So there were roughly 200 incidental otters, what is that in percentage of total catch? If the correlation stays constant regardless of the legal catch than that makes incidentals an important criteria in the models used. If not then noting the variance from the total legal catch will be important in determining the viability of the model used. Otters are unique when compared to our 3 other tag species, bobcat, fisher and wolves as more of the other species can and are released and probably not reported with the exception of fisher.

Bryce

200 incidental otter?

Unless they let you keep and market the incidentals,10 times that many are likely turfed.

Bryce, used to be 3% of harvest when we gave out lots of permits. Became over30% of harvest when we restricted harvest. Now we are headed back towards 3%.

Incidental is a dirty word, it concedes to waste

30%. That's simply not acceptable as well as embarrassing

How many are caught by WS?

What would help show the trends would be a listing of total permits given, tagged harvest for those years and incidentals reported and thus we could see the percentage trend. If we give out more permits and total harvest is not greatly increased then that indicates that over harvest may not be as big an issue as some may believe it to be.

Bryce

Bryce, That would seem to be the most logical & easy to understand. Instead, they like to make things more complicated. Back to a common sense way.

Boxing, You're spot on with that.

Maybe We better retitle this thread as otter logic 2

Sorry Boco. Spell check gets me once in awhile

Missing a few years, but can provide a little color Bryce.

Brian, now you know why otter are referred to as water wolves. LOL I joke, but it is important that trappers take this on. We need to learn from our mistakes of the past. More importantly, our governor has shifted lots of power to the user groups. With that authority, comes responsibility.

49er, funny you bring up WS and incidentals. Noticed they dropped too.

What is the reason that WS amount of incidental dropped.

Maybe reason is the wrong term. Factors.

So it appears that a higher harvest also has lower incidentals. I wonder what it would look like if all incidentals were reported? Because we all know that doesn't happen.

From a significant statistical standpoint, I am not sure they have dropped 49er. Still staying in that range of 11-18 beaver per otter which is where they have fluctuated historically. Guessing that is impacted by the ratio based on number of new miles versus maintenance and also the shift to more roads/railroad work versus trout stream work.

Now if I was David Ruid, I would be telling all my guys to put the trigger on the top and in the middle on those baited poplar sets in the spring

EDIT FOR CLARIFICATION: Ratio of Otter to beaver has dropped.See below.
2015-99 otter or 1 otter for 15 beaver
2014-82 otter or 1 otter for 18 beaver
2013-79 otter or 1 otter for 16 beaver

Is there a break down for each of the 3 zones?

What kind of breakdown by zones are you looking for Brian? I gave a breakdown of incidentals by zone on the previous page.

Brian, sorry for hijacking your wolf thread with otter logic.

Justin, what is the estimated beaver harvest for 15?

I was referring to "total trapper harvest" in comparison to "incidentals" for each zone. Or at least reported incidentals. Maybe they use a percentage figure for non reported inciedenals in their models?

No problem Steve. I'm hoping all the wolves swim to your side of the river anyway.

Brian, I think in the farm zone there is a lot of SSS practiced lol.

Well I'm sure there's some of that here, but not enough