More than 2500 B.C. hunters were surveyed last March by the Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations (MFLNRO). The ministry was compiling data to understand the economic impact of hunting throughout the province.
On a region-by-region basis, hard numbers were put together and recently released as the BC Resident Hunter Expenditure Survey.
During the 2012/13 hunting year, the ministry estimates that over 79,000 adult hunters made their way into B.C’s backcountry to hunt game. The most hunted animals are deer, moose, and elk.
On average, individual hunters spent $2900 each during the hunting seasons, or $230 million in total.
In the Skeena region, which includes Burns Lake and the Regional District of Bulkley Nechako, B.C. hunters spent $13.2 million on hunting-related expenses, which included everything from vehicle and quad purchases, to rifles, ammunition, fuel, food, lodging, and licensing.
The three major expenditures for all hunters were large purchases - like ATVs, boats, and campers - at $695 per hunter annually, vehicle fuel at $604 per hunter annually, and food and beverages at $425 per hunter annually.
Resident Skeena region hunters spent $9.8 million last year on their hunting trips.
Although the exact portion of that money which was spent in other regions isn’t clear, the statistics indicate that the majority of the money spent by local hunters probably stays local.
Of the 22,523 trips Skeena region hunters made during last year’s hunting seasons, 19,425 of them were made within the Skeena region itself.
In other words, Skeena region resident hunters averaged 6.1 hunting trips per person, and 5.3 of those trips were within their own local region.
So local hunters are happy to be hunting locally, but it does seem that the region attracts comparatively few out of region hunters. Of the 3693 adult hunters who reported hunting in the Skeena region, 3272 of them were also residents of the region, leaving only 421 out-of-region B.C. hunters reporting that they came here to hunt.
The statistics do not look at non B.C. resident hunter’s expenditures in the province.