where i usually go, there has been a substantial increase in can res traffic the last few years.  its to the point i dont even want to go back now.  a few years ago before all the talk of changes, it was rare to see other non sask hunters.  it seems that fear of not being able to go has spurred a lot of guys to rush out and get it in before they may not be allowed to anymore.  in my opinion, this draw beeswax has created a problem where there wasnt one before.

last year, i had a crew of dudes from med hat follow me up to where i hunt.  i dont mean the general area....they ended up in the same fields.  that made me search for a new area this year.  i stayed in the same zone, but went to the opposite end of it.  it was a gong show of road hunting can residents.  im not joking when i say i saw about 4 out of province plates to one SK plate wherever i went.  after 2 days i went back to my old haunt to find it even worse.  i was so bummed out by it, we packed up and returned to alberta. we were actually seeing some pretty good bucks there anyway, and we both ended up getting decent the bucks in my other thread.  the odd thing i thought was that the majority of plates werent even alberta....they were mostly from BC. 

i guess what im saying is that the numbers dont lie....the can res hunters flocking to SK in the last few years has grown exponentially since the talk of restricting it.  when this all first came up i argued that there wasnt even a problem where i hunt.  there sure is now.  as much as i like to go every year....they need to do something to fix this.  id gladly go every 3 years if it meant cutting hunter numbers by a third. another option that i think is worth merit would be spreading out the can res over the 3 weeks instead of cramming everyone into the one week and concentrating the problem.

so what did everyone else see and think about it?

Sask was brutal, between the anti hunting fish cops charging everyone with unlawfully hunting the day before the season that was out scouting asking permission or even driving back to the cabin from town with groceries while doing 80km an hour down a gravel road. (since when is it illegal to have a firearm in a vehicle? or   the locals that thought  they owned the road and also THOUGHT they where tuff..... I will not be hunting sask anymore or at least a whole different area.

I hunted 6 days in the Prince Albert area, went onto public land and set up 3 bait stations with trail cams and had lots of deer hitting them, does within a couple of hours and bucks by the next morning. Had bucks from spike horns all the way up to 160" class, I was pretty impressed with the amount of bucks and the response to the new bait sites, this was the 1st year I tried Sask so I don't really have a reference as to whether this was good hunting or not but I'm definitely going back. I didn't have much interaction with any local hunters but any I did were just fine, there were more hunters out than I would have expected though, especially for bow season. Here's one of the bigger bucks I had coming in...

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We hunted for a week in East Central Saskatchewan, and the deer population was quite healthy. We saw several mature bucks, and my partner took one, but I was holding out for a really large buck, and didn't see one. Hunting pressure was very light, but deep snow kept us from getting into our best hunting areas.

Deerman, the snow started in October over here and hasn't let off since. Our weather has been bitter cold with only a few around '0' days. Not ideal for fall camping.