Bull/cow or calf?

[gbk]

And game populations are not managed on an individual level. Theyre managed on a regional level.

Nothing truer-especially for moose.
The moose actually CAN BE wiped OUT from and area by overharvesting.
That is why Quebec HIGHLY regulates bull vs cow harvest(what good is an area full of cows if no bull?)

[Tman]

I'm no scientist but if the mortality rate is somewhere around 50% for calves then my mind says if 100 less calves are shot in an area then there are still 50 more calves surviving. I assume the mortality rate isn't including hunters? I don't understand the killing of calves let alone cows with calves never made any sense to me how someone can just kill a cow and the calf with it and not think that affects the future of the species... not to mention groups of hunters with multiple calf tags maybe killing more than one calf on their hunt just because they can. Anyway like I said I am not a scientist or biologist, I'm just some guy that wants to hunt moose for a really long time..

[MarkD]

GW11, thanks for your comment. I tend to agree with you.
The both assumption (that calf is hard to shoot and that most people wouldn’t shoot calves even though there is no opportunity for a bull) might be outdated.
For the first one, I still don’t see it from my experience. For 20 years hunting in Canada I only shot two claves. I don’t think it is a lot and I got the impression it is a common situation - calf is hard to get.
But I talked to my friends in Russia recently and they say cows with calves are very easy to see in winter time. And I think this may be the clue. In winter months both moose and deers are changing their behaviour, becoming more credulous.
And that’s probably why in the northern part of Ontario calves are an easy target while I still believe (maybe wrong? - if so I will accept it) in the Southern part it is not.
With regards to the point that much more people hunt calves than was previously expected, then the new licensing rules seems to be an appropriate way to go and hopefully will fix the problem.

However I still would like to point out that conservational matters should not be confused with ethical stuff as it was the case in this discussion.

Please don’t tell me that you think all these organizations and government bodies do this because it’s the right thing to do. It’s all about the benjamins. Money more often than not dictates policy. Let me repeat, policy is not based on studies entirely! Follow the money.

Yes, right. I do not trust eye blinded to government policies in general. But I tend to trust MNR and OFAH policies much more just because I think we have the same views on the problem. I do not say they are 100% right. But I do not have a better opinion either.
And don't forget that moose management is also about money. No money (come from licenses) no management lead to less moose population. I guess and hope they balance it somehow.

I think the argument that “50% of calves die anyway” is BS. So, why should we shoot them then? Seems counterintuitive to me.

It is math. Not very simple but not entirely complicated either. Think about it. To VERY simplify, statistically, if you shoot adult moose you miss 1.5 youngsters in the next year. If you shoot a calf you miss 50% of younger next year compared to the adult. Something like that…
Again, I’m not 100% sure if this is really true, but I guess, this is the best approach they had at the time. Again, I’m not 100% sure if this is really true, but I guess, this is the best approach they had at the time. And all other approaches (expressed here) are based on personal opinions/observation, not on science and statistics.

[sawbill]

Wow, sure is some nonsensical posts here. Sorry Dilly and Birdbull but you win the prize on this one to claim its a money grab. Really? There's not enough money generated in moose license sales to keep the lights and heat going in a district office. That thought insults all those bios who've dedicated their careers to doing the best job they can toward managing a very demanding program. MNR's mandate first and foremost is to ensure sustainable moose populations, not ensuring the viability of tourist outfitters. If you do want to point the finger at someone, then look in a mirror because hunters demand they have something to hunt. It now becomes a juggling act between proper management initiatives and satisfying a very demanding and vocal hunter group who often come armed with political backing. On the other end of this thread , MarkD and Blasted Sabers comments are just about as close and accurate as you can get to the current state of affairs.
The demise of once healthy moose populations from the 50's and 60's era isn't that difficult to figure out. I hunted in those years. Loss of habitat, increase in number of access roads, improved access tools, 4x4's, ATV's and side x sides. Smarter hunters, especially calf hunters, thanks to the internet. Ribbon rail--train kills. Those numbers alone would astound you. Unregulated native kill--another issue.
In my humble but honest opinion, the only way to get our moose population back to a sustainable but highly restricted hunt would be to close a large number of WMU's down completely for nothing short of 5 years.

[dilly]

Sorry Dilly and Birdbull but you win the prize on this one to claim its a money grab. Really? There's not enough money generated in moose license sales to keep the lights and heat going in a district office.

In my humble but honest opinion, the only way to get our moose population back to a sustainable but highly restricted hunt would be to close a large number of WMU's down completely for nothing short of 5 years.

Well Sawbill, I have to admit, you would know better than most about what is actually going on out there. I'm glad you chimed in. I agree with much of your post. The point I was making was not that moose licenses are meant as a revenue generator, but rather that people wanted SOMETHING for the price of their license. That something was a chance at a calf.

[Fenelon]

"increase in number of access roads, improved access tools, 4x4's, ATV's and side x sides". I have a friend who was an MNR bio back in the Lands and Forests days. He gave me some old internal district reports for northwestern Ontario wmus that were written back in 1968. The topic was the impact on moose hunter success since the advent of the "power toboggan" (snowmobile). They looked at at data from 1960 - 68 and the results were shocking. This would have been back in the days before the 3 wheelers came out. Success rates went through the roof because hunters could now range much farther (more than 15X former "on foot" travel) in the search for an animal. Evan back then, they started to see areas that were getting hunted out. I can only imagine the impact now from modern equipment, esp. ATVs. Back in the 50's-60's hunting occurred on outer fringes of moose habitat. The inaccessible interior areas would have been refugiums for the remaining population. Sadly now, there's rarely a patch of bush that you go to that doesn't have an ATV trail whacked through it.

[blasted_saber]

Wow, sure is some nonsensical posts here. Sorry Dilly and Birdbull but you win the prize on this one to claim its a money grab. Really? There's not enough money generated in moose license sales to keep the lights and heat going in a district office. That thought insults all those bios who've dedicated their careers to doing the best job they can toward managing a very demanding program. MNR's mandate first and foremost is to ensure sustainable moose populations, not ensuring the viability of tourist outfitters. If you do want to point the finger at someone, then look in a mirror because hunters demand they have something to hunt. It now becomes a juggling act between proper management initiatives and satisfying a very demanding and vocal hunter group who often come armed with political backing. On the other end of this thread , MarkD and Blasted Sabers comments are just about as close and accurate as you can get to the current state of affairs.
The demise of once healthy moose populations from the 50's and 60's era isn't that difficult to figure out. I hunted in those years. Loss of habitat, increase in number of access roads, improved access tools, 4x4's, ATV's and side x sides. Smarter hunters, especially calf hunters, thanks to the internet. Ribbon rail--train kills. Those numbers alone would astound you. Unregulated native kill--another issue.
In my humble but honest opinion, the only way to get our moose population back to a sustainable but highly restricted hunt would be to close a large number of WMU's down completely for nothing short of 5 years.

Great post.

[Gilroy]

Great post.

Times 2.

[MarkD]

I'm glad that I'm not alone here.
This is a complicated, multifactor issue and it’s very wrong if we come here just with our emotions and personal experience/observations.

However, even though it seems that Sawbill knows about the topic better than all of us I don’t think that it’s really

The demise of once healthy moose populations from the 50's and 60's era isn't that difficult to figure out.

Again, look at the examples like Sweden and Russia. For example, look here
http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/static/ho...via_alaska.pdf
In Sweden they hunted (killed) 88k moose in 2009, that's more than estimated total numbers of moose in Ontario. And I'm pretty sure they have much better access to moose habitat than here in Ontario. And Ontario is twice bigger than Sweden. Then note that Sweden is almost entirely populated, with roads and access to the moose habitat while Ontario’s Northern part is relatively wild.
I think

close a large number of WMU's down completely for nothing short of 5 years.

will definitely help to improve the moose population numbers but the reason for low moose numbers lies somewhere else, outside of hunting. Hunting moose removal is just a small part of it.
I also don’t see much loss of habitat in Ontario, especially in the North.

[MarkD]

Read it! Some stuff is just astonishing!
http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/static/ho...via_alaska.pdf

The way moose are hunted and managed in Scandinavia is
quite foreign to us. Moose meat can be sold. Landowners, including
public land agencies, own the moose on their land, and profit from
the harvest.

Almost every acre of moose habitat in Scandinavia isaccessible to hunters. Dense systems of high quality forest roadsare drivable by car or pickup.