The Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa will take part in a bulls only moose hunt this fall, allowing nine permits to be issued to tribal members to hunt in 1854 ceded territories.
Boise Forte band will also distribute nine permits to band members for the subsistence hunt in Northeastern Minnesota.
Grand Portage and Boise Forte set their season under regulations established by the 1854 Treaty Authority, which manages hunting and fishing held off-reservation under an agreement with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR).
Both Grand Portage and Boise Forte signed covenants with the state to forgo some hunting and fishing treaty rights in exchange for $2.68 million per year to be given to each tribe.
Under that agreement, the state said the bands couldn’t offer a big game hunting season if the state didn’t also hold a corresponding season. And when the two bands attempted to provide a hunt three years ago, the state started a legal process to have them end it, which they did at the time.
But Norman Deschampe, chairman of the Grand Portage Tribal Council, argued in 2014 that a tribal subsistence hunt was fundamentally different than a sports hunt and should be considered differently. Since that time the DNR, through the 1854 Treaty Authority, has agreed that a limited taking of moose helps the bands maintain their tradition and culture.
Meanwhile, Fond du Lac Band, which never signed an agreement with the state of Minnesota to forgo its fishing, hunting and gathering rights in the 1854 ceded territories, is issuing 48 permits to its band members to take up to 24 bull moose. Last year Fond du Lac issued 50 permits, and 27 bulls were harvested.
If the 2017 limits for bull moose are met by each band, 42 moose will be taken this fall.
Under an agreement worked out in 2016 between the DNR and the 1854 Treaty Authority, Grand Portage and Boise Forte each were allowed five permits to take bull moose for cultural and educational purposes. A Bois Forte band member harvested one bull under that agreement, but that was it.
Minnesota suffered an incredible drop in the numbers of moose that roam northeastern Minnesota. In 2006 there was an estimated 8,840. By 2014 the DNR’s annual winter count placed that number at 2,600 moose.
Today, the DNR estimates there are about 3,800 moose in Northeastern Minnesota, not high enough to restore a bulls only hunt by the state, but high enough for DNR wildlife biologists to say the population has stabilized.
The DNR’s relationship with the 1854 Treaty Authority is different. The DNR makes an annual payment to the Bois Forte and Grand Portage bands in exchange for the bands not exercising some of their off-reservation hunting and fishing rights.
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