Elk, bear populations on the rise, mule deer decreasing from CWD for hunting season

Hunting season has started in the province.

Darrell Crabbe, executive director of the Saskatchewan Wildlife Federation, joined the Evan Bray Show recently to kick off the season and the challenges hunters are facing when obtaining landowner permission for hunting.

Read more:

• Province starts mandatory CWD and BT testing for hunting season
• Man sentenced for illegal outfitting in Wilkie area: CPPS
• WATCH: Hundreds of deer and elk cause daily damage to Plunkett farm

Crabbe discusses the success of the gopher control program, which connected landowners with hunters to manage overpopulation.

He notes that while some game populations, like elk and bears, are increasing, others, such as mule deer, are declining due to Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD).

Listen to the full interview with Darrell Crabbe, or read the transcript below:

The following questions and answers have been edited for length and clarity.

EVAN BRAY: What’s the overall outlook this year in terms of game populations in the province for the fall hunting season?

CRABBE: We have some species that are on the increase, or are certainly above the long-term average, elk being one of them, and bears being another one. We also see some decreases in populations, especially among the largest populations, and the mule deer population is likely to be more prevalent.

When we’re talking about decreases, do you have a sense of what trends are contributing to that?

CRABBE: With the moose, there is a fairly large study going on by the University of Saskatchewan right now. I believe that the predominant issue is disease, and perhaps overharvesting in some areas. But I think disease is playing a much bigger role in that than we had anticipated.

How big a problem is Chronic Wasting Disease in deer this year?

CRABBE: It’s huge, and it has been huge for many, many years. We were somewhat ground zero in North America. We have the highest prevalence rate for Chronic Wasting Disease in all of North America.

The most affected by that would be our mule deer populations. All ungulates are susceptible to it, but mule deer, because they herd up and stay herded up throughout most of the year, are certainly the most susceptible.

Aside from the decreasing population numbers, what are some of the other consequences of Chronic Wasting Disease that we see in the province? How does it impact hunting?

CRABBE: Well, it’s really disappointing because mule deer were one of the most sought-after hunting opportunities in Saskatchewan, by a long shot.

People don’t often connect the two dots, but the economic driver that resident hunting is in the provinces is huge. It’s one of the few economic drivers that actually moves money from urban areas out to the rural areas. Hunting and angling in Saskatchewan generates, I believe, we’re approaching $700 million a year.

How healthy is the hunting industry? Are we seeing the number of hunters in the province growing, or is it declining? Where are things at?

CRABBE: We experienced about 20 years, up until last year, of very stable numbers. We could almost photocopy the numbers from one year to the next. There might be a small increase every year, like one per cent to one and a half percent for the last 20 years.

But over the last few years here, we’ve started to see a decline that can be attributed to a number of things, certainly the declining population in some of the species, but the most commonly accepted issue was the trespass legislation and how that affected gaining permission to go on to land.

Let’s talk about that. What is the rule? Essentially, do you need permission to go on private property?

CRABBE: Correct, and you can get that permission in a number of different ways. It can be voice, text or written; however that might be. But it has to be verifiable.

The vast majority of landowners allow hunting activity to go on on their properties. But there is a real disconnect in the technology or opportunity to actually contact land owners and know who owns what parcel of land. That’s probably the biggest stumbling block we have right now.

We’re going to be working with SARM and a few others to see if there’s an option out there. Being near the United States, we’ve looked at a whole bunch of different programs that run there, and trying to find something that we can plagiarize, if you like, and see if we can put a Saskatchewan spin on it here.

Because at one time, there was an app. What happened there? It just wasn’t working?

CRABBE: Yeah, SaskLander was the name of the app. It just never filled the role that was anticipated. Most landowners found it cumbersome, and it required them to do a lot of the work in regards to registering their land. So it didn’t work for the landowner, which it has to work for the landowner right off the bat.

The vast majority of hunters in Saskatchewan probably use HABISask (Hunting, Angling and Biodiversity Information of Saskatchewan) because it’s very good at identifying the different parcels of land in Saskatchewan. We have a lot of what we call habitat lands in Saskatchewan that are owned either by the provincial government, which would be Fish and Wildlife Development Fund lands. It also shows pastures and lands owned by the Saskatchewan Wildlife Federation, Nature Conservancy and Ducks Unlimited as well.

It is very useful for identifying those types of parcels and who owns them, because they use RM maps as their background.

The problem with the RM maps is that with farms growing, it’s not as simple as driving up to the farmer’s house to talk to the farmer. Many times, there may not be a residence on the property, and they’re trying to get some consent. There must be other agencies that are out there wanting to find a solution for this?

CRABBE: There’s a great opportunity there, if we can develop something that works, predominantly for the landowner. One of the greatest concerns is just the ability to actually find some type of contact, whether it’s an email or a telephone number, which is really difficult.

Is there an app or a website where hunters can go, even if it’s not perfect, to try and figure out who the landowners are so that they can get permission to hunt?

CRABBE: I would say iHunter is the only one that I can think of that will list who the land owner is, and that’s a huge start. The provincial government has one called HABISask, but it’s more broadly based, like it talks about bird watching and fishing and everything else, but it’s free, and it’s available on all app stores, and it’s actually pretty comprehensive.

There was a hunt happening earlier this spring with elk in parts of the province due to the numbers in some areas of the province. How did that end up going? I know there was some pushback in the late-season hunt as people were worried about the elk being pregnant.

CRABBE: It was a problem and continues to be in certain areas. One of the issues the government is trying to come to grips with is that the Saskatchewan hunting community want to participate, and we want to be part of that solution. It’s how do we link the two communities together to make that work?

Are invasive pigs a problem in our province?

CRABBE: The number of feral pigs in our province has been greatly exaggerated. The Saskatchewan Crop Insurance Corporation and a team with SaskPork have identified groups of individuals who trap and eliminate those populations.

So we’ve been very successful doing that by identifying pockets where they might exist, and going in and taking them out. They trap them and then euthanize them. When you hunt wild boar, they will break into separate groups almost immediately and go nocturnal right away. So hunting them actually would disperse them and increase their population, because they can reproduce very, very quickly.

We have so many hunters and so many non-hunters that have trail cams out. That’s normally where we get our leads from, about populations that exist outside of our present knowledge. But really, there are nowhere near the numbers that have been suggested by some other folks.

What is the process of hunting wild boar?

CRABBE: There’s no tag. They’re considered an invasive species. There’s no licensing requirement. The only issue is that you may cause dispersal of that group. But usually, in those cases, it’s one animal they see out in the field.

Do you still want it reported if they shoot the animal?

CRABBE: Yeah, we need to know because they’re never alone. There will be a sounder (a group of wild boars) in the area. So there is a 1-833-PIG-SPOT, which is the phone number. We really encourage anybody, whether you’re a hunter or not, to take a picture of it and send the land location if you see a wild boar. And they’ll send some folks out to verify it and then see if we can find the herd.

How did gopher control with the Saskatchewan Wildlife Federation go this summer?

DARRELL CRABBE: It actually went very well. We were able to connect dozens and dozens of individuals with landowners who were experiencing overpopulation, which happens quite often in Saskatchewan, with gophers. I think it’s going to lead to a better developed program for next year, where we want to start earlier and certainly get the message out quicker.

You had no problem finding volunteers who were willing to hunt gophers for a day?

CRABBE: It’s kind of a Saskatchewan tradition that’s been around for generations. It worked out very well. The real benefit of it was creating those positive relationships between landowners and hunters.