Quote:
Originally Posted by Bbkkcc
this is insane.
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Some would say, nothing much has changed.
Seasons and bag limits were incredibly generous by todays standards but that has to be looked at in context of what the province was like in the past.
I was born in 1954. The population of the northern half of the province was only a few thousand people back then. In fact there are way more people living in Grande Prairie now then lived in the whole northern half of the province in 1933 when dad came to Alberta.
And there was a lot more game. I remember dad telling about seeing herds of Deer along the Peace River valley that reminded him of herds of cattle he had seen in southern Alberta on his way north. Dad grew up in Nova Scotia and his dad was a deep sea fisherman so herds of cattle were something new to dad.
When I started hunting a Moose tag allowed the hunter to take a bull or a cow and the season ran from September first to January first.
The homestead act allowed dad to take one Moose without a license and the wildlife act allowed him a second Moose with a hunting license.
When Dad arrived in the north, much of the forest was gone, burnt by forest fires. By the time I was born, 21 years later, most of the forests had regrown some but much of it was not much more then big saplings.
The only Elk in the province back then were in the foothills and mountains and the Deer were few and far between, the result of massive Wolf populations that had since been wiped out by the rabies plague of the 1950s.
It was boom then bust, both for people and for wildlife.
The world we live in now is far removed from the way it was before we humans began managing every aspect of the world around us.
And we have learned little from the mistakes of the past. Our bag limits in some cases are beyond what a population can sustain and others fall far short of controlling some populations.
Wolves are still increasing in populations at an alarming rate, as are Beaver and Snow Geese. Meanwhile Moose and Duck populations remain well below historic levels.
One can not imagine what that distant past looked like unless one live through at least part of it. Fields of stooked wheat with clouds of Ducks swirling over head. Seeing 27 Moose at one time from one location.
One road into the north, and it gravel, mud and dust, or snow so deep only dog sleds could make it through.
No snow plows, no fire fighters battling forest fires, major business centers the size of today's villages. Cities with no pavement and no electricity in some cases. Transport trucks hauling freight to the far north that today would be city delivery trucks.
The one thing I see that hasn't change a lot are rifles. Sure there are a way more cartridges to choose from, but to a large degree the form and function has not changed much.