What do fallen vegans do when they visit Alaska from lands far away?

Well, according to a blog calling itself Reality No-Show, they grab a net and head for the Kenai River to abuse salmon.

"When you dipnet you literally dip your net into the river and the fish swim right into it,'' writes a blogger named Beverly. "When you catch one you use the boat as support and pull it out and dump the fish into the boat. Usually they are allowed to flop about for several minutes as they slowly die but occassionally (sic) if one is especially spunky they will club it which helps end the convulsions but summons an unpleasant amount of blood."

Who is this bandit blogger?

Who cares?

It's the blogosphere. Beverly might or might not exist, although the digital photos of a big-eyed, big-toothed young woman in Anchorage bars and along Turnagain Arm would appear to indicate the former.

What matters here is not the embodiment of the writer anyway, but the attitude.

The girl from New York City by way of Nebraska -- if the blog is to believed -- reflects way too much of the worst views of modern urbanity:

• It's better to let creatures suffer than to witness blood.

• Breaking the law is cool as long as it benefits you.

• All values are relative.

"Aside from various roadkill and bugs I have never killed another being and the roadkill was accidental, so suffice to say I have never deliberately murdered anything aside from a roach or ant or mosquito," Beverly writes. "I never thought about it either. As a former vegan I am excruciatingly aware of where our food comes from and generally don't dig on factory-farmed raised meat, though I can't really afford another option most times."

Look, nobody needs to eat meat. If you're offended by it -- i.e. "excruciatingly aware of where our food comes from" -- you can vote on the subject with your pocket book every time you visit the grocery store. I respect people who do that.

To some degree, I even agree with them. I don't like the industrialized, factory-like nature of a lot of modern agriculture either. And I really don't like the widespread use of chemicals to maximize the growth rates of cattle, pigs and chicken. Or as those less familiar with the realities of where our food comes from might know them: beef, pork and chicken.

Why do people unable to identify the taste of a meat invariably say "it tastes like chicken?"

But that's off-point, and we need to get back to Beverly and that dipnet, because as most Alaska dipnetters know, it is illegal for nonresidents to fish this way -- all nonresidents.

To qualify to dipnet a winter's supply of salmon in Alaska, you must have endured at least one winter in-country. A dipnet permit is sort of a reward for suffering through one of those long, dark Alaska winters.

Beverly was well aware of this, but hey, what does she care? It's just some silly old Alaska law:

"We flew into Anchorage and the next day drove down to Kenai to meet up with our host Matt's family, who were already out on the boats," Beverly writes. "On the drive out there we got reports from mom who proudly gave the totals of 63 fish the first day and 68 the second. That's a lot of salmon. Matt explained that we would not be doing line fishing but instead pursuing the method of dipnetting. Now only licensed Alaskans are allowed to dipnet and they are only allowed to do it for a few weeks each July. Graciously, Matt's father flouted the law and let us on the boat."

Let's hear it for Matt's father.

Jackass.

Next question: How many salmon does one family need?

I've had something of a problem with the dipnet fisheries for years because of waste. People go to the Kenai or Copper rivers and start dipnetting.

The blood lust fires up, and pretty soon they've killed way more fish than they're going to eat over the course of the year.

No doubt, some just throw fish away. The most conscientious would appear to clean their catch, freeze it, eat as many as they can over the course of the winter, and then send a bunch of fish to the Anchorage landfill at the start of the next summer.

Is this really the way the state's salmon resource should be used?

But that too is an aside.

Most dipnetters are probably already doing the math on the catch of Matt's family.

Matt's family, if Beverly is to be believed (and you can't really believe any blogger) had 131 salmon and was headed out on the Kenai again with Beverly and other illegals in tow to catch more.

The limit for the Kenai personal-use fishery is 25 salmon for the permit holder, plus an additional 10 for each member of the permit-holders household.

By my calculation, this would mean Matt's dad, the apparent permit holder, must have at least 11 people living in his house, or Beverly is making things up.

Her blog has photos of an inflatable sport boat with a bunch of salmon on the deck, but far from 131. And photos, like stories, can be faked.

So who knows. It's not like there's anyone or any entity out there fact checking blogs. Eventually the marketplace will catch up, I'm sure.

People will figure out who tells the truth and who doesn't and gravitate to the latter, but until then we're on our own.

All of which is why I don't generally read blogs.

That and the fact that most of them are boring as sin.

I don't know who Beverly is, and I didn't bother to try to track her down.

It's not worth my time.

But it might be worth the time of Alaska Wildlife Troopers to put some names to those faces on Reality No-Show and go have a little chat with Matt's "dad."

Because I'm sure there are more than a few dipnetters at the moment outraged by what they've read here and probably just about every law-abiding angler.

Outdoors editor Craig Medred is an opinion columnist. Find him online at adn/com/contact/cmedred or call 357-4588.

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