Changes to Sheep Hunting Regulations

As it seems Pudel's original post got drug in another direction, I thought I'd post his info regarding sheep again in a thread only dedicated to changes to sheep hunting regulations. Let's please keep mule deer out of this and keep it productive....this is the future of sheep hunting we are looking at.

Here's what pudel posted for the proposed changes:

Sounds like there are 3 proposals for sheep:

(South = South of the Bow, Central = Bow to Brazeau, North = North of Brazeau)

1. Put entire province on a draw. Doing the math with all the info available, this would allow approx 1150 permits. We now sell about 2200 sheep licenses per year, so it works out to an average of hunting every second year, although obviously some areas would be longer and some less depending on accessability and populations. This would allow management WMU by WMU

2. The north would stay as a general tag with 4/5 curl restrictions, the central would go on a draw with 4/5 curl restrictions (this area would allow about 300 permits). The south would stay as a general license but with full curl restrictions.

3. The entire province would stay as a general lisense but north would be 4/5 curl and both central and south would be full curl.

Other options available:
Wait times after harvesting a sheep:
1 yr after first sheep
3 yrs after 2nd sheep
5 yrs after 3rd sheep
7 yrs after 4th sheep

or

Wait time depending on age of sheep:
>10 yrs 1 yr wait
8 - 10 yrs 3 yr wait
6 - 8 yrs 5 yr wait
<6 yrs 7 yr wait

- Increasing sheep license fees ( to reduce number of hunters)

- Designated registration offices to keep measuring fair (this could increase travel of successful harvesters)


From what I understand these are what SRD brought to the AGMAG.

Here's a few questions that popped into my head after reading the above and I'll be posing these to the powers that be. Hopefully everyone else will ask their own questions as well. There may well be some logical explainations.

I'd suggest sending your questions to:

Jim Allen james.allen@gov.ab.ca

Honourable Frank Oberle peace.river@assembly.ab.ca

Rob Corrigan Rob.Corrigan@gov.ab.ca

Ron Bjorge ron.bjorge@gov.ab.ca

Anyhow, here are my thoughts.


1) What is the actual problem they are trying to address is? Obviously, or at least I think, they want to reduce ram harvest in the south and central portions of the province. Why? Are there not enough rams? Is there a problem with age structure? Is it to create a better quality trophy hunt?

2) Have they actually looked at the percentage of mature rams in areas like K-Country that reach or at least have the potential to reach the legal definition of full curl? Not doubt some will but I see this significantly reducing harvest compared to a draw unless they are only planning on issuing a couple tags per WMU.

3) I see they anticipate 2200 draw applicants but we already have 11,829 applicants for the five sheep draws we currently have and we've seen the increase in applicants that putting any species on draw creates. Am I missing something here? The 2200 number does not also take into account hunters that were ineligible to purchase a sheep licence in 2011 due to being successful in 2010. Realistically, it would seem to me that we'd end up with 15,000-20,000 applicants, increasing wait times to 15-20 years. Something just doesn't add up or perhaps they plan on handling this in another way which leads me to the next question.

4) Will these new WMUs be covered under a new draw code or amagamated with the current sheep draw codes as discussed last year?

5) If amalgamated, what will happen to current priority?

6) It looks as though resident opportunity will be cut in a minimum of half if a draw goes ahead. Will outfitters see a similar decrease in tags?

7) I see one of the options was to increase licence fees to basically price sheep out of the reach of many Alberta hunters. Is this for real?

8) Are the sheep population results are going to be released as promised by SRD?

9) What is the rationale behind further punishing sheep hunters for being successful.

10) Are other methods of sheep management being considered? While hunter management is a simple task, are issues like habitat, industrial use and predation also being looked at potential solutions to whatever the problem is?