Hunting season opens this weekend in the City of Delta.
The season runs from Sept. 7 to March 10, 2025, with provincial and federal regulations allowing hunting one-half hour before sunrise until one half-hour after sunset.
Hunters must have several federal Migratory Birds Convention Act and BC Wildlife Act permits and licences, while hunters require landowners’ permission to hunt on private lands.
The city on its website outlined a series of rules including restrictions in Boundary Bay, based on the Discharge of Firearms Regulation Bylaw, where no firearms discharge is permitted anywhere shown as “Discharge of Firearms Prohibited.”
Earlier this summer, the city asked the Delta Police Department to increase patrols in the 2700-block of 64th Street during the opening days of waterfowl hunting seasons for firearms-related violations.
The increase in patrols is in response to continuing glass damage at a nearby greenhouse operation from stray projectiles.
Last year, the operator of Houweling’s Nurseries Ltd. contacted the chair of the former Agricultural and Hunting Regulation Advisory Committee about the facility continuing to incur financial losses from replacing greenhouse glass damaged by stray pellet shots.
The complaint was first made back in 2017, but despite the city putting up signs at the 64 Street access point to educate hunters on the expected code of conduct, the problem has persisted.
A staff report to council notes that the operator said that since October 2023, the greenhouse has had 31 separate instances of reported glass damage, concentrated on the south-facing side of the buildings.
The Hunting Regulation Advisory Committee this year concluded that educational approaches have not been effective.
The report states that the committee does not believe amending the bylaw to entirely close the area in the vicinity to all firearms discharge will be beneficial, as the hunters who are shooting landward are already in violation of the bylaw and the closure will instead penalize law-abiding hunters.
The committee believes that only an “aggressive enforcement approach, where fines, and not warnings, are levied, will correct current poor behaviour.”
The City of Delta says if anyone witnesses someone violating hunting rules in Boundary Bay or elsewhere in Delta, to contact Delta police at 604-946-4411.
