MNRF announces changes to moose hunting in Ontario

Today, the Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry announced major changes to moose hunting and the tag allocation process in Ontario.

THE CHANGES

These changes will be phased in over two years (2020 and 2021) and include:

  • new bowhunting opportunities (2020)
  • separate bow and gun tag quotas in many northeastern Ontario WMUs
  • calf tag quotas in 5 additional WMUs (2020) and a new provincial selective harvest system with WMU-specific calf, cow/calf, and bull tags (2021)
  • a new points-based system allocation system to replace the current two-pool moose tag draw (2021).

The MNRF had proposed new restrictions on party hunting but based on the comments they received, have decided not to proceed with these changes.

MORE INFORMATION

Visit www.ofah.org/fishing-hunting/hunting/moose/action/ for a full explanation of the changes and the OFAH response to the proposal and make sure you stay tuned for more detailed information, especially in the run up to the 2020 tag applications.

These are big changes, so the OFAH will make sure that hunters have all the information they need to understand the new system as these changes come into effect.