Wolf hunting licences to be available to out-of-province hunters

By Rob Mahon

The recently released provincial budget contained a lot of notes for a lot of groups and a lot of money for them as well.

One news note from that busy day will interest the hunting community.

Saskatchewan has decided to introduce a new wolf hunting licence as an add-on to the non-resident outfitter big game hunting licence. The new licence will come into effect on Sept. 1.

“I was a little bit surprised to hear about that,” said Don Erhart, the vice-president of the Prince Albert Wildlife Federation. “But I understand, I was talking with our provincial office last week (and) apparently the outfitters made a pitch to the provincial government … The end result was there was support for them opening things up for out-of-province hunters.”

Wolf hunting isn’t the easiest aspect of the sport, and the population of wolves may have had less to do with the decision than a chance to appeal to the market in a different way.

“They’ve had licences available to residents of the province for quite some time, and the success rate is not very good,” Erhart said. “I think what this will do is provide another opportunity for the outfitters to do some marketing to out-of-province hunters.”

What this may help with is hunting-based tourism, something that’s often a boost for the Prince Albert area. The industry has had to reckon with the pandemic the last three years.

“Things were pretty much shut down during COVID and there was no ability for people from out of province to get here and do some hunting,” Erhart said. “Now that COVID restrictions are over, I think you’ll probably see a gradual return of folks who come up here and want to spend time in our outdoors hunting.”

According to Erhart, you won’t find wolves to hunt until you get to the forest or the forest fringe. Once up there, people who hunt wolves directly don’t often have a lot of luck.

“Anyone who has an out-of-province white tail deer tag and has one cross their stand if they’re sitting there,” said Erhart. “The numbers that I’d heard when people in the province had opportunities to buy licences and hunt wolves, the success rate was under five per cent.”

Erhart added with ice fishing season due to wrap up this week, the wildlife federation is looking forward to water opening up again so people can do some spring and summer fishing.