Hunting Guide 2014

Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

HUNTING G

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INSIDE: • Cow moose off-limits on Tanana Flats

PAGE 3

• Fortymile caribou road hunt delayed

PAGE 6

• Moose hunters look for a better season than 2013

PAGE 8

• Dall sheep populations on the rebound

PAGE 10

• Delta bison permits good for bulls and cows this year

PAGE 11

• Nelchina caribou quota raised

PAGE 12 ERIC ENGMAN/NEWS-MINER

2014

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Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

2014 HUNTING GUIDE

HUNTING GUIDE

Caribou graze on a ridge high above the Savage River Valley in Denali National Park and Preserve.

Herds usually hang out in the lower elevations of the park during the month of June.

Unit 20A cow moose off-limits Fortymile caribou hunt delayed Grouse hunters hope for rebound 2013 was a down year for moose UAF surveys sheep hunters Dall sheep making a comeback Delta bison hunters get bonus Nelchina caribou hunt delayed Big wildlife, big money North Slope moose hunt closed More hunting news

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Under this permit, the Pogo Mine Access Road and Pogo Mine property are restricted to all public access. The DNR permit further stipulates that use of the road for hunting and/or transportation of hunters or hunting equipment is expressly prohibited.

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Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

2014 HUNTING GUIDE

No cow moose hunts in unit 20A this year

By Tim Mowry TMOWRY@NEWSMINER.COM

Cow moose on the Tanana Flats are off-limits to hunters this season for the first time in 15 years.

With the number of moose in game management unit 20A south of Fairbanks the lowest it’s been in approximately two decades, state game managers say there is no need to thin the herd further by shooting antlerless moose, a management strategy that has been employed at varying levels in recent years to cull animals from a population they say has outgrown its range.

“We ended up with an estimate that was lower than anticipated, that’s why we’re not recommending an ant-

lerless harvest,” area biologist Don Young, with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Fairbanks, said.

The current count, conducted in November, came in at an estimated 10,150 moose, give or take 1,500, Young said. That’s down about 2,000 moose from last year’s estimate and is below the management objective of 12,000 to 15,000, he said.

The only year since the department began issuing permits to hunt cow moose in the Tanana Flats in 1996 that there hasn’t been an antlerless hunt was 1999, Young said.

A cow moose and her calf feed in a swampy area along the Chena Hot Springs Road near 32 Mile on June 24, 2004.

The cow stayed in the water even though the calf bounded into the woods at the approach of traffic on the road.

SAM HARREL/NEWS-MINER FILE PHOTO

High cow harvest

harvest in unit 20A in 2004 when the population climbed to 17,500 moose.

Moose were showing signs of nutritional stress at the time, such as low twinning rates and low 10-month-old calf weights. Also, cows in the unit did not produce calves

The department ramped up the antlerless moose

COWS » 4

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Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

2014 HUNTING GUIDE

COWS

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until they were 3- to 5-yearsold, which is one to three years later than moose with a good habitat.

Trying to increase harvest of antlerless moose, the department switched from drawing permit hunts to more-liberal registration

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permit hunts, which more than tripled the annual cow harvest in unit 20A. More than 2,100 cow moose were killed by hunters in the fouryear period from 2004-07.

The liberalized cow hunts caused a major stir in the hunting community by pitting those in favor of antlerless hunts against those opposed, as well as drawing an influx of hunters from

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other parts of the state. Local hunters complained about everything from overcrowding to trail damage to trespassing to a severe decline in the moose population.

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Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

2014 HUNTING GUIDE

COWS Continued from 4

No refunds The decision not to issue

antlerless permits was made in late December after biologists received the latest population estimates, which was also past the Dec. 15 deadline to apply for drawing permits. As a result, hundreds, if not thousands, of hunters applied for antlerless permits for unit 20A at $5 each.

Hunters were allowed to apply for up to three different antlerless permits.

However, hunters who applied for the ghost permits did not receive a refund from the Department of Fish and Game.

The department is considering alternatives for antlerless moose hunts to avoid a similar situation in the future, he said.

20B cow hunts While there won’t be any antlerless hunts in unit 20A, there will still be some antlerless hunts in unit 20B, which covers most of the

road system around Fairbanks.

Assistant area biologist Tony Hollis said the number of antlerless hunts in unit 20B will be reduced by about one-third.

The moose population in unit 20B in 2009 was estimated at around 20,000 and Hollis expects this year’s estimate — he was still crunching the final numbers this

week — to come in somewhere between the management objective of 12,000 to 15,000. As a result, fewer cows need to be killed now to keep the population stable, he said.

“Our cow harvest objective before was to reduce the population by harvesting 2 to 2 1/2 percent of the cow population,” Hollis said.

“Now we’re going to switch

to about 1 percent.”

That should reduce the cow harvest in unit 20B from around 300 to 100, he said.

Last year, the department issued more than 1,200 drawing permits for antlerless moose in unit 20B and hunters killed about 320 moose, Hollis said.

Contact staff writer Tim Mowry at 459-7587. Follow him on Twitter: @FDNMoutdoors.

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basis. The cow harvest in unit 20A since 2008 has been a total of 1,100. Last year, the department issued around 600 drawing and registration permits for antlerless moose in unit 20A and hunters killed approximately 70, Young said.

In 2011 and 2012, the unit 20A moose population estimate came in at just over 12,000, which was enough to hold a limited number of antlerless hunts, but the latest survey in December produced an estimate of just over 10,000. At this point, managers don’t know how much of the decline is due to actual losses or poor survey conditions.

The record-late spring last year probably had something to do with the lower count, as it resulted in higher calf mortality for newborns and

a lower survival of yearling moose through the winter, game managers said.

In addition, information gleaned from radio-collared moose indicates that the mortality rate for adults may have been higher due to the late spring, as well.

Whatever the case, the unit 20A moose population hasn’t been this low since the late 1980s or early 1990s.

Managers say they are taking a “conser vative approach” by discontinuing the antlerless hunts this year but are confident that habitat is improving. Areas burned by wildfires during the past decade are beginning to produce more moose browse, they say.

Whether there will be an antlerless hunt in 2015 depends on what the 2014 population is, Young said.

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Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

2014 HUNTING GUIDE

Fortymile caribou road hunts delayed until Sept. 3

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The fall hunting season for Fortymile caribou along the Steese and Taylor highways is being delayed for five days to avoid a Labor Day weekend slaughter similar to the one that occurred last year.

The season will open Sept. 3 instead of Aug. 29.

State game managers announced the move in late June, saying they hoped “to minimize the risk of over harvest and increase the likelihood of a longer fall season.”

The delayed opening will help lessen the chance of hunters taking the entire

annual quota in the fall hunt, which would force the cancellation of the winter hunt, ADF&G spokeswoman Cathie Harms said.

“The goal is to make sure we have hunting in both the fall and winter,” Harms said.

The winter hunt was canceled last year after hunters exceeded the entire hunt quota of 1,000 animals during the fall hunt.

The harvest quota is split between the fall and winter hunts, with 750 caribou allocated for four fall hunts and 250 allotted for two winter hunts.

Last year, hunters killed approximately 1,120 caribou during the fall hunt when

large numbers of animals congregated along the road systems, making them easily accessible to hunters during the Labor Day weekend.

The high harvest came even though the Taylor Highway hunt (Zone 3) was closed after just two days and the Steese Highway (Zone 1) hunt was closed after five days.

“Caribou have shown they can camp on the highways,” Harms said. “On a holiday weekend, many more people have time to get out, and history has shown when that happens and there are a lot caribou around that it’s FORTYMILE » 7

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Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

2014 HUNTING GUIDE

FORTYMILE Continued from 6 relatively easy to exceed the annual quota in a short time.

“We’d rather avoid that,” she said.

The department is “still investigating” ways to allow limited harvest of caribou when they congregate along the road system, Harms said.

The season in two other, less-accessible areas (Zones 2 and 4) will open on Aug. 10 as originally scheduled.

The harvest quotas for the for fall hunts will remain the same, with 225 animals allotted to zones 1 and 4; 185 animals to Zone 2 and 340 animals to Zone 3.

In addition to delaying the opening date in the Steese and Taylor highway hunts, the depart-

ment is continuing a hunt closure for caribou in southern unit 25B for the 2014-15 season.

During late September 2013, the Fortymile Caribou Herd made a sudden movement north of the Yukon River into southern unit 25B near Eagle.

That area has longer seasons and more liberal bag limits designed to accommodate migratory patterns of the much larger Porcupine Caribou Herd, which rarely approaches the Yukon River in the southern part of the unit, not the Fortymile herd.

The movement of the Fortymile herd prompted managers to close the caribou season in southern unit 25B to prevent additional over harvest of Fortymile caribou.

Contact staff writer Tim Mowry at 459-7587. Follow him on Twitter: @FDNMoutdoors.

Here’s hoping for a better grouse year

By Tim Mowry TMOWRY@NEWSMINER.COM

Grouse hunting in the Interior this season almost surely has to be better than it was last year. After all, it can’t get much worse.

“Last year was the worst of my life,” longtime Fairbanks grouse hunter Jim McCann, author of “Upland Bird Hunting in Alaska,” said. “I shot five grouse all last fall.”

In previous years, McCann and his brittanys would regularly bag that many birds in a single day.

But that wasn’t the case last year, even though the grouse population cycle was on the way up and numbers should have been on the rise. A record-late breakup proved deadly for many of the young birds that make up the bulk of the fall popu-

A spruce grouse takes flight from a spruce tree in the Isberg Recreation Area on March 31, 2010.

ERIC ENGMAN/NEWS-MINER FILE PHOTO

lation.

The result was a bummer of a hunting season for McCann and other hunters who stomped through the woods looking for birds.

Based on what he’s seen this summer both in terms of the weather and birds, Mc C a n n i s o p t i m i s t i c this season will be much improved over last year.

While it’s been a recordwet summer, the rain didn’t start until mid-June and by that time most young birds were feathered up enough to deal with the rain, he said.

All the rain has produced a bumper crop of mosquitoes, which are one of the main food sources for grouse.

“We’ve sure got the insects they needed,” McCann said.

“I tell people, don’t complain about (the mosquitoes); the birds are eating them all the time.”

McCann said he heard more drumming ruffed grouse in the woods this spring and there were more sharptail grouse on leks this year than there were last.

“I’m looking forward to a good season,” he said. “I think it’s going to be OK even though it’s been crappy outside.”

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Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

2014 HUNTING GUIDE

Interior moose harvest was down in 2013

By Tim Mowry TMOWRY@NEWSMINER.COM

Every now and then, the moose win, and that was the case for the 2013 hunting season.

Hunter success for moose was down significantly throughout most Interior hunting units last season, a trend that appeared to be statewide, according to harvest statistics compiled by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

The number of moose taken by hunters around Alaska during the general season — 3,643 — was the lowest it’s been in at least 10 years. That trend held true in the Interior, too, from Fairbanks to Delta to Tok. Area management biologist Don Young at the Alas-

ka Department of Fish and Game in Fairbanks called last hunting season “dismal” and blamed it on the recordlate spring followed by a record-hot summer.

“The leaves stayed on the trees until the end of October,” Young said. “That not only reduced visibility of moose but I think it changed their patterns — where they were feeding and what was available to feed on.

“When I was out cow hunting in unit 20B in October a lot of animals were still feeding on leaves in the trees when they’d usually be in rutting areas,” he said.

The numbers back up Young’s theory. In game management unit 20A south of Fairbanks, for example, the reported harvest of bulls in the general hunt was 186

T’Sheal Pugh, 18, poses Sept. 18, 2009, with a moose she shot.

FILE PHOTO COURTESY OF T’SHEAL PUGH

for a success rate of 17 percent. The five-year averages from 2008-12 were a harvest of 360 bulls and a success rate of 27 percent.

The total bull harvest in unit 20A, which includes drawing and registration hunts, was 404 bulls in 2013 compared to an average of 588, Young said.

Biologist Tony Hollis saw the thing in unit 20B, which encompasses most of the road system around Fairbanks. The average bull harvest in unit 20B from 200812 was 658 bulls, but last 2013 HUNT » 9

Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

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2014 HUNTING GUIDE

2013 HUNT Continued from 8 season hunters reported killing only 446 bulls.

The record-late spring — the ice didn’t go out on the Tanana River at Nenana until May 20 — probably had something to do with it, Hollis said. Calves were born later than normal and both cows and bulls may have entered the rut later than usual as a result of a later greenup.

Biologists received multiple reports from hunters about big bull moose still having velvet on their antlers at the start of the hunting season, which is unusual, Young said.

“Normally big bulls shed their velvet by the early part of September,” he said. “We got reports from hunters about how they were still seeing big

bulls in velvet later than in a normal year because of the late spring.”

Hunters also reported that bulls didn’t respond to calls like they normally do, perhaps because of the record-warm summer — 36 days with a high temperature of 80 degrees or higher at the Fairbanks International Airport — that persisted through September. “ My g u e s s i s t h e y entered the rut a little late,” Hollis said. “They didn’t move around as much and do things associated with the rut that make them more vulnerable to hunters.”

Down in Tok, 200 miles southeast of Fairbanks, bull harvest numbers were down as well, according to biologist Jeff Gross. In unit 12, hunters reported

UAF survey targets sheep hunters’ concerns

2013 HUNT » 12

SURVEY » 10

By Tim Mowry TMOWRY@NEWSMINER.COM

The University of Alaska Fairbanks’ wildlife department is conducting a survey for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game to address complaints about competition, crowding and conflicts among Alaska’s Dall sheep hunters, guides and transporters.

The survey was sent to a random sampling of 3,500 hunters who have hunted sheep, received a permit to hunt sheep or applied for a permit to hunt sheep in the last five years in Alaska.

“We’re trying to identify first of all if there is a problem and if there is a problem we want to find out the extent of the problem and what people are most dissatisfied with,” project leader

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Todd Brinkman, a wildlife biologist with the UAF Institute of Biology, said.

The study was requested jointly by the Department of Fish and Game and Alaska Board of Game to help address an increasing number of recurring proposals that have been submitted to the game board in recent years to change sheep hunting regulations, said Tony Kavalok, assistant director for the Division of Wildlife Conservation. Many of the proposals have targeted guided, nonresident hunters by requesting changes in hunting season dates and the proportion of sheep tags allocated to nonresidents. Resident hunters complain that the quality of sheep hunting in Alaska has declined because of too many nonresident hunters,

transporters and guides.

The game board has yet to adopt any of the restrictions aimed at nonresident hunters.

The department wants to know “what are the majority of sheep hunters saying, not just a handful of folks that regularly submit proposals,” Kavalok said.

Cross section The survey, which is being funded by ADFG to the tune of about $50,000, is designed to examine the issues, attitudes and behaviors of a large and representative cross section of Alaska sheep hunters, Brinkman said.

The survey asks hunters about their hunting patterns, how they feel about hunter competition and

crowding, hunting season timing and the cost of resident and nonresident sheep tags, among other things. It also proposes hypothetical changes to sheep hunting regulations and asks hunters how much they approve or disapprove of them.

“This survey should be able to tell us how the typical sheep hunter feels about the current situation and how it might be improved,” Brinkman said.

Brinkman, whose research focuses on the human dimension of wildlife, did a similar survey surrounding the controversy over antlerless moose hunts in the Interior a few years ago. He has also done a similar survey on Sitka black-tailed deer.

Brinkman conducted

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Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

2014 HUNTING GUIDE

SURVEY Continued from 9 nearly 100 in-person discussions with sheep hunters, guides, transporters and sheep biologists across Alaska, including Fairbanks, Tok, Palmer, Anderson, Healy, Glennallen, Wasilla and Anchorage, to help develop the survey. He also held teleconferences with stakeholders in rural communities.

Thanks to a data sharing agreement with ADFG in which he was able to examine sheep harvest reports, Brinkman said he was able to pick out a good cross-section of sheep hunters.

“I got people that were successful hunters and people that weren’t,” he said.

“I got a good proportion of resident versus nonresident hunters.

“We sample a greater proportion of people who

hunted than didn’t hunt,” Brinkman said. “There are a lot of people who apply or receive a sheep permit and don’t hunt.”

Not surprisingly, the response rate has been higher among people who have hunted sheep as opposed to those who didn’t hunt or didn’t receive a permit, he said.

The deadline to complete the survey is Sept. 1 but Brinkman said so far the response rate has been good. More than 1,000 hunters have responded.

“Usually somewhere around 30 percent is typical when a survey is completed,” Brinkman said. “We still have a second mailing to send out.”

The goal is to get at least 1,500 responses back and Brinkman said the final response rate may surpass 50 percent, he said.

“That should give us the confidence rate we need to

say what’s really going on,” he said.

Sending a survey to ever yone who hunted sheep, or applied for or received a permit in the last five years to hunt sheep would have been practically impossible, Brinkman said.

“There’s not way we could sample 20,000 people,” Brinkman said, referring to the size of the hunter pool he was dealing with. “The return sample size would be so low the statistics would be pretty poor, and it would be grossly expensive.”

A similar survey was sent out to approximately 200 guides, transporters and air taxis that provide services to sheep hunters, Brinkman said.

Fairbanks sheep hunter Tom Lamal, who has submitted multiple proposals to the Board of Game asking for an earlier sheep hunting season for residents, said he would have

liked to see everyone who put in for a sheep permit in the past five years get a survey. A lot of sheep hunters, including himself, didn’t get a survey and want to offer their input, he said.

Brinkman agreed and said any sheep hunter who didn’t get a survey but wants to fill one out can contact him by email (tjbrinkman@alaska.edu) and he will provide access to the survey.

The Department of Fish and Game plans to present the findings of the survey in public meetings in Fairbanks and Anchorage in November, Kavalok said.

“I think it’s going to be very revealing,” he said. “I think it’s going to be a good source of information for the Board of Game and the department.”

Contact outdoors editor Tim Mowry at 459-7587. Follow him on Twitter: @FDNMoutdoors.

Dall sheep appear to be rebounding

By Tim Mowry TMOWRY@NEWSMINER. COM

After taking a major hit as a result of last year’s record-long winter, Dall sheep populations appear to be on the rebound.

Biologists around the Interior were finishing up surveys in late July and while not great, the numbers of sheep they saw was higher than last year, when the late spring killed off a good number of lambs born.

“Overall, the number of sheep were slightly lower, but we did have more lambs than we saw last year,” biologist Jeff Gross with the Alaska Depart-

ment of Fish and Game in Tok said of sheep surveys done in the Tok Management Area. “Last year was almost a complete failure.

This spring we’re getting back to more normal lamb production.”

The sheep population in the Tok Management area declined 30-35 percent as a result of last year’s late spring but Gross said it appears animals fared well last winter.

“We’re going to need a few years of favorable weather to see the population come back to the levels we saw in 2012,” said Gross, noting that the number of drawing SHEEP » 15

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Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

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2014 HUNTING GUIDE

Delta bison hunters get either-sex permits

By Tim Mowry TMOWRY@NEWSMINER.COM

Hunters who drew a permit to hunt Delta bison this winter got a double dose of luck.

Not only did they get drawn for the most sought-after hunting permit in Alaska, they also won’t have to worry about whether they shoot a bull or cow.

The 80 drawing permits the Alaska Department of Fish and Game issued for this season’s hunt are eithersex permits, meaning hunters can shoot either a bull or cow. It’s the first time the state has issued either-sex permits in more than five years, Delta area biologist Darren Bruning said.

In past years, hunters received either a bull or cow

permit and had to make the distinction in the field before shooting an animal, which is not an easy task considering that, like caribou, both cows and bulls have horns. Each year, a handful of hunters were cited for shooting the wrong sex animal.

However, Bruning said hunters shouldn’t expect a permanent switch to eithersex permits. The decision on what kind of permits to issue is made on a year-to-year basis and it’s “highly likely” that the permits won’t be either sex next year.

“Hunters should not expect it to be either sex next year,” Bruning advised.

Either-sex permits were issued this year because the herd’s bull-to-cow ratio is BISON » 15

Bison roam on the Stevens Village farm east of Delta Junction on Aug. 30, 2006. SAM HARREL/NEWS-MINER FILE PHOTO

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Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

Wednesday, August 6, 2014

2014 HUNTING GUIDE

Quota for Nelchina caribou hunt: 2,800

By Tim Mowry TMOWRY@NEWSMINER.COM

Thanks to a bumper calf crop, the harvest quota for the Nelchina caribou hunt was bumped up this year.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced a harvest quota of 2,800 animals — 1,400 bulls and 1,400 cows — for this season’s hunt.

That’s slightly higher than last year’s quota of 2,500 animals.

“It’s largely a product of a good calf crop,” biologist Frank Robbins at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Fairbanks said of this year’s quota.

While this year’s quota is split evenly between cows and bulls, last year’s quota weighed heavily in favor of bulls after a record-late spring resulted in higher-than-normal calf mortality. Hunters took about

2,300 bulls during the fall season and only about 200 cows.

The cow quota was so low that the hunt lasted only one day before it was closed.

The state has issued more than 7,000 permits for this year’s hunt — 5,596 Tier 1 permits; 1,000 drawing permits and 554 community harvest permits. The season opens for Tier 1 and community harvest ticket holders on Aug. 10 and for drawing permit holders on Aug. 20.

How long the season remains open and whether or not there will be a winter hunt depends on where the caribou are distributed during the fall season and how successful hunters are at finding them.

The fall season is scheduled to go through Sept. 20 but could be closed sooner if hunters reach the harvest quota.

Last year, the cow season

lasted only one day, while the bull season ran through Sept. 20, but there was no winter hunt because the quota was met.

“It’s a fairly significant harvest and we’ll see how it plays out,” Robbins said.

The harvest quota for the Nelchina herd fluctuates with the population, which has been like a rollercoaster the last few years. The management objective for the herd is 35,000 to 40,000 animals but bumper calf crops in 2010 and 2011 pushed the herd’s population closer to the 50,000 mark.

As a result, game managers bumped the harvest quota up in 2012 and hunters killed more than 3,000 bulls and approximately 1,200 cows.

“We thought we’d have to do that a couple years in a row but that extended winter we had in 2013 really did a number on

2013 HUNT Continued from 9 harvesting 100 bulls compared to the five-year average of 129, a decline of 23 percent. In adjacent unit 20E, the harvest was reported at 140 bulls, which was 20 percent lower than the average of 175.

According to hunters he talked to, bulls weren’t responsive to calls like they normally are, Gross said.

“They were saying the moose weren’t responding well to calling,” he said.

“They said bulls weren’t with cows as much as they’ve seen in the past and rutting activity was a little different.”

The lone exception for Interior hunting units was in unit 20D around Delta, where harvest and success rates remained pretty much the same, said Delta area biologist Darren Bruning.

“When the smoke cleared the harvest success was about average at around 25 percent,” he said.

While the total harvest in unit 20D was down, so too was the number of hunters, Bruning said.

the caribou,” Robbins said.

Biologists weren’t able to conduct a photo census of the herd this year because of the rainy, wet weather but are confident the herd is somewhere around the 35,000 mark, he said. Last summer’s count was 35,464 and the herd fared well over the winter. Low winter mortality combined with this year’s good calf crop should mean a spike in the population. Biologists documented a calf-to-cow ratio of 53-to-100 during summer composition counts.

“That’s going to add a significant number of calves to herd if we don’t have a catastrophic event,” Robbins said. “We felt fairly confident we could take a fairly substantial harvest this year.”

Contact outdoors editor Tim Mowry at 459-7587. Follow him on Twitter: @FDNMoutdoors.

Contact staff writer Tim Mowry at 459-7587.

Follow him on Twitter: @FDNMoutdoors.

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Fairbanks Daily News-Miner

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2014 HUNTING GUIDE

Big game means big money for Alaska

By Riley Woodford

W

hile it’s not surprising that wildlife is important economically, the scale is amazing. The non-monetary value is also profound — most Alaskans cite wildlife as a significantly important reason for living here.

The details came out earlier this year in study launched by the Division of Wildlife Conservation.

About two years of work went into the project, and a summary of the report, The Economic Importance of Alaska’s Wildlife in 2011, indicates that spending on hunting and wildlife viewing totaled $3.4 billion in 2011 and generated $4.1 billion in economic activity in Alaska.

While it’s important for Fish and Game to measure the significance, follow the money and dig into the details, this isn’t a surprise to people like Sherry Brock

of Nome. She works at Dredge #7 Inn, a 28-room hotel in Nome. May was booked pretty solid and June is sold out – thanks to birds.

“We’re full-up for the entire month of June with birders,” she said. “We have a lot of foreigners from England, Australia, Japan and Italy coming up for birding. One person rented eight or ten rooms for a group.”

Many are return visitors, she said, and they’re not just spending money on rooms. “They eat, they shop, and they rent cars from us.”

To better understand how much money this means for Alaska businesses, Fish and Game turned to experts. ECONorthwest, based in Oregon, provided a team of economists, analysts, and survey researchers to work with Wildlife Conservation staff. The division’s assistant director

Maria Gladziszewski served as project manager. The core data for the report’s economic analysis come from surveys conducted in 2012 that gathered information from about 7,000 residents and 2,000 visitors through surveys conducted by phone, over the internet, and by mail.

Additional information comes from key informants with knowledge about the wildlife-economy relationship and a review of related literature.

Generating money Spending on hunting and viewing totaled $3.4 billion in 2011 but generated $4.1 billion in economic activity in the state, more than 27,000 jobs and $1.4 billion in labor income. How does that work?

Two moose hunters leave their homes in Fairbanks

and head to the local sporting goods store where they buy hunting licenses, ammunition, new hunting boot insoles, a spotting scope, and some game bags. They grab sandwiches and sodas at the local grocery store, and fill their trucks and four–wheeler tanks with gas. Early the next morning, they put their four-wheelers in their truck beds and drive to their secret spot to begin their search for moose.

The money the hunters and wildlife viewers spend goes to work almost immediately. It goes to pay the wages of the sporting goods store sales clerk, for example, who in turn spends some of those wages at a local restaurant and some more to pay his utility bill.

The money ripples outward in many directions through the local economy, even to sectors not directly related to hunting or viewing. The cycle continues until all the

initial hunting and viewing spending eventually leaks out of the economy.

Almost one million households — residents and visitors — took at least one trip in 2011 to hunt or view wildlife in Alaska. Of those, more than 100,000 households, 86 percent of them Alaska residents, went hunting. Almost 900,000 households, 77 percent of them visitors, went wildlife viewing.

About 37 percent of all resident households took at least one hunting trip, and they averaged 11 trips during the year. About two percent of the visitor households hunted, with most taking only one trip.

About 77 percent of all resident households took at least one trip to view wildlife, and they averaged 30 trips during the year. About 86 percent of visitors participated in wildlife viewing and averaged 1.4 trips per household (for example,

side trips from a cruise).

More money to be made The report also offers some potential insights for businesses, as part of the study details how much more money people are willing to spend.

The study implies there is potential for more money to be made from people’s desire to hunt and view wildlife.

“We asked both hunters and viewers how much they paid for their trip,” Gladziszewski said. “We asked if, for example, gas had cost a certain amount more, would you still have gone — yes or no. If they said yes, we asked if they would have paid twice as much; if no, we asked if they’d have paid half as much. That gives you a sense for people’s willingness to pay for a trip.”

Facing declining population, North Slope moose hunt closed

By Tim Mowry TMOWRY@NEWSMINER.COM

Citing a “drastic” decline in the moose population, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game has closed all moose hunting on the North Slope this fall.

The department announced the closure in May. Practically all moose hunting north of the Brooks Range will be closed because the moose population had dropped by 50 to 75 percent in the last few years.

“We found a surprising and drastic reduction in moose numbers earlier this

month,” area biologist Geoff Carroll at the ADFG office in Barrow said in a press release. “We need to cut back on moose harvest while we see how the population responds.”

The department is closing all moose hunting for nonresidents and the only resident hunt that will be open is an Aug. 1 to Sept. 14 season in game management unit 26A, which will be two weeks shorter than normal. Three drawing permit hunts that were scheduled to be held in the two units will also be canceled, as will a winter, either-sex hunt in

unit 26A. Poor nutrition as a result of last year’s late spring and poor conditions last summer are probably to blame for the decline in the population, biologists say. Very few 10-month-old calves were seen during spring surveys in April, indicating that most of last year’s calf crop died off during the winter. Predation by wolves on weakened moose may have also contributed to the decline, biologists said.

“Moose on the North Slope are on the northern edge of their range and I don’t think it takes too

much of a change to affect them,” eastern North Slope area biologist Beth Lenart at ADFG in Fairbanks said.

“The growing season is so short that any alteration can make a difference.”

According to moose surveys conducted by biologists last month, the number of moose in unit 26A on the western North Slope has declined by 50 percent since 2011 while the moose population in unit 26A on the eastern North Slope dropped by almost 75 percent since last year.

Biologists counted only 208 moose in unit 26A this

spring, down from a count of 609 in 2011. In unit 26B, meanwhile, biologists counted 109 moose his year compared to 400 last year.

Similar results were also seen in unit 26C, which extends east of unit 26B to the Canadian border, but there is no moose hunting season in unit 26C. Biologists have documented severe declines in the North Slope moose population before, most recently in the mid-1990s, according to Caroll and Lenart.

In u n i t 2 6 A , w h i c h stretches from the Dalton Highway to the west coast,

the moose population got up to approximately 1,550 moose in the early 1990s with a harvest of about 60 moose a year but the population plummeted more than 75 percent between 1992-97, at which point hunting seasons were severely restricted, Carroll said.

The unit 26A population reached a low of 326 moose in 1997 before climbing back to 1,180 in 2008 and hunts were reinstated. The population declined again in 2009 and has remained low since, with an average harvest of under 15 moose a year.

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2014 HUNTING GUIDE

IN BRIEF Unit 21E moose permits available Hunters interested in obtaining registration permits to hunt moose in unit 21E this season, including the Yukon-Innoko Flats area, can do so online or in Fairbanks.

A misprint in the recently released state hunting regulation booklet stated that permits were only available in McGrath.

Permits for the hunt will be available online at www. huntalaska.gov starting Aug. 13 and can be picked up at Fish and Game offices in Fairbanks and McGrath, and from local license vendors.

The Alaska Board of Game changed moose hunting requirements in unit 21E from a general, harvest ticket season to registration permit hunt RM836.

“This can help us more closely monitor the moose harvest,” ADF&G area biologist Roger Seav-

oy in McGrath said.

Hunters will need harvest tickets to hunt in adjacent units 18 and 21A and a separate registration permit to hunt in unit 21D. Hunters with questions on moose hunting in unit 21E should call the McGrath Fish and Game office at 524-3323 or 524-3325.

Wet weather means no caribou census The cool, wet weather this summer didn’t help biologists trying figure out what’s going on with Interior caribou herds. Biologists weren’t able to conduct photo censuses of any caribou herds in the Interior.

Ideally, biologists wait for hot, buggy weather that forces caribou to concentrate in large groups. The groups are then photographed and biologists use the pictures to count caribou and estimate herd size.

This summer, however, hot weather has been in short supply with record rainfall in June and near-record rainfall in July.

“The weather just didn’t cooperate,” biologist Jeff Gross in Tok said.

Without a photo census, biologists are forced to use composition counts and models to estimate herd populations.

“It does make for more of a challenge,” Gross said of not getting a photo census.

Tanana River bridge in Salcha will be open The U.S. Army will allow hunters to use the new bridge over the Tanana River in Salcha as a way to access military land on the Tanana Flats this hunting season, but it’s still unclear what hunters will do once they get across the river.

“There’s nothing there,” Cathie Harms, spokeswoman for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, said. “It ends in a spruce forest. There’s not a network of trails for people to use.

“If hunters think they can leave

their boat at home and take their four-wheeler over there and get anywhere in (unit) 20A, that’s not the case,” she said. “It’s kind of a bridge to nowhere.”

The U.S. Army will allow access across the bridge starting Sept. 1, according to McHugh Pierre, deputy commissioner for the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs in Anchorage.

As of July 28, the Army was still figuring out the logistics of opening the bridge to the public, such as what size of vehicles will be allowed on the bridge, which is only 12 feet wide, and what people will do when they get to the other side of the river.

“Those are some of the details we don’t have ironed out yet,” Pierre said.

Hunters must have a military permit to cross the bridge, just as they must to hunt, fish, trap or recreate on other military land, he said. The Army will have staff on hand at the bridge to issue permits but Pierre said it would be wiser to get a permit beforehand.

Moose season extended on Middle Fork Chena The moose season in the Salcha River drainage upstream from Goose Creek and in the Middlefork Chena River in game management unit 20B is open through Sept. 25 this season.

The Alaska Board of Game voted to extend the end of the season from Sept. 20 to Sept. 25 in March.

The bowhunting season was extended to Sept. 26-30.

Only one moose proxy allowed in 20A and 20B Starting this season, hunters in units 20A and 20B around Fairbanks will be limited to proxy hunting for moose only once per year. The regulations previously allowed someone to proxy hunt BRIEFS » 15

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2014 HUNTING GUIDE

BRIEFS

BISON

SHEEP

Continued from 14

Continued from 11

Continued from 10

multiple times for different people during a season.

higher than the objective of 50 bulls to 100 cows. The bull-to-cow ratio during the spring census was 57 to 100, Bruning said.

“We allow it when we can,” he said of the eithersex permits. “When we don’t need to ask people to harvest a certain sex bison we’re glad to do so.”

The herd is faring well, for the most part, Bruning said. The pre-calving population this spring met the the population objective of 360 animals, he said.

This year’s calf crop was smaller than it has been the last three years, likely the result of a hard winter two years ago, but the herd is healthy, Bruning said.

permits in the TMA this year was reduced from 80 to 60 because of the lower population.

Sheep numbers in the Alaska Range were “definitely down a bit” but better than last year, biologist Tony Hollis in Fairbanks said.

New regs for nonresidents Nonresident moose hunters in game management unit 20C southwest of Nenana will be limited to big bulls this season, but they will have longer to find them.

The Alaska Board of Game in March adopted a new regulation that limits nonresident hunters to taking bulls with an antler spread of 50 inches or that have four brow tines on one side. But the game board also extended the end of the season five days from Sept. 20 to 25.

Moose dates changed in 20F

From staff reports

Contact staff writer Tim Mowry at 459-7587. Follow him on Twitter: @FDNMoutdoors.

veys were “pretty poor,” according to biologist Don Young in Fairbanks.

“It looks like we might be seeing a couple of weak cohorts coming through seven or eight years from now with the late spring last year,” he said.

Contact staff writer Tim Mowry at 459-7587. Follow him on Twitter: @FDNMoutdoors.

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The moose hunting season in part of unit 20F near Tanana was changed starting this year.

The state game board voted to shift the season dates from Sept. 5-25 instead of Sept. 1-15 at the request of the village of Tanana. The regulation change applies to the Tanana River drainage and on the Yukon River downstream of Hess Creek.

The season dates for the part of unit 20F accessible from the Dalton Highway remains Sept. 1-15.

“There’s more lambs this year than there were last spring, but it’s not great,” he said of the sheep population in the Alaska Range. “The number of legal rams still seems OK, though.”

The fallout from last year’s big lamb die-off won’t be felt by hunters for another seven or eight years. Ewe-to-lamb ratios in this year’s sheep sur-

13508769 8-6-14Hunt

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