.

Mandatory reports...well that should apply to ALL stakeholders

Residents
Non Residents
Land Owners
Road Kill pickups
Outfitters
First Nations
Etc....

If You want “data”, collect as much as possible.

LC

Sadly, it is nearly impossible in today's age of government consultation for the public to know what these proposed changes are really about.

In general, greater knowledge of licenced harvest rates should be a good thing. Yet the implementation of mandatory reporting was considered unviable until now. What changed?

The desire to shift Resident/Outfitter allocation distribution from harvest to "Opportunity", with a caveat that unfilled Resident Allowable Harvest can be given to Outfitters is what changed.

This is Not about bettering Wildlife Management, the purpose is for changing Allocation Policy, opening the door to transferring Harvest between user groups.


What is really sad, the "Opportunity" based policy proposal is still unverified as to how it will or could work, Gov. statisticians can't figure it out. Yet the government desires to push ahead in this direction anyways. To me it appears that the "Opportunity" allocation will become a back door to transferring Resident licences to Outfitters.


I am confused as to why the Gov. is promoting Allocation Policy proposed changes within the Hunting Draw booklet. These concerns are being privately debated within AGMAG, with Public consultation due at some undetermined date in the future. This process has already become very convoluted and in continuous flux. Adding this biased "Propaganda" will undoubtedly advance concerns that the AGMAG process is fatally flawed.


KISS.

So the bottom line, is that this is all about APOS making more money?

From my perspective, No.

This is more about changing things without changing things.

Through other Allocation policy proposals, Outfitter allocations could be lost. Combine several of the proposals and in the short term the big picture doesn't change much. Take a bone, give a bone.

However the doors may be unlocked for further "change" down the road. The ambiguity and "unknowns" of the proposals just shouldn't happen, not when "professionals" are on the job.

of course.

Outfitters
 

Outfitters are not pushing this nor is the government, the AFGA overwhelmingly voted this resolution change this past February and so now the government is saying well why not. The kicker is mandatory means punitive if not complied with. So bottom line is some fellow hunters who have more faith in the government and less faith in their fellow hunters than I do proposed this change and strangely it passed. So government philosophy is in areas that they deem to not have enough harvest ie Caribou managed zones, CWD managed zones, elk zones in general they look at the harvest reports and determine success isn't high enough so the only option they have as different bios have directly told me is too increase the tag allocations and put more hunters out there. So success % actually declines but over all total kill increases is the theory. This is the only tool they have since the beaucracy is so difficult that too propose reg changes that would add value to existing hunts just doesn't happen. Soon we will have at best the same hunting opportunity with the same regs and more skewed harvest stats then ever and likely longer wait times for tags. And we'll be punished if we don't fill out a harvest report even if nothing was shot. And all thanks to our own fellow hunters. And that's the good part. Worse is if non hunters as they already have take those stats and pressure bios to reduce tag allocation on the bases that hunter success is too high. Future for the hunter is not good.