Had a great time, got F&W to commit to sending me the Sheep data for public release, and met a bunch of great guys and girls. I'm sorry I had to miss out on the real party, but duty called early on Sunday. Next year I promise to be hung over in the morning.
I think there is more to it Darcy. You take numbers of hunter that have increased and huntable area has went way down. That is the biggest reason for less animals.They are forced out of huntable areas to the santuaries. Then you add all the predators and wild hourses and others competeing with them for food.. I dont buy all of the crap that they are saying about age stucture of legal rams and all the other whooy... That study is flawd from the start as they have introduced new sheep from all over so how can that eaven make sence to that study. Also you did not have to regester a ram back in the day so why is it they have all of this info prior to registration? Also back in the day you could also hunt rams in November.Big difference to now. Now only Natives can hunt then other than a couple draws.....
I know it wasn't directed at me but,,,Nube to start you should try and make it to the seminars. It's a great chance to hear info and voice concerns. I know that people have other commitments but in the years I've been attending most of the biggest voices about sheep hunting on the forums have nothing to do with the sheep foundation. They put all this on to help inform the public and raise money for sheep and many that argue or complain on the situation of or mountain sheep do minimal to do anything about it.And as for data well we were told outright it will be all given to the public in the near future. But to cover a couple topics they still go with the overall population being stable. Up in some areas and down in others. Harvest age averages have risen in the last few years but mainly due to rams reaching legal at older ages. Very few 4 1/2 or 5 1/2 year old rams being harvested any more as rams are taking longer to reach legal size. They also confirmed that horn base and length sizes are getting smaller. They also confirmed that overall harvest numbers are down over the last 30yrs. From around 220 in the 80's to I believe just over 160 this past season. Hope I got them numbers right.From what they stated is that a Province wide draw is not in the near future. But there are changes and looks like full curl in some more zones is a possibility and longer wait times was also talked about. There was a few more possibilities but I think these are the top ones.
Harvest age averages have risen in the last few years but mainly due to rams reaching legal at older ages. Very few 4 1/2 or 5 1/2 year old rams being harvested any more as rams are taking longer to reach legal size.
They also confirmed that horn base and length sizes are getting smaller.
They also confirmed that overall harvest numbers are down over the last 30yrs.
To clarify a few of your comments; None of this has been shown to be true.What would be needed to show what they are showing in these studies to be true? Average age of harvested rams has increased from 6.7 to 7.5 years over 35 years (1975-2010). The average age of harvested rams is only increasing in half of the SMAs. And right from there mouth average age has increased due to fewer 4.5 to 5.5yr old rams being harvested, And depending on SMA can reflect on the largest protion of harvested rams( keep in mind the areas showing the concern are the largest producing SMA's). The others are stable of decreasing. This is a long term trend, not somethng that has happened over the last few years. Hunters selecting for older rams alone can account for this trend.In the end, THIS IS A GOOD THING! We want the rams to be older.Yes you are right this would be a great thing but like you say this is not prooven and could be caused buy hunters being selective or them rams not reaching legal by 4.5 and 5.5yrs of age. We want rams to be harvested at older levels but from the last 2 years of studies they both say turning legal age is increasing and that to me isnt good. The proportion of 4-5 year old rams harvested has decreased from 25% to 12% of the harvest. again from 1975-2010. This means that on average there was less than ONE young ram (0.54) in the harvest per year over the 35 years. if younger aged rams reaching legal status has dropped by over 50% as you stated can show a trend of rams reaching legal at an later age. Or hunters being more selective. If its hunters being selective thats great if rams are taking longer to reach legal then its a change that should be looked at. And if it has dropped from 25% of harvest which is 58 rams in 1990 (233 total rams harvested) to 12% which is 20 for 2011 (168 rams harvested) that shows a significant change, and if you are correct then all these legal rams should be out there and guys should be seeing legal 4.5 and 5.5yr old rams on the hills and from what guys are indicating and what studies show as the percentage of the population as legal rams contradicts that people just being more selective. Still see a ton of just legal tipped rams throughout the forums each year. The only way this can be relected is to have profile pics of every ram killed and an age then compare what rams are lamb tipped and young and just legal as apposed to broomed and just legal but older The proprtion of young rams in the harvest is only occuring in 6/10 SMAs.Yep 60% of the SMA. Which probably include 80% of sheep habitat as the ones included are the largest and produce the highest percentage of rams in the province.Increased hunter selection towards older rams can easily account for this. I know quite a few guys who eat their tags every year after passing up young rams. You may know some too. Be great if this was truley the case but nothing has been posted to document or show this. I still see a tone of just legal rams being harvested each year. Just look at the 2 Nube got last year.There has been no evidence shown to prove that the rams are taking longer to become older. Brooming loss is NOT accounted for in the measurments. Nope takes the same length of time to get "older"! And brooming loss wont have changed over the last 35yrs it will be a relativly stable occurance and is very minimal in the lower age half of harvested rams. This evidence will affect all the past year statistics and drop/increase in age and and size differences from now to 35yrs ago will all have the same affect from brooming. F&W only stated a decrease in horn length and base size in only 3/10 SMAs. One are shows a decrease in length, bases are stable. 6/10 areas show stable to increasing horn length and base size!Id have to see them numbers again as I dont recall it being up in that many areas.Harvest numbers are right on the long term average, only half of the SMAs show a decrease in harvest, the other half are up or stable. Harvest numbers are down almost 65rams per year since 1990 as a province average not right on and in a harvest level of under 200 sheep per year now that is a significant loss to resident hunters. Thats far from stable as a province! And yes some areas are stable. And that is why they are looking at full curl and such in certain zones to target areas of concern. When you look at SMA 1 + 2 as being stable and say 4A, B and C as decreasing its a huge difference. SMA 4 has minimum twice( probably more) the sheep habitat and many time higher sheep harvest numbers so when that region is decreasing it has a huge effect on sheephunting.Weather and disease issues can be seen in the harvest data. These incidents are mirrored to periods of localized lowere harvest rates. Outfitter harvest also shows a trend to be effected by these conditions as well as the world economy. Weather and disease, True but what do we do if that is the true cause? Just keep hunting them as hard as we always have? World Economy, I hate to say but most top sheep outfitters still book 100% of there tags or an equal amount as each year even with the world economy and there harvest rates and such have still changed.We need to be careful to not read to much into generalized comments. Before to coming to any conclusions, lets confirm if and where there is a concern, then figure out what is causing the problem. Then is the time for discussing possible hunting restrictions. Doing things in reverse may cause long term damage to hunting opportunity without actually solving the problem.When will there be an agreement between all studies, thoughts, ideas and personal opinion to actualy decide when there is an issue or problem? Once there is an irreversable decline or some situation like that? If we wait for that to happen then we may as well just give up and open things up and giver shit!
If your are referring to the graph in the PP that showed the low numbers of less than 5% in SMA's virtually across the province you have to view those numbers as presented. Those were 40 year averages of each SMA. If you take the SMA that included 400 where the die offs virtually eliminated mature rams for some time leaving 0 in the column then you can see that the averages will be quite low. In fact a buddy crunched some numbers and if you could increase the average by .5% (that's one half %) per year the spread sheet wasn't big enough to get the number over 5%. If you increased it by 1% every year it would take 16 years to get the number over 5%. On the ground however you would be looking at over 20% of the population being a mature rams. There is a lot of info and stats in the presentation that are suspect when it comes to figuring out what's going on and that is the reason the raw data that generated these graphs needs to be presented.
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Topic: 2012 wild sheep banquet!!!! (Read 3275 times)
