I just think it's INTERESTING (and that's it - not saying one is right or wrong) how Alberta you cannot bait and SK you can. I am interested in the difference in the quality of hunting, tactics, monster buck success, etc when comparing the 2 places.
I do not know if I have the answer Skip. I guess it is comparable to the question "why does Iowa not allow it but Kansas and Ohio do?" Simply a law passed by one government and not another for whatever reasons. You cannot to the East of SK in Manitoba yet west of Alberta in British Columbia you can.
I do know that the forested areas of Alberta are somewhat different than Saskatchewan simply due to huge amounts of oil exploration. This in turn has created more of an agriculture type environment in those forests as those areas are put into alfalfa or clover to prevent erosion and in turn making the tactics for hunting the two forested regions quite different. In Alberta it would be common to sit watching a gas line that was planted into what is a desirable food source for deer whereas in Saskatchewan, the native food source in the forest would be native plants, browse etc and the locations of them would be, well anywhere the deer decided to eat them. However, both provinces have extensive agricultural lands too, so who really knows why in one place you can and the other you cannot. I do not know if the tactics from one place would be a whole bunch different aside from those who use bait, I would guess that many more do not than do here in SK.
I do know from talking to guys from Alberta that travel here to hunt that a major difference is land access. Alberta has four times the people than SK, they also allow outfitting pretty much anywhere whereas in Sask it happens on public lands. Obviously that changes things for the average Joe. I know men from Calgary, Alberta's largest city who simply do not even whitetail hunt Alberta but instead come here because they can gain access to 1000's of acres in a day of asking permission and back home, public mountainous regions are the only places they can get on due to outfitters tying up private ground and/or small parcels of land due to the urban sprawl as well as more competition for lands simply due to population.
In terms of success, both are quite similar. Saskatchewan I believe has 6 separate 200" net typical bucks as opposed to Alberta's 1, but on the flip side, Alberta has more giant non typicals than Saskatchewan does. It's six of one, half a dozen of the other when it comes to monster buck success. In terms of ratio, I believe Saskatchewan puts out more giants than they do, I have read somewhere that 1 in a 1000 deer shot in Sask are Boone and Crocket size deer, I doubt Alberta is that high.
At the end of the day, I guess it's all speculation on my part, I do not know with certainty as I have never hunted there nor do I aim to. I have heard it from the horse's mouth enough times that there is no comparison between the two, that is why the number of people travelling here from there to hunt is huge when compared to the opposite. Like I said, I do not know for sure, I simply have to take their word for it.
...but you know what they say....Opinions are like A#$ holes.......