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  #301  
Old 12-20-2017, 01:27 PM
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Knotter Knotter is offline
 
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Originally Posted by DRhunter View Post
Earlier I had posted that I was 100% completely opposed to paid hunting. However if my $20 bottle of wine I enjoy giving a landowner after the season in thanks, will get me exclusive access to an absolute prime hunting ranch of 10,000 acres... I change my mind!
Perhaps it isn't your cheap wine that gets you the access. Maybe there are other things at work?
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  #302  
Old 12-20-2017, 03:33 PM
Joe Black Joe Black is offline
 
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20$??? Cheap? that's top shelf in my cellar.
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  #303  
Old 12-20-2017, 03:55 PM
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jungleboy jungleboy is online now
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3 certainties in life : 1 - Death ,2 - Taxes , 3 - Alberta Farmers and hunters gonna grumble.
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  #304  
Old 12-26-2017, 03:35 PM
protect protect is offline
 
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If the future comes to being paid access just buy some land now, and be ready for a long term investment, with a pay back. If paid access does not take place you still have a place to hunt. No permission needed, no gifts to buy, just enjoy your hunting season
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  #305  
Old 12-26-2017, 07:13 PM
59whiskers 59whiskers is offline
 
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95% of the licenced hunters would be gone. We would be just like Europe where the wealthy can pay to play. Beginning to believe what a fellow from Europe told me 40 years ago. All this is okay if you are rich. How would you like to see fish and wildlife resources privatized as well.
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  #306  
Old 12-27-2017, 08:04 AM
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Bushrat Bushrat is offline
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 59whiskers View Post
95% of the licenced hunters would be gone. We would be just like Europe where the wealthy can pay to play. Beginning to believe what a fellow from Europe told me 40 years ago. All this is okay if you are rich. How would you like to see fish and wildlife resources privatized as well.
Where already at the point where most poor people can't afford to hunt, it is simply not cost effective. If you only have a few dollars most people are going to spend them on food. Outside of a few rural poor who might shoot animals because they are accessible to them and they don't have to spend money to hunt, don't buy licenses or spend money on equipment, fuel and time, the vast majority of hunters hunting today are not hunting for food, they are hunting because they like hunting. The meat is just a bonus. In places like rural America where there is a lot of poor and most hunting is limited to landowners, their friends and people who can afford a hunt club or pay for a hunting lease there are tons of people who don't hunt, not because they don't want to but rather because they simply can't afford it. Eating road kill is very popular, down there, even gaining popularity up here in Canada though most who eat road kill would probably rather hunt for it if they could afford to.

As time goes by hunting everywhere is becoming an activity of the more affluent. Allowing landowners the right to charge for access will be just another nail in the coffin.
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  #307  
Old 12-27-2017, 09:16 AM
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MK2750 MK2750 is offline
 
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I think many hunt for the quality of meat not the quantity or money savings. I seldom if ever buy meat from the grocery store and when I do I often end up over cooking it for fear of the processing. At least once a month and usually once a week there is another news story about some death or illness as a result of poor food handling or cooperate greed. I think there is still many that are hunting primarily for food and as the study suggests, it is a main reason newbees are taking up hunting.

This is from the Realtree Website;

A survey by Responsive Management cites a full 39% of survey respondents listed “for the meat” as the chief reason they hunt. This is up from just 22% who answered the same way in 2008.

Why the increase? I think there are a few reasons. Chief among those is probably the field-to-fork locavore movement that has swept the nation in the past few years. People are better informed about where their food comes from these days. They want to know how the meat they consume was raised, with many preferring it to be as natural as possible. It doesn’t take much research on the topic to realize wild game is the most natural protein available. Game meat is additive, steroid and added hormone free, leaner than most farm-raised meat, and tastes absolutely delicious when prepared correctly.

This desire to put wild game on their family’s dinner table is also one of the main contributors to new hunters taking up the sport. I often participate in group discussions with new hunters where the bulk of the questions getting asked center on field care, processing and cooking of the meat. Many of these hunters readily admit that no one else in their family hunts and that they are taking up the sport for the sole reason of obtaining the most natural meat available.
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  #308  
Old 12-27-2017, 01:56 PM
calgarychef calgarychef is offline
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by NCC View Post
I'm a landowner. I ranched in the Peace Country for 15 years and recently returned to the family farm in central AB. Having land to hunt is one of the motivating factors for me to own land. I don't let anyone I don't know hunt our place. I've had far more negative experiences with hunters I don't know than positive. Poaching, ruts, garbage, gates left open, etc.

I have friends in TX where paid hunting is allowed. They can charge for access but the state still owns the wildlife. The one guy who was leasing out his place was charging $4500 for access to 5000 acres that was not managed for trophy quality. . Another guy I know manages the deer, and charges a bundle to shoot deer on his place.

From being exposed to both systems, here are my observations:

Trespassing is reduced where paid hunting is allowed, as the guys who have paid for a hunting lease will fiercely protect what they have paid for. Poachers may also have more respect for a "fellow hunter" than what they perceive as a greedy landowner.

For people who have some disposable income and want to start hunting, paying a landowner for a private hunting spot is a nice option with a high rate of success.

Paid access certainly will limit access to private land.

If you really want to manage the wildlife, you need a high fence.

The hunting experience for those who can afford to pay for access will be improved. The idea of heading to a private hunting preserve for a weekend is appealing to many.

Wildlife will benefit in many cases as the farmers will have an incentive to grow mature animals and increased numbers.

That said, I'm opposed to paid hunting as although it would benefit me, it would work against many outdoorsmen. I am very much against high fences as they disrupt travel patterns of wildlife.

I have also made a couple other general observations regarding land access:

Large corporations are not going to let hunters on as the corporations will not be willing to assume the risks involved for no reward. Sooner or later, a hunter is going to sue a landowner over something silly (like the gunsel on the trail ride who rode his horse over a wire gate, got piled, and sued the Hutterite Colony where the incident occurred) and that will be the beginning of the end.

Many landowners (like myself) hunt, have kids that hunt, and have friends that hunt. That doesn't leave a lot of time or space for strangers to hunt their property.

Hunters would be way better off figuring out how to increase the game numbers on the 70% of the Alberta landscape that is crown land than worrying about access to private land.

Lastly, stop with the cowboy welfare comments. We operate the same as any other business. If my 70 year old dad wants to drive a new truck and go to Mexico for a winter vacation after busting his ass for 55 years, what does that have to do with hunting access?
Well said
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  #309  
Old 12-29-2017, 04:39 PM
Huevos Huevos is offline
 
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I'm just wondering how much people think they will have to pay for these hunting leases, or paid access. Lets make up an outfitter. This guy outfitter has 20 mule deer tags in various wmus and another 30 white tail tags. He sells the muleys for $7500 and the whiteys for $5500 USD. This is about top dollar they could get for these tags. He Grosses $315000 at 1.2 exchange he is bringing in $378000. Now he attends shows and does advertising to sell all these hunts which will cost him around $3000 per show average once he gets a hotel, rents a booth and prints brochures etc. Lets say he averages 7 hunts a show so he attends 7 shows. that's $20000, This is going to take forever, I will just list guestimated expenses: shows $20000, Insurance $5000, guides $30000, food $8000, fuel $15000, accommodations $15000,
pay himself for the year at least $50000, professional fees and everything else I missed probably another $50000. That is close to $200000 in expenses without accounting for any incidentals or other things a guy runs into such as repairs. so now we have $178000ish. To take 50 good deer, how much land would he have to lock up? I'd say at least 2 quarters per mature trophy deer. Thats 100 quarters of land he would have to pay for. so max he could pay would be $1780 per quarter. before he started to lose money.
If 4 guys got together and payed $500 each to lock up a quarter, you could outbid an outfitter every time.
I would venture a guess that outfitters don't want paid access either, it would cut into their profits if they had to compete with us for paid access.
There are more private quarters than there are hunters in Alberta, so If we looked at it from a supply and demand perspective, the cost of getting a hunting lease somewhere in the province would never be excessive. Sure there will be some hot spots, but if the deer are allowed to grow to excessive numbers, they will have to spill out into other land.
All that being said, I don't want paid access to hunting anymore than the rest of you, but if it happened, I don't think it would be the end of the world.
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