Quote:
Originally Posted by Lr1000
I don't know how targeting only class 4 Rams will help out the rut tho? Unless your banking on a lot of class being broomed past legal. Otherwise class three Rams will still be doing most of the rutting as class 4 will still be harvested.
400 is not the best case study when it's comes to hunting. Very few Rams are shot in this easy access zone. It's also created a frenzy for substance hunting on the just under legal Rams.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Titanium79
I ment success rates. Really what is full curl going to do? Is it going to put more sheep on the mountains? No it will not. The sheep will die as soon as they are legal. Does not matter if it is half cull, full curl or what ever they make it. To me this is just like everything else SRD does. It is all a theory and no hard fact to what is better. I see you use 400. I know that almost all legals that are in hunt able areas in that zone get shot as well every year. So please give me some hard fact to why this is better? I know one reason it will end up really bad for SRD but I will keep that for a further date.
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LR you will still have class 4 Rams left over to rut, they do not have to be full curl to fit in that class. It allows many more Rams to reach that older age class rather than getting dumped at 5-7 years old like we have now. In a perfect world we would only harvest mature Rams, 8 plus years old but with bighorns that's pretty tough to do for reasons already discussed.
Fair enough titanium on the harvest success rates of outfitters.thing. I agree most legal Rams are harvested in each area of the province. The post harvest survey data clearly points to that. We have very high hunting pressure on Rams and easy access throughout the province. I strongly disagree that the regulation change will not increase the population of rams and here is why. By shifting the rut to an older class of ram those 5-7 year old Rams don't expend so much energy during the rut and mortality decreases. So instead of having a pile of those 5-7 year old Rams dying post rut we will see a much greater percentage of those Rams survive into class 4 rams. That is what the research points to. Read the link I posted earlier from the sheep and goat council on what can happen and what I expect will happen. There will for sure be a few lean years for resident and outfitter hunting until the age classes settle out. I expect that the outfitters for sheep will be crying the loudest as their success rates will be pretty dismal for a few years.
What is the alternative? The province has a stated mandate, well proven by research, that having 5+ percent trophy Rams post season is the minimum healthy level. They are going to reach that goal by some means and this is the best way that still provides maximum Hunter opportunity. If this doesn't go through the next step is going to be draw and then all resident sheep hunters are really going to be crying while the outfitters will be laughing. They will have limited resident hunting pressure and still have their permits. It's a win win for them and a loose, loose for residents. I imagine the outfitters are fighting this tooth and nail because they can see the next step of it going ing draw. I makes me question the motives of the people fighting the hardest against this. It's either short sighted thinking, or they haven't taken the time to understand what the research points to or they would rather see sheep on draw for residents. Idk
http://media.nwsgc.org/proceedings/N...&%20Watson.pdf