Quote:
Originally Posted by hunter1993ap
in bc we dont have a trophy mule deer herd but we have some nice deer and we can hunt from sept. 1 to the 10th of december. i like the system we have and there are still nice deer. what are the regulations on hunting in saskatchewan that produce such nice deer.
|
in bc, there are lots of places where access prevents a lot of hunting pressure, thereofre some nice deer will exist. i lived there for a while and can assure you that bc is nothing like saskatchewan when it comes to numbers of big mule deer.
mules arent very bright and without protection in some form or another, they just wont grow big. they need to live to maturity and in most places, hunting pressure assures that they dont. saskatchewan gives them the protection they need in the form of limited hunting. mules are on a draw with tag numbers set so that not all the bucks get killed at a young age.
that doesnt mean that all bucks grow up....lots do die young, but there are less tags issued than there are bucks ensuring that there is a percentage that survive to maturity. in alberta, that was the case from about 188 to the early 2000s. lately though....there have been far too many tags issued resulting in the death of the vast majority of bucks at a very young age.
whitetails however are different. their survival tactics are much better, and they dont need to be protected from hunters. they are smart enough to have a good percentage of bucks make it to maturity without help. the kicker for them is habitat. thats why the southern parts of alberta have so few mature bucks around....the bald prairie gives them no escape cover. the odd one that lives down here does it by using a sanctuary. no hunting land, parks, and even cities will produce some good bucks...but never in the numbers that are in the central to northern regions.
back to mules.....in all fairness, saskatchewans lower human popualtion is helping too. archers there are killing mature bucks, but here in alberta, archers are killing a lot of immature bucks as well. archery tags are over the counter, but it may be time to get archers on a draw to reduce harvest. im a bowhunter too, and id rather hunt quality bucks every couple years than baby bucks every year. either way....the way mules are managed today in alberta, this province has no hope of rivalling saskatchewan in the production of trophy mules.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CLB
The sad thing is that the areas where these photos were taken have now been totally decimated by CWD culls. You still find the odd one in these areas but they are few and far between. These areas are just starting to get back onto the draw the last year or so, hopefully we will one day see these kind of deer in those areas in decent numbers again. A couple of these zones had 3-4 thousand deer shot out of them in a single year of the CWD slaughter. I saw 2 guys who took 33 deer between the two of them one year. Made me sick.
|
ive met a few that did that too cam. the most ridiculous thing i ever heard was the guy who had a truckload of them beetching and moaning that were no big bucks around.
that arsehole has been whining for 5 years now that its all the governments fault for killing all the deer, but cant see the fact that he contribuuted....and still does to this day pounding does left and right.
the game departments made some very stoooopid decisions, but the fact remains that hunters are the ones carrying it out. we have seen countless examples on this board over the last few weeks. so many guys willing to go to the east side of the province to smack the few deer left there.....but beetching the whole time about the low deer numbers. makes me wanna slap some sense into some of them.....but i doubt thats even possible.