Tough Saskatchewan winters making for poor hunting season

Watch the video above: Hunters are bagging fewer animals in Saskatchewan due to cold weather

SASKATOON – Hunters across Saskatchewan are reporting a poor season with potential game numbers the lowest many have ever seen.

Nick Winiewski has been hunting since he was old enough to carry a rifle and is also a former guide.

“There’s been years where I’ve gone out and the first day of hunting season with the rifle, I’ve shot my deer, I never got to shoot at one this year,” he added.

He says white-tailed deer numbers have been way down in previous years.

“I like to go for a bigger buck to start and once I realized maybe that’s not possible, I started looking at anything,” Winiewski said.

“Near the end of the season it turned out to be hard to find something even for meat.”

The Saskatchewan Ministry of Environment says although each zone differs, numbers of deer, moose and various bird species are down across the board.

“We’ve had two fairly severe winters and tough springs over the last three years so we expected the populations would be down,” said Katherine Brewster, the province’s wildlife population ecologist.

She says this makes it hard for animals to survive.

“They’re going to have a harder time of finding food, they’re going to be less able to escape predators, generally their survival is down,” Brewster said.

The ministry says it’s too early to say whether this season’s low populations will have an effect on next season’s quotas.

“Once we’ve kind of got an idea of what the winter has been like, where spring’s headed, all of our survey information is compiled, our hunter harvest survey is in, that’s when we’ll start making those decisions,” said Brewster.

Winiewski says he wouldn’t be opposed to stricter limits, especially for the white-tailed deer.