‘It hit the spot:’ Big River outfitter says COVID assistance will help industry

It has been a quiet pandemic for Reg Quaale.

Quaale, the owner of Big River’s Big Bend Outfitting, said business has been at a standstill since last March when the COVID-19 pandemic hit Saskatchewan.

“We haven’t had hunters (in) basically a year and a half,” he said Thursday.

“It’s just not great. I have no debt per se with my business … but I have two different lodges (and) you have bills everywhere. So it hasn’t been great. We’re kind of burning up our savings.”

On Thursday, the province announced financial assistance for the outfitting and ecotourism industry. That includes forsaking outfitting licence fees for those who didn’t operate in 2021, allowing outfitters to retain the right to a licence in 2022, reducing fees for those who decide to operate and setting 2021-22 disposition rates to $0 for operators with Crown resource land leases or permits.

Quaale, who said he had already applied for his benefits, likes the change.

“I mean, everybody has bills, right? It’s definitely going to help pay the bills,” he said.

“This will keep us going to fall … so hopefully by the middle of September, we can get back to making money.”

Quaale is used to a busy few seasons for hunting in the Big River area, explaining who how busy his business used to be before COVID hit.

“On a normal year, we would do bears around the middle of May … (with) 15, 20 bear hunters probably,” he explained. “Then starting say the 10th of September about, we hunt waterfowl for about six weeks. Ideally, we would bring in 70, 75 guys for that … The first week of November, we do whitetail deer up north, (so) depending (that’s) 15, 20 deer hunters there as well.”

Quaale said he remains optimistic things will return to normal, but for now, he’s happy with the financial assistance from the Ministry of Environment

“It hit the spot,” he said with a laugh.

According to the provincial release Thursday, the industry has lost $88 million in revenue since March 2020.