Changes to Sheep Hunting Regulations
 

As it seems Pudel's original post got drug in another direction, I thought I'd post his info regarding sheep again in a thread only dedicated to changes to sheep hunting regulations. Let's please keep mule deer out of this and keep it productive....this is the future of sheep hunting we are looking at.

Here's what pudel posted for the proposed changes:


Here's a few questions that popped into my head after reading the above and I'll be posing these to the powers that be. Hopefully everyone else will ask their own questions as well. There may well be some logical explainations.

I'd suggest sending your questions to:

Jim Allen james.allen@gov.ab.ca

Honourable Frank Oberle peace.river@assembly.ab.ca

Rob Corrigan Rob.Corrigan@gov.ab.ca

Ron Bjorge ron.bjorge@gov.ab.ca

Anyhow, here are my thoughts.


1) What is the actual problem they are trying to address is? Obviously, or at least I think, they want to reduce ram harvest in the south and central portions of the province. Why? Are there not enough rams? Is there a problem with age structure? Is it to create a better quality trophy hunt?

2) Have they actually looked at the percentage of mature rams in areas like K-Country that reach or at least have the potential to reach the legal definition of full curl? Not doubt some will but I see this significantly reducing harvest compared to a draw unless they are only planning on issuing a couple tags per WMU.

3) I see they anticipate 2200 draw applicants but we already have 11,829 applicants for the five sheep draws we currently have and we've seen the increase in applicants that putting any species on draw creates. Am I missing something here? The 2200 number does not also take into account hunters that were ineligible to purchase a sheep licence in 2011 due to being successful in 2010. Realistically, it would seem to me that we'd end up with 15,000-20,000 applicants, increasing wait times to 15-20 years. Something just doesn't add up or perhaps they plan on handling this in another way which leads me to the next question.

4) Will these new WMUs be covered under a new draw code or amagamated with the current sheep draw codes as discussed last year?

5) If amalgamated, what will happen to current priority?

6) It looks as though resident opportunity will be cut in a minimum of half if a draw goes ahead. Will outfitters see a similar decrease in tags?

7) I see one of the options was to increase licence fees to basically price sheep out of the reach of many Alberta hunters. Is this for real?

8) Are the sheep population results are going to be released as promised by SRD?

9) What is the rationale behind further punishing sheep hunters for being successful.

10) Are other methods of sheep management being considered? While hunter management is a simple task, are issues like habitat, industrial use and predation also being looked at potential solutions to whatever the problem is?

"Wait time depending on age of sheep:
>10 yrs 1 yr wait
8 - 10 yrs 3 yr wait
6 - 8 yrs 5 yr wait
<6 yrs 7 yr wait"

Observations of a dummy who has hunted sheep but never harvested one (that would be me):

How on earth would that ever be enforced short of having to bring every sheep harvested into "The official government age estimator"?

Come to think of it, how does the enforcement of any "wait time after harvest" actually work? Guy gets a sheep, tags it, takes it home. Never got stopped by F&W so there is no record he ever actually got anything. Yes, I get it that a taxidermist could keep records, but you aren't forced to go to one, and from the Lesnar case we know how reliable some of them are (not).

Wait time after issuance of tag seems the easiest to enforce. Sort of sucks if you weren't successful thoug to have to wait.

All rams must be registered and plugged Oko so there is always a record. There is currently a one-year waiting period after killing a ram. This is one of the options being suggested that would penalize hunters for shooting younger legal rams. I don't think tracking the waiting periods would be that tough considering it's all done on computer. If you were unsuccessful, you wouldn't have to wait...only if you harvested a ram as is the case now.

The big problem I see with this is that you would lose a lot of potential sheep hunters. Most first-timers are willing to kill the first ram they see and if it's a young one, taking them out of sheep hunting for seven years is likely to take them out forever. Also, I don't see this having any impact on harvest. It would just be different guys shooting rams. Maybe that's their logic though...I don't know.

It seems to me (or so I hear) that it's often difficult enough in many situations to judge whether a ram is legal or not. Is it reasonable to expect a hunter to be able to judge the age of a legal ram from 300 or 400 yards? If it's extremely difficult then it seems to me that a penalty for shooting a younger ram amounts to not much more than luck of the draw and won't accomplish anything in reality.

Awaiting your experienced knowledgable reply, Sheep LOL

Accurately field aging bighorns is pretty well impossible but telling a young ram from an old one is certainly possible.

Unfortunately, CO's have a hard time coming up with the same age as one another! Just like some co's are harder on judging than others. I'm sure after awhile there will prefered office to go to!

We had 4 officers give 3 different ages on mambas ram! The 5th admitted she wasn't sure, and asked what we thought....lol

I agree potty and I think SRD realizes this too because they do talk about setting up central registration offices....I suspect with people trained in aging.

It's pretty apparent there's a pent up demand for more sheep tags and the present habitat appears to be pretty well maxed.
One long term solution is to exponentially increase the RMS range to their historic habitats.
The southern and central Alberta river valleys. Just like Montana did in the Missouri River Breaks.
What's clearly needed is more harvest. Not a bunch of fine-tuning and inventing new ways to carve up the current surplus which doesn't appear to create one extra ram.

I'm sorry, but I'm still lost...If the guidelines are such that you need to be an expert to assess the animal exactly, how can that be of much assistance to the fellow pulling the trigger? It seems a bit like handing out speeding tickets based on rate of speed when the cars have no speedometers. Actually, it's exactly like the new .05 law. No one actually knows how many drinks it takes them to hit .05. Only the guy with the breathalyzer knows, so the only totally safe course of action is to not drink (or shoot) at all.

You aren't lost at all.;) It is exactly like the .05 law. You wouldn't actually be breaking any law shooting a legal ram but your sheep licence would be taken away for a considerable period of time depending on the age of the ram, which is difficult if not impossible to determine in the field and even open to arguement in the hands of professionals. Basically you are punished for doing something legal....just like the .05 law....lol

I guess the thing to remember is that it's only one of a long list of options.

Wow, something to chew on...:test:

If your happy with the ram...shoot! Its just you'll have to wait extra time before you can shoot another one if you like shooting youngsters. Nobody's going to jail! That can only help build the trophy quality.

Sheep
 

By changing the rules we , are still not addressing the 2 biggest problems
Predation- which is impossible to calculate or control.

aboriginal rights- If we are trying to produce bigger sheep, we may produce them for the wrong group.
In the 400 area, we have too much access, and have lost quite a few rams, around the shell waterton comlex, as well as Crowsnest lakes area, where we apparently lost 3 rams last week. this is not 100% confirmed yet, but from a reiable source.

If it is to go draw accross the province I would like to see a lottery points system, where your priority, determines, how many times your name is submitted. eg priority 14 your name goes in 14 times. Priority 1 your name goes in once.

No thanks! Don't like anything in which luck is involved.... If I'm a 14 I'd better be getting that tag before a 1 does.

sheep
 

would you pefer to lose your priority, should they decide to eliminate them?

Even the courts of BC have come to the conclusion that aging bighorns by experts is NOT consistent. Several BC age based sheep seasons are closing (Going with curl definition only) due to the difficulty in having consistent aging of inspected ram by Bighorn experts.

SRD is setting up a legal battle if they put age based wait times on the books.


Why won't SRD learn from others failed attempts with the same management techniques? :1041:

Other options available:
Wait times after harvesting a sheep:
1 yr after first sheep
3 yrs after 2nd sheep
5 yrs after 3rd sheep
7 yrs after 4th sheep

I don't think this is really unreasonable? If it was still on general tags it's a decent plan I think. As well it'd give guys that typically spend a lot of time in the mountains a chance to go after some other species.

Is there any talk of reintroducing sheep to some of their old haunts?

I'm curious to see how much influence APOS had on these decisions. I know of some of the local sheep outfitters that were complaining about the high hunting pressure pushing sheep out of a lot of their traditional ranges.

There's no need to change our current draw system......unless it goes to a once a lifetime thing. Which isn't even reasonable for this subject!

I suspect they are part of the working group.

sheep
 

And I suspect the outfitters, will not lose any tags.

If a draw happens and resident opportunity is reduced by 50%, you'd hope that the NRA allotment received a similar cut.

Not trying to derail your thread sheep hunter , but I hadn't heard about this latest in the seemingly never ending" late sheep shooter saga" .. Stuff like this makes changes to sheep hunting { draws , etc.} even more difficult to do .. I mean come on , everybody needs to be on a level playing field .. How do you have a regular season with regs. and rules and then somebody comes in after the season and helps themselves to what is already a limited trophy species .. It's not like taking some muley or whitetail does for the table .

sheep
 

I think where it needs to start is to re-define the word subsistense.to mean any animal that does not bear horns or antlers, or is otherwise considered to be a trophy animal, such as grizzly or cougar.

Going to have them taking sheep off the winter range unless there are serious changes made to our laws. Unfortunately the government lacks the raisins necessary to do that. Sheep will always be shot from now till spring by them as it's easy pickings... It's much easier to try and manage us.

The timing of these changes is interesting. I wonder if APOS helped delay the changes (expected last year) until after they negotiate their new 5 year agreement.


I suspect that APOS will try to close the new 5 year Outfitter allocation agreement before signing off on the sheep hunting changes. This way they can have five years of higher allocations before having to play along with new restrictions.

One would hope that with the knowledge that major changes are being considered for 2013 that it would factor into any allocations handed out. I mean everyone at the table knows something restrictive to residents is going to happen.

sheep
 

To the best of my knowledge, the sheep alocations were lifetime tags, to the outfitters, who can also sell, or lease to another outfitter, they do not come up for bid or negotiation. things may have changed, so correct me if I am wrong here.

Some good questions posed already.

Mine will be:

1. please define the problem - not enough rams? trophy quality too low? age structure? not enough sheep altogether? something else?

2. please provide us with the data which were used to define the problem - counts, field studies into age structure, etc etc

3. please provide details on how each option would be implemented (e.g. the existing priority issue; what will happen if suddenly 12,000 hunters apply instead of the envisaged 2,000)

4. what other management options are you considering (predation control, habitat conservation, access, etc)?

5. if there will be restrictions on number of tags, please inform us how outfitters will be impacted.

Probably will come up with a few more.

As stated in all other sheep threads. Were is the proof there is a problem. The only problem is we keep loosing land to hunt sheep. Provincial parks are the real problem for us loosing opertunity. But on the other hand PP were designed for recreation. Also the gov stated hunting is a recreational sport. So why are me not aloud to hunt in them. That would also make it better as that is were 80+% of the sheep live.