Outdoors/Adventure

Holey smokes! No bullet holes in Alaska road signs along Denali Highway

PAXSON – Moose season has ended in most of the Interior units and caribou hunting takes a month-long break. There will be a few ptarmigan hunters and an occasional bear hunter about, but most of the roads will be pretty darn quiet. Yesterday I took a needed supply trip from our place on the Maclaren to Delta Junction and back. I spotted nine moose (including two young bulls) and several caribou, but I was struck by something else: No holes in any of the highway signs.

In the past, it was almost impossible to find a sign on the Denali Highway, and very few on the Richardson, without numerous bullet holes.

Why do people shoot at signs along the roadway? I have no good answer, so I looked up what others have said on the topic in past stories.

"They don't move fast and are always in season!"

"It needed shootin!"

Hunters more conscientious?

Shooting signs is far from an Alaska phenomenon; all states see some of it. Most of the shooting is blamed on the 4x4 crowd. That may be the case in some place, but almost all Alaska hunters – and many other citizens – drive 4x4s, so I won't buy into that one for our state.

Hunters get blamed, and it is likely that they are the culprits since more than half the folks on Alaska highways are hunters and they carry guns in their vehicle.

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If my premise holds up, Alaska hunters appear to be getting more civilized, more conscientious. Traffic signs along the east end of Denali Highway were erected in 2009-10, so they may have gone five or six years without a hole. That is really good considering the number of caribou hunters the past few seasons.

There is also less litter along our roadside this fall. We've picked up a few plastic water bottles and a beer can or two, but the litter that baffles me is fast-food containers.

After all, it's a long way to the closest Wendy's. In the past, when picking up roadside trash, there was a preponderance of beer cans.

One year, a bunch of us cleaned up between Paxson and Maclaren over a three-day period, separating the beer cans into brands. If I remember correctly, Budweiser won with slightly more than 400 cans. There were more than old "C" ration cans back then too, showing the military influence at the time.

This past week, a 5-mile cleanup yielded no ration cans (they don't make them anymore), only a couple of beer cans and a half-dozen plastic bottles. We did get five hubcaps, testimony to the bumpy Denali Highway.

Respect for the roadside

No doubt, there is less litter along the road and fewer holes in signs. To me, that signifies a trend toward a responsible, civilized hunting crowd. Every season, there also seems to be a little more white hair riding around on the 4x4s too. That could be a factor.

Another possibility is the increasing number of motor homes and truck campers, rigs that tend to have garbage cans in them. What used to go out the window now returns to town and the landfill.

The old mentality of "easy to hit after a couple of brews" seems to be disappearing in Alaska, replaced by a huge upswing in respect for the roadside. The trend bodes well for the future of outdoor users.

But without old, discarded, highway signs full of holes, what in the world am I going to use for a snowmobile sled?

John Schandelmeier is a lifelong Alaskan who lives with his family near Paxson. He is a Bristol Bay commercial fisherman and two-time winner of the Yukon Quest International Sled Dog Race.

John Schandelmeier

Outdoor opinion columnist John Schandelmeier is a lifelong Alaskan who lives with his family near Paxson. He is a Bristol Bay commercial fisherman and two-time winner of the Yukon Quest.

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