Q: Our camp has a hunting party of 24 people (members and guests combined). We always seem to have issues with the tag applications, such as receiving information too late from guest hunters, guest hunters not aware if they are pool 1 or pool 2, and online applications not entered properly by some applying as individuals, so they aren’t actually entered in the draw and revert to, or stay in, pool 2 the following year.
Other camps advised that they avoid all of these problems by getting the Outdoors Card numbers, postal codes, and dates of birth for all hunters and doing all moose-licence purchases online for the entire party.
We would like to know if this is legal.
–Randy Lambert, Simcoe
A: The wording from the 2018 Hunting Regulations Summary is: “It is illegal to transfer, buy, sell or give a licence, validation tag, game seal or any component of a licence to another person. It is also illegal to use or possess a licence tag, validation tag, game seal or any component of a licence that was issued to someone else.”
Third party purchases legal
While this may suggest you cannot buy a licence for another person, what it really means is that you can’t buy a licence for yourself and then give it to someone else to use. Third party purchases of licences, where you buy a licence for another person in your party, in their name, are legal. Just make sure they know you are buying their licence for them and that they are OK with that; every year we have situations where a person tries to buy a licence only to discover that they already have one, without knowing it.
Also, if you are the person who the licence is being bought for and you no longer wish to be part of that party or have a licence bought on your behalf, make certain that you make this very clear to the person who has been buying the licences on your behalf.
–David Critchlow (Provincial Enforcement Specialist, MNRF)
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Originally published in the May 2019 issue of Ontario OUT of DOORS magazine. Ask a CO is also a regular feature in the print edition.
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