The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reports the Alaska Board of Game pushed back the caribou hunt from Aug. 10 to Aug. 29 and prevented hunters from shooting female caribou.
The late start reduced the concentration of caribou on two main roads and allowed the hunt to last over a month instead of a few days.
"We didn't have the mass murder we usually have," said Central Fish and Game Advisory Committee member Bill Glanz.
The Central Advisory Committee is one of five local advisory committees involved in drawing up the harvest plan for the herd.
Hunters killed 454 caribou in the fall hunt over three sites, fewer than the 600-caribou limit for the fall season. Each hunting site remained open until the scheduled Sept. 30 closure and no site reached its limit.
"We had a hunt this year instead of a run-and-gun for two or three days," said Don Quarberg, chairman of the Delta Fish and Game Advisory Committee.
Despite heavy fog, hunters found a high concentration of caribou on the first day of the season and took 72 at the Steese Highway site, leading game officials to close the hunt the following day. The site has a 180-caribou harvest limit for the season.
"Had we had clear conditions," said Tok area wildlife biologist Jeff Gross, "they likely would have shot the entire quota in one day."
The department reopened the season a week later, after the caribou had dispersed.
"In general, people seemed to be pretty happy with the changes," Gross said. "People were very understanding and supportive of the conservation of the herd."
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game will hold a meeting next week in Fairbanks to discuss management of the Fortymile herd. The current herd management plan expires in 2012.
"The current primary goal is to increase the size of the herd, and secondarily it is to increase harvest as the herd grows," Gross said.
The herd numbers about 50,000, and game officials are considering expanding the yearly limit of 850 caribou.
"There was a time when we were hoping to get this herd back up to a couple hundred thousand, but without some kind of extreme predator control efforts where no caribou get eaten at all, we won't be going that way," said Mike Tinker of the Fairbanks advisory committee "Maybe we can build them up to 60,000 or 70,000 over the next 10 years and go from there."
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