Trying to make sense of Alaska’s moose-hunting regulations

Kenai Peninsula hunters have another task to perform before entering the field in pursuit of moose this fall. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has developed an online quiz to assist hunters in identifying what is, and what is not, a legal moose. This comes after reports of a season in which some 20 percent of the moose harvested were illegal. I doubt anyone would disagree that one in five moose being illegal is astonishing and unacceptable.

I took the quiz, a 19-question test composed of short video segments that depict bull moose in a variety of sizes and circumstances. The test is multiple choice, and judging by the videos, the problem seems to be with moose on the large end of the scale. Prospective hunters must determine if the moose in question is legal.

The quiz seems useful, in particular for folks lacking much experience with larger bulls. I had trouble with a couple of the videos playing and so did not answer two of the questions. The rest, I was able to answer correctly. The test does illustrate how daunting the task of determining whether a bull has 50-inch antlers.

Determining whether a bull is a legal spike doesn't seem to have been much of a problem; only one of the questions dealt with a small bull.

The process takes about 15 minutes and seems worth the time for any hunter who hunts in an antler-restricted area.

It has been a long time since Fish and Game adopted a regulation that restricted the taking of bull moose on the Kenai to those having spike/fork antlers, or at least a 50-inch antler spread, or at least three brow tines on one side. At the time, I had only been hunting the Kenai for about 15 years.

The regulation didn't make sense to me then, and it makes even less sense now. Killing all of the little ones, and the big ones before they had the chance to breed the year they became legal, just didn't seem like a good plan.

You often hear, "You can't question the science." Of course you can, and while I don't make a habit of it, when it seems out of sync with what seems to be going on, questioning becomes a responsibility. Several months back I wrote about the difficulties of identifying a legal bull, speculating there may be better, or additional, measures that could minimize the problem. But a lot more information could be considered if the goal is providing a healthy moose population available for Alaskans to harvest for the table. The sustained-yield principle is supposedly precisely that.

The spike/fork, 50-inch/three-brow tine regulation was imposed in the late 1980s. The way it was explained to me, at least the best I remember from years ago, was that spike/fork moose were inferior animals and represented a lesser portion of yearling moose then those who sported palms during the fall as they began their second year of life. By culling these out, better animals would provide better breeding stock. Allowing these bulls to reach the 50-inch class before taking them would, in turn, improve the quality of animals produced.

In the 1990s, there were some good moose harvest numbers in parts of the Kenai due to improved habitat, a gradual trend toward better (i.e. warmer) winters, and a brown bear population that had not yet grown out of hand.

Moving into the 21st century, habitat on the Kenai has deteriorated and predator numbers, especially for brown bears, grew.

No surprise that moose populations declined. The ratio of bulls to cows in a healthy moose population is at least 30 per 100. That dropped to 20 per 100 on the Kenai. In fact, seeing any bull moose was a remarkable event. Hunters recognized the problem and, in the fall of 2010, suggested it was time to stop killing all the yearling bulls — even suggesting a complete closure of the moose season.

The result saw the 2011 moose hunting regulations changed to allow only the taking of bull moose with antlers at least 50 inches wide, or with at least four brow tines on one side. After a couple of seasons, the regulation changed to allow the taking of spike bulls (not fork horns).

After a few years, sightings of bull moose before, during and after hunting season became commonplace. By 2015, there were bull moose everywhere, like nothing I had seen in 46 years of living on the Kenai. For the first time since the early 1970s, one could go out and see a bull moose, practically at will.

In a bit of irony, the bull moose explosion seems to have created the circumstance that finds hunters taking a lot of illegal bulls. We seemed inundated with bull moose that, for the most part, had two brow tines but shaded the 50-inch mark.

[Legal moose? Hard to tell, even for veteran Alaska hunters]

Maybe what happened isn't surprising when you consider that many hunters hadn't even seen a bull moose in years, and if they did, it was a spike/fork. Folks with a lot of experience around big moose can negotiate the terrain of estimating antler spread a lot better than the hunter who has, perhaps, never seen a bull approaching 50 inches.

What can we learn from this uncommon form of moose management (the only reference I have found to similar regulations in moose-producing areas of Canada and the northern U.S., is a limited implementation in British Columbia)?

On-the-ground evidence suggests fork horn bulls constitute a much larger segment of yearling bulls than either spikes or those who achieve palms by the start of their second year of life. Selective killing of large bulls reduces the chances of big bull genes being passed on (much as we discovered as we caught and killed the largest king salmon in the world and wondered why they all but disappeared).

The issue of moose taken illegally due to lack of antler spread isn't new. Perhaps this was not a big deal, just collateral damage. That might make sense if the result had been a lot more moose available for Alaska tables. That does not seem to be the case.

Moose populations ebb and flow in Alaska, and it is almost always related to available habitat, weather, and predator populations (including human), not antler size. The year-to-year harvest also ebbs and flows from one area to another while the overall statewide take does not seem to change much.

Maybe I am making more of this than it deserves. But, however you look at it, a 20 percent illegal kill rate demands some consideration, and while an online moose quiz may help, it won't solve the problem. Sort of like when you start up a muddy hill and spin out and try to solve the problem by applying more pressure on the gas pedal. No matter, the view never changes. Sometimes, it seems, you have to just back up, take a deep breath, and find a better way.

Steve Meyer of Soldotna is lifelong Alaskan and an avid shooter. He writes every other week about guns and Alaska hunting. Contact Steve at oldduckhunter@outlook.com.