Moose have long felt at ease in Anchorage's Kincaid Park because it was far from the madding crowd. But the bustle of civilization has overrun the 1,550-acre park, once semi-isolated on the western tip of Alaska's largest city. Nowadays the park crawls with people most of the year.
Moose are no longer as welcome as they used to be, due to an upsurge of mostly defensive attacks on bikers, skiers and hikers over the last couple of years. Some park users have pulled a shotgun out of their vehicle or a handgun out of their waistband and stopped the troublemaker in its tracks.
Taking a different tack, Ira Edwards has asked the Alaska Board of Game to authorize a Kincaid Park moose hunt.
Bumps, bruises, stitches, concussion
Edwards was skiing in Kincaid Park in April 2013 when a cow moose stomped him, breaking a pole and both skis on his Nordic sit ski. The attack left him bumped and bruised.
The same week, a man and his dog were charged in a different part of the park. The moose chased both off the trail. The man fell against a tree and ended up with a concussion and stitches.
In June 2013, a woman walking with her husband on the Mize Loop was kicked in the head, neck and back by a cow moose with a young calf.
A few months later, two well-publicized skirmishes in Kincaid Park galvanized both Edwards and public opinion. A bull was shot in September by an off-duty police officer during a middle school cross-country race when the animal charged toward a pack of runners. Less than a month later, a biker let his dog off leash on Mize Loop and was charged by a cow protecting two calves. He shot at the moose multiple times with a 9mm handgun, hitting it three times. Police later dispatched the wounded animal.
Moose gravitate to packed ski trails when the snow is deep. Ski coaches, racers and their parents have long complained about moose on Kincaid's trails. Edwards recalls skiing under a moose standing on a trail during a high school race 22 years ago.
He insists there is no shortage of moose in the park: "If you want to show a visitor a moose, you take them to Kincaid." He likes watching moose and enjoys photographing bulls. However, according to Edwards, "Every time we have an event at Kincaid there's a moose in the way."
By reducing the number of moose in the park and by shooting more aggressive cows, he hopes to make the park safer for people.
Planning a hunt in the park
Edwards has modeled his proposal on a cow moose hunt that has been conducted successfully in the upper Campbell Creek drainage since 2005. That hunt is better known as the "Hillside hunt." Edwards was among the first batch of permit winners.
Edwards wants the Alaska Department of Fish and Game to issue up to 10 drawing permits for Kincaid Park. Only Alaska residents would be eligible. The hunt would be conducted in October when the park tends to attract fewer people.
"Earlier than that," Edwards said, "the park is full of bikers and other users." By November, cross-country skiers are usually out in force.
Hunters would be limited to muzzle-loaders or shotguns with slugs. Unlike most modern rifles, these firearms have relatively short ranges. Although some 12-gauge slugs can travel more than a mile, it's unlikely that an errant shot would reach 200 yards if fired at a nearby target in a heavily wooded area.
Edwards doesn't support bowhunting in the park because of the public's aversion to seeing moose with protruding arrows. Permittees would be required to attend a hunter education class and demonstrate proficiency with their firearm. Successful hunters would have to remove the entire carcass to avoid attracting bears.
The Kincaid hunt would be limited to hunters with at least a 70 percent physical disability. Edwards himself is physically disabled and uses a wheelchair. His spine was smashed in 2010 by a "widow maker," a leaning tree he was attempting to remove from a ski trail for Alaska State Parks.
Edwards has proposed that permittees must be at least 70 percent physically disabled, as defined by Alaska statute, and require a wheelchair or mobility device.
Public safety concern
Hunters would be allowed to shoot from a motorized vehicle. A similar accommodation is authorized for disabled hunters on the Kenai National Moose Range.
Because hunters would be shooting firearms in a dense network of trails, public safety is a concern. Edwards believes the only way to conduct the hunt safely would be to close sections of the park. A large area could be cordoned off with signs warning park users that a hunt was in progress. It's unlikely that any closure could be accomplished with fewer than a dozen signs on trails leading into the area.
Hunt areas could be rotated to allow hunting in different parts of the park. However, the area abutting Jodhpur Drive isn't suitable, Edwards said, because nearly every house has a "social trail" into the park and it would be impossible to warn everyone entering the park.
Using the same rationale, it might be safer to limit the hunt to one person at a time, which would greatly extend the hunting season.
Moose don't always collapse where they are shot, and a hunter with a 70 percent disability might experience difficulty finding a wounded moose or hauling one out of the woods. Fish and Game could require each permittee to be accompanied by another certified hunter, who does not use a wheelchair or vehicle, to help retrieve the moose.
Edwards also wants to limit the hunt to antlerless moose. He's primarily interested in targeting cows because they are more dangerous than bulls. And bulls, he says, have "a higher intrinsic value" to park users.
How many moose are there?
An aerial survey in the mid-1990s counted about 20 moose in the park in early winter. Because aerial surveys seldom find every moose, Fish and Game's population estimate was 25-30 moose. However, moose numbers have fallen throughout the Anchorage area in the past decade or two, and it's likely Kincaid Park has fewer moose now.
Fish and Game is updating its population estimate. Because the park is adjacent to the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport and a low-level aerial survey is dangerous, wildlife biologists are conducting ground counts.
As crazy as that may seem, they have a solid methodology. The park has about 57 miles of trails and few areas far from a maintained trail.
A team of 10 biologists and volunteers walked all the trails and bushwhacked through wooded areas without trails for a total of 77 miles on Nov. 6. Each individual was assigned several square-kilometer grids and carried a GPS unit that recorded his or her exact track and the location of each moose seen. Noting sex, presence of calves, the time of the observation, and which way the moose was moving made it unlikely that any moose was counted more than once.
According to Fish and Game biologist Dave Saalfeld, who organized the survey, seven cows and three calves were seen within 5 and 57 yards of a trail, as measured by rangefinders. The average distance was 30 yards. By calculating the total area observed within a conservative 27 yards of every GPS track, Saalfeld figured the observers saw every moose in 70 percent of the park. Applying a correction factor for the areas that weren't observed, an estimated 14 moose were in the park, or about 10 cows and four calves.
No bulls were seen. Bulls are often present in September and October, during the rut, and may have moved out of the park before the count.
Six moose per square mile is a high density for a large management area, which might encompass hundreds of square miles, but unremarkable for such a small area. The number of moose fluctuates somewhat and might be more or less when hunters are afield.
Shooting every cow in the park
Given 10 permits, hunters might shoot every cow in the park, leaving the calves to fend for themselves. Under the law of diminishing returns, the last one or two might be hard to find.
While formulating his idea, Edwards canvassed most organizations that schedule events in the park, including the Nordic Skiing Association of Anchorage, which sponsors the Junior Nordic program, the Arctic Bicycle Club, and even an attack dog association. He said their responses ranged from favorable to neutral. No organization has told him it would oppose a moose hunt.
Anchorage residents are not opposed to hunting in the city. In a 2010 public survey conducted by Responsive Management, 70 percent of Anchorage adults supported the idea of a moose hunt in Anchorage, including large city parks like Kincaid.
Fish and Game is officially neutral on the proposed hunt but intends to work with Edwards to make it safe and successful if the Board of Game authorizes it.
Edwards has also talked to park managers.
"At this time, the Municipality of Anchorage does not support hunting on municipal parkland," said Holly Spoth-Torres, Anchorage's superintendent of parks. If the municipality refuses to waive its prohibition on discharging firearms in city parks, the hunt will be dead on arrival.
The Board of Game is meeting in Anchorage in mid-March to consider proposals for the Southcentral Region, including Proposal 150, the Kincaid moose hunt. The board will be accepting written comments until the end of February and people may also testify in person.
Rick Sinnott is a former Alaska Department of Fish and Game wildlife biologist. The views expressed here are the writer's own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News. Contact him at rickjsinnott@gmail.com.