Anchorage Daily News

State and federal wildlife managers are giving hunters on the lower Yukon River -- where some villagers say they struggled to afford food in recent months -- another shot at bagging a moose this winter.

The state Game Board directed the Department of Fish and Game on Tuesday to re-open the regional moose-hunting season until Feb. 28. That means people who live in villages like Emmonak, Kotlik and Nunam Iqua have another four weeks to get their moose.

"(I'm) very satisfied with the outcome," said Ted Hamilton, natural resource specialist for the Emmonak Tribal Council.

Hamilton wrote a letter to the game board Jan. 23 asking the state to lengthen the season after an unusually cold winter and high fuel prices hurt subsistence hunting.

He also asked the state to loosen hunting rules by allowing hunters to take any moose -- not just calves, or bulls with antlers. But that would have required the board to declare an emergency in the area, which it didn't want to do, according to the state.

"The decision was that cold temperatures are a fact of life in Alaska," said Game Board member Dick Burley. Still, he said the board was sympathetic to reports of hardship in the region, and that the declaration wasn't necessary to simply extend the season.

The original winter season ended Jan. 20.

The Federal Subsistence Board, which regulates much of the land outside the villages, re-opened moose hunting in the region this week as well.

Hunters who venture onto federal land will be able to take cow moose as well as bulls. But the old bag limit still stands. Anyone who shot a moose during the fall or winter hunting seasons can't get a second moose just because the season's been extended.

Emmonak made headlines this month when a local man gathered stories of his neighbors choosing to between fuel and food and put them in a letter that echoed across the Internet.

Things are getting better now, Hamilton said, largely thanks to donations from out of town. Alaska Newspapers Inc., a subsidiary of the regional Calista Corp., gave 5,200 pounds of food to the village last week and has since collected 2,250 pounds more, according to managing editor Tony Hall.

Along with Emmonak, the extended hunting season covers about 1,100 square miles that stretch from Cape Romanzof to Mountain Village.

Regulators put moose hunting on hold there in the late 1980s and early 1990s, said area wildlife biologist Phillip Perry and with plentiful food and few predators, the population is exploding.

The area now has an estimated 3,300 moose, a number growing by about 27 percent a year.

But hunters in villages outside the lower Yukon River region have fewer choices. Along the Kuskokwim River in Kalskag, store owner Daniel Ausdahl said he wasn't able to find a legal moose all winter. With high gas prices locked in place until next fall, it would be too expensive to travel north to the re-opened hunting areas, he said.

Two villages on the Alaska Peninsula, Ugashik and Egegik, asked the state to extend their hunting seasons this month too.

The Game Board denied those requests, partly because the local moose population isn't as stable as in the lower Yukon River area, said game board director Kristy Tibbles.

Find Kyle Hopkins online at adn.com/contact/khopkins or call him at 257-4334.

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