Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Canada Decimation of BCs wildlife.

What is decimating BCs wildlife? Is it the herbicide spraying? Is it the FNs shooting everything? Is it the wolves and bears eating all of our game? Or is it habitat change?

Personally I am glad that we don't own a guiding territory because things must be pretty bleak with the animals all gone.

That sounded like a bit of a tongue-in-cheek post but I'll tell you what:
Yesterday I went on about a twelve mile hike through prime wintering ground. Typically, this time of year, I would see in excess of 150 elk and probably a hundred deer. I saw exactly two elk and about twenty deer. I saw the tracks of a pair of wolves (this is typical of the area) a bunch of coyotes, and one cougar.
In this area, I think the elk have been over-harvested for the last three or four years. Elkfencing of hay fields and increased pressure on range lands has hurt lowland herds. Elkfencing has also resluted in increased predation of deer by coyotes. It didn't take coyotes long to figure out they could run deer into a fence to kill them. In the field next to us, coyotes average a deer a week.
I have to say, we still have a lot more game than I saw any evidence of up the Fox River this fall! GD

Canuck,
Where have you hunted this year?
I've hunted elk in the Muskwa-Ketchika, moose southeast of McBride, and deer/ducks in the Fraser Valley. Of the three, the area that had the fewest game animals was the McBride area (although we did get our moose, but we were one of the very few who did). The general feeling among the locals is that the regulations have allowed overhunting of moose. For many years, there have been lots of LEH permits for cow and calf moose. The results of that policy shows, there are only about 1/4 of the moose that used to be there.
In the other areas, the game numbers seem pretty good.

I agree that over harvesting has played a large role in many places. It's my understanding that with all of the F&W cuts, it has been severeal years since ministry personnel have had the resouces to do any comprehensive game surveys, such as the winter moose count, which used to be done on a fairly regular basis in the interior. Over that span of years, changes to LEH and open season regulations have not kept pace with the diminishing wildlife populations. Also, many areas once contained large tracts of wildlife habitat which were somewhat difficult for hunters to access. Now many of those wilderness or semi-wilderness spaces have roads through them and some have become absolutely riddled with ATV trails, and you will find on many of those trails, hunters outfitted with every technological gadget available to improve their chances of success - radios, range finders, and even phones that will run Google Earth. I'm not blaming, or saying that using available technology is inherently "bad", but it can and does tip the scales in favor of the hunter. It may be time to decrease the harvest significantly, and to reconsider the whole concept of "fair chase". While I don't have statistics to support my generalizations, I do have about 40 years of hunting and 15 years of trapping experience in the central interior of the province
No doubt habitat change has been a major factor in some areas, and I know that certain areas I hunted in recent years have greatly increased wolf populations. Finding a black bear in many parts of region 7-10 is a much simpler proposition than finding a harvestable moose. I guess all of those things create increasing pressure on dwindling game populations.

We haven't noted an increase in hunters and actually in some of the spots hunter numbers are way down [as evidenced by lack of camps]. What we do see is black bears everywhere and copious amounts of wolf sign. There isn't a road or trail in 7-21,22,12,11,10,7,9 that I travelled that didn't have wolf tracks on it. Some of those trails had ZERO moose crossings for miles and miles while the wolves were everywhere. My home town is in the heart of moose country...at least it was...now they are all wolf shyt I think.

My conversations with hunters who hunt around the province, indicate ungulate game populations are down all over. Black bears and wolf sign everywhere, we need proper game management, which inlcudes predator culls.

One notable exception - the ranchers from Cranbrook up to FSJ bitch like hell about the large numbers of elk that knock down their fences and eat their hay every winter. In many areas, there seem to be more elk than ever before.

With more and more roads, we are getting extremely good at stomping out fires. If mother nature was allowed to refresh about 1% of the landscape every year with new vegetation, the groceries might be a bit better.

For our county here in Oregon. That would only amount to 102.26 sqaure miles per year. Square that up, and it's only a little over 10 miles to a side. If we wanted a 50 yr rotation we could double those figures.

We did have deer elk and moose but since the ministry just takes our money and does nothing to check on the state of wildlife we have lots of wolves and only a few of the rest left

The ranchers will bitch as long as there is one elk remaining at large. We, the taxpayers, have, at considerable expence, helped to pay for ranchers to put up elk fences around hay producing property. At the same time, we watch the incursion of cattle-borne invasive weed species which degrade the elk range further. Here, in my small part of the East Kootenays, the greatest impact on game populations and the environment comes from predators that walk on two feet and ride on four wheels. Right behind comes the damage caused by and the competition from domestic animals. GD

The outfitters must really be noticing the massive kill off happening because of too many wolves and habitat destruction with the oil and gas chasing industry??

I know a rancher in west Texas with 22,000 acres who was worried about some drilling activity chasing away his deer. He hired a helicopter survey of his deer and they were mostly hanging out around the rimrock formations where they had always been and this was near the 24 hour drilling activity.

I have driven across the Jicarilla Apache indian reservation in northern New Mexico, and it was full of oil and gas wells. This is one of the premier trophy areas for really big mule deer and bull elk. What I'm saying is the game gets used to the wells, they learn the wells don't shoot at them, and they stay in the area. May not be true in BC but I would not be too concerned about it.
Over hunting and too many natural predators along with droughts, bad winters, fencing off the migrations with tall fencing etc. are all bigger problems IMHO.

I think a big issue with well development is not the equipment, but the fact that good roads are jammed into every 160 acre parcel. Come the season and an army of rigs and 4-wheelers, and there is no escape habitat available.

Not sure why a stirring the pot here CS, must be because you are banned over at HBC. Bored eh?????

One year does not spell gloom and doom........we did 3 for 5 on moose in 5 days and saw 10 other bulls.

The "sky is falling" is something that you are always stating because of the bad year you had.

Nobody is disputing the huge increase in wolves in BC, and that the Gov is to chicken sh*t to do anything about it, yet you keep bringing it up......it is getting old man.

Keep stirring the pot....at least it brings out the best in some people.

Cheers

SS

The sky is not falling, it's collapsed!!!

Anybody seriously considering booking a hunt should look somewhere besides British Columbia because the wolves are eating everything. And the provincial government is taxing the sheat out of everything else. You'll pay a 12% harmonized sales tax on anything you buy...and a hidden carbon tax on fuel...

Govern yourselves accordingly.

SS>see you this afternoon. ;-)

CS always gets a little strange after hunting season is over,he's bored! I know he's had wolves in his fields, he should be letting the air out of them.Monashee

Are you back at HBC????

I need to get over there and see all the new posts....LOL

Are you moving to Alberta yet???

and the sky is not falling!!!! at least not yet......

Cheers

SS

10-4, and in west Texas oilfield pumpers get some great deer- in january.

FYI, to decimate something means to eliminate 10% of that something. It doesn't mean 'to wipe out'.

deci = ten.

decimate:

1.
to select by lot and kill every tenth person of.
2.
to take a tenth of or from.

"< Latin decim&#257;tus, past participle of decim&#257;re to punish every tenth man chosen by lot, verbal derivative of decimus tenth, derivative of decem ten; see -ate1 "

dec�i�mate/t/Verb: 1.Kill, destroy, or remove a large percentage of.
2.Drastically reduce the strength or effectiveness of (something): "plant viruses that can decimate yields".