Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Canada Hunting in BC Canada? Please consider not booking

CS
Please re read GreyDog Post ,do you not think that he has not hit the nail on the head < other than the out of control Frist Nation hunting>

Just because I don't agree with your idiotic position does not automatic mean that I am a guide outfitter .

I have done many hunts with GOABC members. I will do many more I'm sure. As far as how I feel about it being done in my own state, it is. I never could draw a good area to hunt brown bear on Kodiak, but a nonresident could if they paid their money. Good for them, bad for me. That's how it's been for quite a while now. I pay my money and hunt BC. I have many good friends that are GOABC members. I'm there to hunt, not get involved with allocation. In fact, that's the last thing I should be involved with as it should be decided locally without my input.

As a nonresident hunter, my concern is about the one animal I'm there to hunt. If the moose allocation is 1000 or 10, it doesn't matter to me as long as I get one of them. I don't have anything to do with those making decisions. To think I would skip hunting in BC because of how BC is allocating tags is a bit of a stretch. If I don't go, it's not as if that tag won't be used or go back to a resident. Someone else will pay the money and use it.

It's not that I'm not sympathetic to the locals, but this decision is being made in BC by BC residents. The GOABC members I hunt with are all BC residents as well. I'll hunt what I'm allowed to hunt. I won't have hurt feelings when my tags are reduced and won't be any extra happy when they are increased. I'm there to hunt while I can. When I can't, I'll be hunting somewhere else.

It's not that I'm not sympathetic to the locals, but this decision is being made in BC by BC residents. The GOABC members I hunt with are all BC residents as well. I'll hunt what I'm allowed to hunt. I won't have hurt feelings when my tags are reduced and won't be any extra happy when they are increased. I'm there to hunt while I can. When I can't, I'll be hunting somewhere else.

Kodiakisland
The BC residents who are making this decision are making a unilateral decision without consulting anyone else other than the handful of government minions, also in my view the the GOABC you speak of in many cases are foreigners too and were not born here.

sjr
Please re read GreyDog Post ,do you not think that he has not hit the nail on the head < other than the out of control Frist Nation hunting>

I think that this decision suiting the GOABC is the very reason 1st nation hunters have a constitutional right to hunt, (priority allocation) whether it is abused or not is erelavent. They have been hunting here for thousands of years without issue, and with several thousand native hunters in BC as compared to the upwards of 100,000 resident hunters in BC its like the pot calling the kettle black.
The issue here is "controlable" game management, which is so bad I dont know where I would start..... foreigners having an unbalanced proportion of tags for monetary gain, while the resident hunters are left to have the crumbs.
There is no way the government should be in control of game management, it should be in the hands of competant biologists who are not paid directly through government and are independant of government.

Actually, quite a number of the GOABC members are NOT BC people, there are Americans, Germans and other foreigners involved as "Owners" of GO outfits and they have NOT behaved with integrity or appropriate respect for we who OWN BC/Canada....."what goes around, comes around" in life.....

This, will make foreign hunting here "better" in the short term and some foreigners will laugh and take advantage of the situation, however, it is already motivating comments by BC residents on local hunting forums and in the media about just banning foreign hunting completely.

After the next provincial election, when the current opposition party will very probably form government, I expect a major effort by citizens here to permanently end all foreign hunting and this is quite likely to happen.

The "wild card" here is the aboriginal problem and IF the BCWF and the aboriginals are onside on this, the days of the GOABC and other GOs are numbered.

I consider the GOABC's position on allocation and other resident-related issues to be very shortsighted and even self destructive in the longer term.

The outfitters I hunt with are BC residents. As are the guides. If there are many foreigners who own hunting areas, maybe BC residents should address that if it is an issue.

Again, as a nonresident hunter, I'm interested in my one tag. Not how a state or province decides to allocate them. There will never be any plan that everyone agrees on. I do think BC residents should act if they feel what is happening is unfair or out of line, but it will not change my plans on whether I book a hunt or not.

The original post and thread title is consider not booking a hunt in BC if you are an American. There are a lot of things I consider before hunting anywhere far from home, but allocation is not one of them. This is a local issue that should be handled locally. I see no reason for an American boycott of BC hunts. When I book a hunt, my money goes to the BC government and BC residents. Legally.

It is simply an effort by some BCers to seek support among US trophy collectors, as some hunters here tend to see all North American hunters as members of some rather nebulous fraternity.....

I am not quite so sanguine about how many Americans, tend to view Canada and our enormous resource wealth, so, I am not very optimistic about gaining large scale support from US people wishing to hunt here.

In more direct response to your comments, we ARE involved in changing the policies in respect of foreign investment in our hunting/angling businesses, but, it takes time.....the day WILL come when zero foreign involvement will be standard legal practice here.

However, there is a LARGE, well-financed and highly vocal anti-hunting segment of our resident population and MANY of these ARE American expatriots as well as German and British immigrants....we MUST proceed carefully in order NOT to have our efforts to protect OUR hunting become useful to them in their agenda.

Your hunt money MAY well go to a foreign operator as they are more numerous in BC than many seem to realize.....but, I suspect that all foreign hunting here is doomed and so do a number of BC guides, etc., whom I know.

So, all in all, the request to Americans to refrain from booking hunts here was/is a reasonable and potentially very helpful one.

Its your personal decision to make all good. As a BC resident hunter I'd like as many as possible to know about the issue and they too can make their mind up. But as posted further back the back room deal huge allocation increase to the GOABC has been halted, the government now says they got it wrong and have ordered a renegotiating of this with resident hunters represented at the table. Hopefully this will all be behind us before long.

I had no issue with GreyDogs post, it's the post from someone who claims to be a resident hunter that has no issue with the GOABC reaping 40% of the grizzly bear allocation, and 25% of moose allocations. Your either a guide, an outfitter, or a resident with deep pockets that can just buy your hunts each year.

I don't fault you for that position...there is nothing wrong with coming here and hunting legally. IF you decided to forgo a hunt in BC for one in the Yukon, or other Canadian province in support of the BC resident hunters fight over allocation, I'd have great respect for that decision also.

To be clear, I'm not trying to argue or disagree with any of the opinions of the BC residents. I'm sure I would feel the same. In fact, it always chapped my backside that I couldn't get drawn for a Kodiak bear hunt when any nonresident could pay their money and come up. In the US, there are 50 states with 50 different ways of allocating hunting resources. Some are easy for nonresidents to hunt in, some aren't. I'm sure there's not one state that everyone is happy in.

I give my opinions as an actual nonresident BC hunter. I don't make it up every year, but some years I'm there both spring and fall. My perspective is not as a bystander, but someone who is affected by this as well. It is important to me that the GOs I hunt with are BC residents. Some of them are hunting the same area their father or even grandfather hunted as a GO before them. My hunts now are probably as much a social thing as an actual hunt.

In my opinion, me boycotting BC accomplishes one thing, me not hunting in BC. Those tags will go to some other nonresident if not me. If they go unused, I don't know that will have any affect on allocations. If it does get them reduced, that accomplishes less hunting opportunity for me. Either way, that's less hunting for me. If the end result is less hunting for me either way, why would I purposefully set out a couple of years?

I'm not against anything the BC residents are trying to do to gain more access to their land. I understand it. At the same time, I will continue to hunt there with long time BC friends as long as I can.

Yes, I think that we all get that, you and many other Yanks, are sympathetic, BUT, you are going to do what YOU want, first and foremost.

That, is pretty much what I have learned to expect, growing up on a world famous "trophy" fishing lake and then working in BC resource management agencies.

The problem NOW is that many BC citizens, non-hunters and hunters are largely opposed to ALL foreign trophy collecting and when they read, as they do and will, attitudes such as yours, well, WHY even allow you to come here is the reaction......

I understand YOUR point of view,but, I really see NO reason to continue to host those with such attitudes....see how it works?

That's fine. It's clear your goal is no nonresident hunters anyway. You have more to do with the decision than I do. You live there. Currently it is legal for me to come hunt there so I will. When it's not I won't. No worries.

There is little doubt that we are going to end up with more and more species on a limited entry system. While the Guide/ outfitters may support this, it isn't necessarily their fault. It is the fault of wildlife biologists who are in bed with other special interest groups whose desire is to reduce game populations. In this region of the East Kootenays, the elk population has been reduced by well over 70%. This was not done by guided non-residents but by BC resident hunters. Moose population on the upper Flathead has been decimated. This was not done by guided non-residents but by resident hunters who took advantage of an open season and increased access.
I will probably not live long enough to see the elk come back and it really annoys me.
As far as the first nations/aboriginal/indian impact is concerned, there is little question that in some areas they are the worst game hogs we have but they have plenty of help and many are BCWF members.
It is astounding to me that such a huge province with such a valuable resource can have screwed it up so badly in such a short time but in too many cases a look in the mirror shows the root problem. GD

No, I actually am in favour of a total revamp of BC hunting/management and WOULD support the percentages I posted earlier.

However, in our media-intense world, the comments made here and on other such sites DO impact upon BC citizen's attitudes and we hunters are a small minority of our voting population.

But, like Bill and I am older than he, I do not expect to see much improvement OR stable support for trophy hunting in my lifetime.....rather the reverse, sorry to say.

Great insight there Greydog .Hopefully hunters like CanuckShooter + other BCWF members will be able to look at the big picture on what's going on out there hills and not place the blame on the GOABC for the shortage of big game .

CanuckShooter
I had no issue with GreyDogs post, it's the post from someone who claims to be a resident hunter that has no issue with the GOABC reaping 40% of the grizzly bear allocation, and 25% of moose allocations. Your either a guide, an outfitter, or a resident with deep pockets that can just buy your hunts each year.
Sorry to disappoint you but I am just a hard work resident hunter with very shallow pockets .

I don�t think that anyone is blaming the GOABC for being the only problem, but they are certainly part of the problem. As you and others have stated the game populations are way down, so the GOABC getting a bigger slice, much more than any other state or province, is a big problem. The pie has been reduced and the GOABC wants a bigger slice of that smaller pie. This is the current fight, let�s as resident hunters win this one first, and then get our act together and start solving the other problems that face us. If we don�t, no resident hunter is going to be hunting. We need to get political.

Absolutely, the entire approach to environmental/resource management here MUST improve and SOON, but, if we allow this latest travesty, we WILL lose what little hunting we have left.

In any event, some regions, the Kootenays, certainly, are now so populated, etc., that there is simply not enough game or fish to allow any non-resident allocation.

The massive habitat damage caused by foreign corporations/governments as in the "strip miones" and the accursed hydro dams has caused this and we are left to cope with the after effects.

When I look at the discussion we are having I am puzzled by one thing only and it is this....
The land simply isn't supporting the game that it should be, why not?
Some want to blame the GOABC, where I hunt there are no G/O, so thats not why there is such a depletion of game.
Some want to point fingers at the Indians...
Where I hunt in 40 years I've never seen an indian hunting there, so thats not the problem.
Theres been more wolves, that has had a slight impact, but no big deal.
What I do see is a network of roads that weren't there before and there is access to every mountain top and the game simply has nowhere to go, I see guys too fat and lazy to get out of the truck and they seem to shoot stuff if they spend the time driving around.

A big increase in hunters over the last few years, this year I think it was 6 hunters I ran into that probably cant say 10 words in english and I wonder why/how they passed their hunter safety courses to get the licence in the 1st place.
Why the forestry wont de-activate the roads after reforestation is just stupid in my view.

In short there is no reason the land can't support plenty of game for everyone, like it has in the past.
It infuriates me that after a fire they dont de-activate the roads so the benefit of the fire can have a spiraling outward effect on the game within the region, especially mule deer pops.
I'm not against G/O having their fair share, but thats it.

Every time u hunt with a BCGOA outfit u have contributed 200 dollars into a fund used to lobby against the interests of fellow hunters. Perhaps you could question whether you could choose not to pony up.