Seven Anchorage-area moose hunts scheduled for next fall and winter are canceled after the Anchorage Fish and Game Advisory Committee withdrew its authorization of the hunts in Game Management Unit 14C, which includes Anchorage, Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson and Chugach State Park.
The decision wipes out 76 permits for restricted weapons hunts available to archers as well as hunters using black powder or shotguns with slugs. These hunts in and near Alaska's biggest city are prized by thousands of hunters. Two of the canceled hunts are limited to disabled veterans.
Antlerless moose hunts are designed primarily to harvest cow moose, although many bulls lose their antlers by the time late-season hunts take place and bulls without antlers are also legal game in antlerless hunts.
At least three other antlerless and "either-sex" hunts may also be stricken from the regulations. No antlerless permits were issued for these hunts for the upcoming season. They still require an annual reauthorization that the Anchorage advisory committee is withholding.
Because the application period for permits is now open, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game wants to inform potential applicants that the permits may not be issued. Typically, a large number of hunters apply for the permits over the Thanksgiving weekend. However, issuing a press release is problematic because the minutes of the meeting are incomplete and committee members aren't responding to requests for more detailed information.
The roughly 2,000 hunters who have already applied will lose their application fees. Department policy precludes refunding permit and license fees -- even when a hunt is canceled.
How it came to pass
Eighty-four fish and game advisory committees operate across Alaska. The committees advise the Alaska boards of fish and game, which establish hunting and fishing regulations.
Although the committees are advisory, the Alaska Legislature granted them veto power over antlerless moose hunts in their area. The Board of Game must reauthorize the hunts every year, but it cannot reauthorize an antlerless hunt if most of the active advisory committees in the area do not support it.
The Board of Game will meet to consider Anchorage-area proposals next March, and advisory committee recommendations are due in January.
Anchorage advisory committee members are a little tightlipped about what happened at the group's Nov. 18 meeting. The meeting notice emailed that morning listed only two issues – finalize comments on upcoming fishing proposals for Prince William Sound and prepare comments to the National Park Service regarding recent rule making on predator control.
Exercising caution, Fish and Game's assistant area biologist for the Anchorage area, Dave Battle, called Joel Doner on the day of the meeting to ask the committee's chairman if they could use any input from a state wildlife biologist. According to Battle, he was assured that he need not attend.
Even Sherry Wright, the department's liaison with southcentral Alaska's advisory committees, said she was initially unaware that the Anchorage committee had voted on the proposal.
However, during the meeting someone suggested a vote on Proposal 148, the Board of Game measure that would have reauthorized antlerless moose hunts in Unit 14C. Doner said the person who made the motion was Steve Flory, who has long opposed antlerless hunts in the Anchorage area. The 15-member committee voted overwhelmingly to toss the antlerless hunts.
Normally a game subcommittee reviews Board of Game proposals and makes recommendations to the full advisory committee. At a Nov. 25 meeting of the game subcommittee, the chairman said that none of the upcoming Anchorage-area proposals had been discussed prior to the previous meeting of the full advisory group.
Doner offered several reasons for the group's failure to reauthorize antlerless moose hunts. Some members oppose hunting female animals. Flory, in particular, doesn't believe the department's population estimate for Anchorage-area moose is accurate, and he hopes to force the department to issue bull permits to replace the antlerless permits.
Fish and Games hands are tied
According to Jessy Coltrane, the Anchorage-area wildlife biologist, that isn't going to happen. Several of the hunts in question don't allow bulls to be harvested. Other hunts are late-season hunts for "either sex"; however, by January most bulls have shed their antlers and look much like a cow – particularly to someone with an itchy trigger finger. Restricting the harvest to antlered bulls would leave just a handful of legal animals for 45 permittees.
Fish and Game believes cow hunts are necessary to maintain Anchorage's moose population at about 1,500 animals. If the population becomes too large, moose may over-browse their winter range, resulting in subsequent die-offs during severe winters. Too many moose roaming Alaska's largest city also cause problems ranging from more vehicle collisions to complaints about public safety and property damage.
In the last two years, 66 moose were harvested in antlerless and "either-sex" hunts, mostly on JBER and within Chugach State Park. The number of moose killed in these hunts represents about a third of the moose taken by hunters in Unit 14C.
Once an antlerless hunt is off the books, it cannot be re-created until the next time the Board of Game reviews Anchorage-area regulations, which will be 2017. A new board schedule is under consideration that could result in a three-year regulatory cycle. If adopted, Anchorage-area hunts won't be up for consideration until 2018, which means that the next antlerless hunt couldn't take place before fall 2019.
Further complicating the issue, the other two fish and game advisory committees in Unit 14 – Matanuska Valley and Susitna Valley – could override Anchorage's bid to cancel the hunts. The Anchorage advisory committee may also reconsider its vote at its next meeting on Dec. 2.
Rick Sinnott is a former Alaska Department of Fish and Game wildlife biologist. The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News. Contact him at rickjsinnott@gmail.com