Yesterday I got this e-mail, from a friend of a friend....

""It has come to my recent attention that there is a small group of hunters who have had more than luck on their side on obtaining some of the draws. This past summer someone pointed out to me how there is a couple of hunters from the Whitecourt area always seem to get the hard to obtain licenses. I was told that one individual and his wife drew tags for goat the first year, then one of his buddies got the tag this past season. I kind of passed it off as someone's luck making others jealous. When this was originally brought to my attention I was told "you watch this year there will be these guys from Whitecourt getting drawn for goat and 408 sheep". Since then I kind of forgot about this "lucky group" until this past week. While looking on the ABA website at some of the hunters who post their success on the website, I noticed that a hunter from Whitecourt was lucky enough to get drawn for goat, and kill one with his bow to boot. Then I noticed that this guys "lucky streak" continued. He also obtained a tag for the coveted 408 post season, and killed a ram on this tag.

From mostly second hand info, this is the count on their "luck":

The both got drawn for 408 sheep- 2 tags
They have had 3 goat tags -3 tags
At least one was drawn for 437 sheep- -1 tag

After I saw the post of the successful hunter on the ABA website, I phoned Ryk Visscher [President APOS, among other things; FD] to find out if anyone else has said anything about this. Ryk informed me that F&W and ISM know about it, and appairantly these guys knew how to manipulate the system. Ryk did not know much more than me about it, and said that I was the first person who has called him about it. From what Ryk knew these guys knew how to get drawn by when they phoned in and checked their draws? I think that there must be more to it than this. How would they figure this out on their own? As the above outlines, there is still way more questions than answers at this point. At this point, I am telling as many people about this as I can. My computer was recently hit with a virus, and I lost my address book. Please forward this to as many people that you know who you feel should be made aware of this. At the lease F&W, and ISM have to come out with a press release to explain how this could happen. If anyone has any more info, please reply.""

So far the message I got. I talked to a neighbour about it and he confirmed that he personally had encountered cases where the priority system seemed to have been circumvented. What to think of this...I don't know. Maybe some of our long-time Albertans can comment on it with more authority.

Frans

Actually Frans in this case the priority was not an issue because the goat draw does not use the priority system and this year was the first year for the wmu408 sheep tag.This fact would probably make it much easier for manipulation of the draws to take place.This is simply a case of the odds of these three individuals drawing these tags in this time frame being so high that it reaks of corruption.I hope that an investigation will show what really happened and these individuals will be dealt with accordingly if they did manipulate the draw system.As for other people complaining about the priority system, the simple fact is that most albertans don't understand the system and would rather bitch than spend the time to learn how it works.

As I understand, the available tags are being filled with *all* that have the highest priority. If there are tags left, the second highest priority group comes into play. If there are still tags left, but less than the third best priority category has candidates, then a lottery amongst this group will decide who will get the remaining tags. The fourth etc priority don't come into play at all. Is my understanding correct?

My neighbour, a long-time resident, claims, and I cannot verify that of course, that people with a lower priority than himself have gotten tags...if my understanding of the system is correct, that should not be possible. But I'm eager to learn how things work.

Frans

Hello:
I wouldn't get my shirt in too much of a knot about this. My wife is always pointing out to me the numbet of repeat winners on 6/49 and the odds are many time greater there.
Grizz

Frans-The tags keep getting filled by priority until they are all filled.The problem is that people don't understand that priority is determined only by the draw code and not by the wmu that you have been drawing for.For example if one person has applied successfully for antlerless elk for 4 years in wmu338 then applies the 5th year in a wmu359 he still has 4 priority points and will draw a tag in wmu359 before a person that has applied unsuccessfully for 3 years all in wmu359 since that person has only 3 priority points.If one person applied unsuccessfully for antlered moose for 4 years then did not apply for two years he will still draw a tag before a fellow that has applied unsuccessfully for the past 3 years if they both apply in the same zone.Also if you have 5 priority points and apply together with a person that has only 2 priority points your joint application will be treated as one with 2 priority points.

I live in Whitecourt and actualy talked to this guy. I thought that either he was bullshitting me or very lucky. You can only guess my suprise when I read this poast!! The guy seemed to be a hard-core hunter and was very pleasant to talk to. Don't know if he is cheating the system or not.