Mike W. Bryant
Northern News Services

NNSL (Aug 30/99) - It has been a banner year in the NWT for issuing hunting tags to non-resident hunters.

According to manager of Parks and Wildlife, North Slave Region, Gerd Fricke, "The industry has grown every year, it seems. This appears to be the best year yet."

In the North Slave region, approximately 620 hunting licences have been issued and 1,100 barrenground caribou tags have been issued.

Current quotas set aside 924 barrenground caribou tags each season for non-HTA (Hunters and Trappers Association) outfitters. Each community additionally receives a quota of HTA tags to be used for meat harvesting or for local hunting outfitters.

"Three years ago, there were about 700 tags being issued, so it is growing fairly steadily," said Fricke.

Andy McMallon with the Department of Sustainable Development, Kugluktuk, gives three reasons why more non-resident hunters are coming North this year.

"We're starting to get a reputation for good hunting up here," McMallon said. "Another reason is the cheaper Canadian dollar. A vast majority of hunters visiting the North are Americans. Generally speaking, when the American economy is doing well, so do the outfitters.

"We've also conducted much better marketing towards those groups."

Boyd Warner, who operates hunting camps on Whitewolf Lake and Lac du Rocher, says business has been good this year.

"A lot of tags aren't being used by the HTA so there's a pool of tags allocated to non-residents and non-native outfitters and those seem to be reaching their maximum use," Warner said.

"There's still a large part of the commercial quota that's not being used for HTA meat hunting or sport hunting.

"The thing for outfitters is that we don't want to give the impression that we're shooting the heck out of all the caribou because the herd seems to be doing very well and there's thousands and thousands of caribou out there and that's part of the reason why we've been so successful."