Alberta Moose populations
 

I'm a landowner living NW of Calgary in WMU 212 (Calgary Bowzone).
I'm also a hunter, and I pay attention to wildlife populations.

Our Moose population is extremely low compared to what it was 6-8 years ago.
My observations leads me to believe that road kill and the issuance of too many tags in the WMU to the north of the bowzone has destroyed the moose population. When I talk other landowners of significant size I get the same story. They are not seeing many moose. When I talk with the local Biologist each year he tells me they do aerial surveys and I'm incorrect on my numbers. Year after year I tell him they have over subscribed the allotted tags for moose north of WMU 212. Finally last year he admits they did issue too many tags but some things you can't change.
Unfortunately my voice is small and very few people know that the Biologists determine the annual harvest of a species.

It would be nice to know if other people are seeing declining populations in the Prairie and Foothills regions. Is the Alberta moose populations going the way of the Dodo bird? Is the decline of this species a result of attempting to create more opportunity for hunters and less vehicular accidents?

My last question is why would the GOA allow the harvest of antlerless moose when the population is plummeting?

Your last question is a very good one. I think it is totally stupid having all these antlerless seasons when numbers aren’t great. Around here you can get a cow tag on a P1. Totally ridiculous. The only justification I can see is the insurance companies have probably lobbied the government to reduce the number of claims from auto accidents.
Bears, wolves and unregulated hunting all contribute to decreased moose numbers

Actually ....

Prairie Parkland Moose did not have any significant numbers in the 1990's. However, they have spread out over the major prairie river valleys where there are no wolves and few non regulated hunters after them.


There are more bears and cougars that can prey on calves though, and these predators actually are popping up all over the place.

Alot of cattle ranchers really hate moose. An average bull busts a 4 wire fence like it is tinsel.

Some years ago south of Consort, a friend had a cow tag. We went to ask permission and mentioned that a group of cows and bulls had just gone through the fences on both sides of the roads, and we asked if it would be OK to give it a try. He did not own that quarter, but gave us permission on ALL his land, and were told to take as many as we could. We only had one tag, and filled it promptly.

Drewsk

Moose
 

I see the the same in the south. Too many tags. An why all the cow moose tags my opinion there should be zero cow moose tags. One bull can an will breed allot of cows an they are the only thing that make more moose. You want to kill a cow there is allot of elk they give you two tags when you draw in some south zones.

This, near large centres ther is a lot of traffic and accidents which cause serious insurance costs.. large corps against population growth is a no win situation for them.
WDF

The prairie zone I regularly hunt (and have a moose tag in this year) has had the moose population decimated. Back when the season opened up 20 tags were given out and there were 60" moose around. There are now 120 antlered tags given out. Gonna be a meat hunt as that's about all that is left if you can find one. No idea why the powers that be have done this

Yeah it’s frustrating from a trophy perspective, not sure how to keep moose populations down or at least stable though without a higher harvest. I probably hunt a zone close to you (or possibly the same one) and there have been a lot of hunts where I see as many moose as deer. I still see trophy moose although not as many as there used to be but I end up hunting cow moose usually because my wife loves moose meat and I get tags more often. The powers that be probably are sick of how many people hit moose with their trucks, I know several who live out there that have so the population control trumps trophy quality.

501 too.....sad we use to have many moose running around but they are spread out and few and far between...just goes to show you shooting moose in February doesn’t pay off.:(

Drop a cow, two maybe three die....enough said.

The only way to bring back the moose population is to drop the anterless tags.....more like stop the Jan to April harvest of pregnant cows.... my zone has a influx of Jan to April hunters our moose population has taken a massive hit. Also it wouldn't hurt to kill a few bears.
We got 4 bears this fall. And didn't even put a dent in the population. Had fields full of bears as well on the crown.

Less and less moose every year in the crown land I hunted . We used to aways have a bull down by noon on opening day or the next day . Now you don't even see a moose in a week . More Caribou in the area than moose now . If they did not poison the wolfs a few years back the only think they would be eating would be the Caribou ,so i guess they had to poison them . Sad thing is they also took out a lot of birds that we used to see .
This is one old timer that an't putting in for an 8 year wait for a moose draw on crown land .

From the replies so far it appears that the moose population is decreasing in a number of areas. Is that good moose management?

Damage to fences caused by Moose on my place is minor. For the most part Moose take their time when they jump fences. They may break the top wire but generally nothing more.
An injured animal with a bad leg destroys fences no matter if its an Moose or Elk.

Elk cause more fence problems, period. When rut is about to start the bulls gather the cows. The calves which have no experience with fences learn the hard way of how to get to the other side. They will get through week and older fences by breaking old wire and snapping off old brittle fence posts. Good strong new fences typically have the top wires on the ground with many staples missing. Its sad to watch a bunch of elk calves trying to keep up with the distant herd that have already crossed the fence. The calves panic, pushing and launching themselves at the fence. They get ripped up pretty bad. New fences see very little damage. Most of the damage goes to the young calves.

Oct 25th the rifle season begins and the elk herd hit the fences with speed and that's when they do more extensive damage. The entire 4 or 5 strand fence will be on the ground if the number of elk crossing is large enough. As the calves grow we have less issues.

The same bred cows are pregnant during the November hunt, for those with antlerless tags, albeit the volume is known on allocations. But the reality is how many cows are taken which are pregnant, and how many cows are taken with a calf or calves either at heel or hidden in the brush. Essentially could be three moose in one shot, should she have twin calves hidden away when shot that will certainly not make the winter let alone the April time period.

In some regions the tag allocations is a method for controlled numbers to keep moose population density low, in many cases it is tied to removal of food source for predators such as wolves in a last ditch effort to save the declining caribou herd, by way of removal of food source at the cost of decimation of a healthy moose herd. Ungulate management at it's finest!!

The tie to motor vehicle accidents and possible allocations based on densities and collisions ratio, is there any documented proof of this?
For those with trophy concerns, if trophy quality is the end goal, possibly an introduction of a minimum spread or brow tines count such as which other jurisdictions have, or would this be too limiting as not all seek inches of horn or trophy class versus full freezers.
To me no matter how much you boil them antlers, can't get them steaked, tied to roast or ground so they stay in the bush.

The local Biologist tells me that they keep track of every road kill based on reports received from the local highway maintenance company. Companies like Volker Stevin, Ledcor, Carmacks and others.

The real reason will never be told/changed as it would be political suicide...:)

Moose seem to be declining in a lot of provinces

Really, Saskatchewan has fabulous opportunity. Greater than they ever had before. BC continues to have great options for hunters. They have made changes to make it better for residents but they still have a thriving moose population. The Yukon still has opportunity. Manitoba east, I can't comment.

I have not seen many issues with moose populations. They tend to move around a bit more as they are pushed by predators.

Elk the same, I have only seen a handful outside of the parks, Suffield and Nordeg. But I see their tracks and scat semi often.

I think the moose are moving more then they use to. They can travel pretty big distances especially if pushed around.
When you see a moose on the foot hills farm land one day, it might be in the hills the next one and on the side of the mountain the next.

In some zones they are trying to reduce the moose population to starve the wolves and help the caribou herds recover.

Look again at BC they have had numerous studies regarding their declining moose populations and on going cut backs to hunting opportunities. There has been a huge push to consult FN to hopefully get a decrease in cow harvest. A lot of BC moose populations are in decline and no where near past numbers

I am originally from BC and still have lots of family/friends there. BC’s management will give hunter opportunities on much lower populations than Alberta will. The spike fork season is one of the biggest false opportunities

Talking to hunters I know in Ontario and it’s a similar story of declining moose numbers/decreasing opportunities

I have not spoke to family in Manitoba in a few years but last time my uncle was also talking moose numbers being down

Just because some areas have opportunities to hunt doesn’t mean moose numbers are not decreasing

One thing I have noticed with Alberta is management is more conservative and they will go to a restrictive draw faster the some other provinces

There are no excess tags being issued for the northern zones. 544 for instance has 25 Calling Season tags. That zone is well over 150 km east to west.

Alot of zones up north the tag numbers have been steadily shrinking. However, moose are starting to build up again in the northern zones, and with the ongoing wolf kill there are more moose calves making the first winter.

As for prairie zones, yes alot of tags are going out, and for the reason of a population increase and impacts on vehicle collisions.

But the moose numbers have to come down. There was a near moose vehicle fatality south of Athabasca a couple of weeks ago, and winter has yet to really start.

Drewski

In the Yukon there’s a lot of posters up explaining to people that hunting cow moose is damaging to the overall population (go figure eh?). Maybe it’s time to reduce cow draws here.

It depends a lot on the area, but unregulated hunting and poaching play a significant role in some areas. When F&W conducted Operation Tamarack around 15 years ago, they discovered that one individual had personally killed 50 moose in one year.

Yup there is moose population under concern in the Yukon too

Parts of BC have similar signs on logging roads. A lot of theses areas don’t even have cow moose draws. This was part of a program combined with consultation to limit FN harvest of cow moose

Ontario has it's own moose debacle, they have now switched to priority allocation systems like in Alberta versus pool a and b.
A cry for increased opportunities for moose allocations across the province was used hand in hand with the remove the food source for wolves campaign in a last ditch effort for the caribou. Ending with 2 areas being 21A and 15B which are considered to be non-continuous zones for Northshore caribou, both had allocated North of 500 cow moose tags for the last several seasons, this year they have dropped those allocations to below 300 each. Two WMU that had once healthy populations of moose now has had their populations decimated as a demand for allocations and from the hip science created the perfect storm. They delayed the opener for rifle season to post Thanksgiving to allow the rut activity, the rifle season is open from mid October to mid December. The delay did nothing as the bred cows are still targeted until the end of season post rut activity. Low priority such as priority 1 would get you a cow tag if not in round 1, but in round 2 of allocations again satisfying the demand for allocation opportunities.

Cry for allocations, yet take beyond carrying capacity of a healthy moose population where their science used identified the numbers of allocations was not supported by aerial counts and identification of cow/calf ratios.
Who is holding the bag at the end of the day, finger pointing does nothing for a decimated herd, but hunt opportunity was available, be it short lived.

Another mismanaged resource for the sake of caribou populations hanging by a thread who's only existence remains due to the lack of an ice bridge for wolves to access their offshore island sanctuary.

Re 212, 247, 248 bow zone tags: yes, they want to reduce the moose population as much as possible and they are utilizing LICENSED hunters to do it. As they should. That is responsible management as there are too many catastrophic vehicle accidents with ungulates in those areas. No one cares if you want to see a moose in your field when people are being hurt and killed.

As for the rest of the province, the biggest issue is unregulated hunting, followed by predation. Our government is running scared of both unregulated hunters and predator loving ecoterrorists. No good reason for it with a solid majority, but they will do anything to stay at the taxpayer trough and that certainly includes pizzing off rural residents and hunters who will vote for them regardless.

I remember about 35 years ago when a moosexeas spotted on the Jensen spread in WMU 156- it made the news and was the talk of the town because no one had seen a miserable there before .
Now they are common in 158. 166, 208, 206, and on up to the upper 200's.
Cat

How many people are hurt or killed in collisions with moose each year?

I'm having a hard time believing that the number is high enough that it's even an afterthought when making management decisions.

If anyone could provide data, I'd happily change my mind.

I very much doubt they’d be “culling” moose due to the collisions with vehicles. But here is some data:

According to Alberta Transportation, the most recent confirmed statistics indicate that vehicle/wildlife collisions within Alberta are on the rise; 5,997 1 collisions were recorded in 1991 and 16,322 1 in 2008, which indicates an increase in occurrence of almost 170% for that time period. 15,950 of the vehicle/wildlife collisions in 2008 caused property damage, 363 caused injuries, and 9 were fatal. The total numbers for 2008 came to 9 fatalities, 498 injuries, and a total cost of $240 million 2 in damages.

Alberta Transportation found that deer were most commonly reported as the animals involved in these collisions (involved in 85% of reported incidents), then moose (11%), bear (2%), and then of other types of animals (2%).

Source: https://www.alces.ca/references/down...Amy_Carter.pdf

More data:

https://i.postimg.cc/3xMYvV78/IMG-3942.jpg

And some other provinces hard stats and info for comparison:

https://i.postimg.cc/MGqwsBvg/IMG-3943.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/NM0ctw84/IMG-3944.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/FKp4wKSz/IMG-3945.jpg

Source: https://tc.canada.ca/en/road-transpo...istical-review

You are correct and I think many factors are involved. We have had 2 recent years of tick-caused die-offs across AB. And moose have declined in most of their southern ranges in eastern Canade (NB,NS) and northeastern US (Maine, NH, Vermont, NY) and ticks appear to be main culprit. Dame in Minnesota, Montana, etc, along with Colorado,, etc. Climate change (shorter winters) is good for growing winter ticks. Tic Doc

Some interesting discussion. Let me ask these questions.

What is good Moose Management?

Should Alberta works towards a healthy population of moose consisting of bulls of all ages and lots of antlerless moose?

Should trophy hunting of moose exist in Alberta or should it only be a meat hunt.

Should the GOA create as much opportunity as possible and allow for hunting of both antlered and antlerless animals.

Should the moose populations across the prairie regions be restricted to bulls only?

What are your suggestions and observations if you were to make recommendations to your local biologist?