Legal or Not

[Rock Doctor]

I know what the CO told me, but was wondering what you think
I was a little suprised about the outcome






RD

[mountainman]

Legal. But I'm from Alberta and they're all legal bulls (with the proper tag of course) But even for your immy season I'd say legal.

[Fisher-Dude]

Not. He needs 1" of visible boney antler on the busted side.

[BCHunter]

im saying not legal

[Leaseman]

Not too for me.... can't see any antler on the left......

[Kirby]

Not legal, if there is 1" of bone under the hair it is legal. However without that 1" it is not considered a tine and not legal.

Kirby

[rollingrock]

Originally Posted by Kirby

Not legal, if there is 1" of bone under the hair it is legal. However without that 1" it is not considered a tine and not legal.

Kirby

0"= less than two points

If you see a lone young bull with a pair of hairy nuts but without any bone on top of its head, would you consider it legal?

[Fisher-Dude]

Originally Posted by rollingrock

0"= less than two points

If you see a lone young bull with a pair of hairy nuts but without any bone on top of its head, would you consider it legal?

No. It could be a bull calf, and calves are not considered legal spike/fork bulls and are specifically excluded in the spike/fork definition. To be a "bull", it must be over 12 months in age.

[Cariboo]

Legal as to what?

A tripalm bull? A Spike-fork bull? A ten point bull? A generic bull moose?

[Rock Doctor]

Well, I guess this has been discussed before
Like most of you said, I figured it was not legal becouse it had no antler on one side. It is busted clean off. If it had a bit of antler showing, I figured it would be good to go.

When I talked to the CO about it, the suprise to me was that he said he didn't know, and that he would get back to me about it
When he did get back to me, he said that it does in fact need to have some visible antler to be legal as a Spike/Fork. That is his interpretation of the regs.

RD

[Fisher-Dude]

Remember the Good Old Days, when moose season was bull moose, all season, and maybe a week or two of cow moose? If it had bone, it was good to go, and many BC families enjoyed moose meat throughout the winter. There were always lots of moose to go around too, and no real conservation concerns in any areas.

How the heck did we go from that, with 174,000 hunters in BC, to the gobbledegoop we have now for regulations with 90,000 hunters, different regs for every region, silly one or two week openings, STUPID LEH only in region 5, spike/forks, tripalms, ten points, etc?

WTF happened? I just wanna go moose hunting.

[The 'Hummer']

Originally Posted by Fisher-Dude

Remember the Good Old Days, when moose season was bull moose, all season, and maybe a week or two of cow moose? If it had bone, it was good to go, and many BC families enjoyed moose meat throughout the winter. There were always lots of moose to go around too, and no real conservation concerns in any areas.

How the heck did we go from that, with 174,000 hunters in BC, to the gobbledegoop we have now for regulations with 90,000 hunters, different regs for every region, silly one or two week openings, STUPID LEH only in region 5, spike/forks, tripalms, ten points, etc?

WTF happened? I just wanna go moose hunting.

Good question. In just over ten years of my youth and my introduction to hunting came when I lived in the Wells/Barkerville area. We still have a cabin at Bowron Lake but the chances of using it now in hunting season are pretty slim, unless I get a draw.

This year I did get a Bull draw for 5-02 and had plans to hunt with my son who lives in the Horsefly area. Had to cut the trip short because of a hip injury.

[Cariboo]

Originally Posted by Fisher-Dude

WTF happened? I just wanna go moose hunting.

I don't know about the rest of the province but here in the 5-2 the population explosion of wolves has really caused a decline in the moose population. We went from a 5 wolf a year limit to NBL a couple of years ago.

[Fisher-Dude]

Originally Posted by Cariboo

I don't know about the rest of the province but here in the 5-2 the population explosion of wolves has really caused a decline in the moose population. We went from a 5 wolf a year limit to NBL a couple of years ago.

I believe one of the reasons for the spike in wolf populations was the stockpiling of moose by the regional bio with restrictive harvest under LEH. Lots of moose, so lots of wolves showed up to eat 'em. Rodger Stewart strikes again, by trying to feed his outfitter buddies "guaranteed moose hunts", IMO.

Keeping game populations at a more reasonable level helps keep predators dispersed and at manageable populations, and keeps range grazing/browsing to levels that support healthier herds and allows range to recover year to year from grazing/browsing impacts.

Too many moose (or elk, deer, bears, etc) isn't good, whichever way you slice it.

[The 'Hummer']

I think the swings in balance between prey and predator take a while and for the most part we look at things in shorter terms, usually of a year or few years. Locally in the mid to south island area, the Deer population back in the bush is very scarce and has been for quite a few years. In conjunction with that, the Wolf sign/population had increased quite noticeably. However, at present with the lack of Deer, the Wolf population seems to be in steep decline. This swing, in my opinion, appears to have taken place over the last twenty or twenty-five years and I believe it has bottemed out. As a result, I think you're going to see a gradual increase starting in the Deer numbers.

In the mid 60's when I was logging at Gold River, I recall the Deer population was seemingly in decline and Wolf sign and populations were on the increase. I was back in that area a couple of years ago as my buddy had an Elk draw. Deer sign and sightings were fairly numerous and the Wolf sign, almost nonexistent.

Today, locally, the few places you see any number of Deer are around the farms and very close to and in town.