Outdoors/Adventure

John Schandelmeier: Some Unit 13 game proposals need a reality check

A couple of decades back, in a movie called "Pretty Woman," Julia Roberts said to Richard Gere: "I want the fairy tale." She gets it, and they live happily ever after.

As with all fairy tales, the story only concerns the chase. The reality of living happily ever after is left to the imagination.

Some of the current game proposals for Unit 13, the most heavily utilized hunting area in Alaska, read like fairy tales.

The "I want" and "I must have" framework in which they are written will baffle the concepts of biology and fairness of allocation. If you are a hunter, or someone who uses any fish or game resource, make no mistake: fish and game management in our state is more concerned with allocation than biology.

The Alaska constitution tells us our fish and game resources are to be utilized equally by all residents, regardless of who they are and where they might live. Allocation, done at the State Board of Game level, should attempt to make sure that happens. The Federal Subsistence Council, which controls hunting on federal lands within Alaska, is unhampered by such scruples and works with a rural-preference mandate.

Additionally, in units 11 and 13, there is a Memorandum of Agreement between the Department of the Interior and the Ahtna Intertribal Resource Commission that states "federal wildlife proposals will be written to accommodate Ahtna customary and traditional ways of harvesting large wild game."

That doesn't mean snowshoes and spears. Federal definition indicates that mountain sleds and .300 Winchesters have also become "traditional."

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Proposal number WP18-18, which will be in front of the Federal Southcentral Subsistence Advisory Board in Homer on Nov. 5-6, is an effort to achieve the fairy tale.

AITRC has proposed a registration bull moose hunt that would run from Aug. 1 through March 31. Unit 13E would get one bull moose permit per household. The proposal for the remainder of Unit 13 reads "one antlered bull." AITRC would issue permits to Ahtna tribal members and BLM would issue the permits to "other federally qualified subsistence hunters."

Bull moose hold their antlers at least through December, sometimes much longer. A neophyte would instantly realize that an unrestricted snowmobile winter hunt would decimate the bull moose population in the wintering areas along the Gulkana, Delta and Gakona River drainages. The bull-to-cow ratios in many areas of Unit 13 would be reduced to a point where we would need years of recovery.

Do you hunt Unit 13? If so, be at that meeting in Homer. A hunter need not be federally qualified to be heavily affected. The fairy tale is "I want a moose."

The state hunt proposal book offers a few fairy tales of its own. The community hunt, contentious since its inception in 2009, is back in front of us.

This hunt worked for its authors in 2009 because hardly anyone was aware of it. The communities eligible were all Copper Basin communities.

That concept was successfully challenged in court and the original eight communities have grown tenfold. This translates into more than 2,000 hunters in the field from Aug. 1 forward. One hundred of them have "any bull" permits.

It is time for the Prince (the Alaska Board of Game) to divorce the Princess (Ahtna Tene Nene'). I understand the rationale of the Ahtna communities and I sympathize. Communities are struggling to not be overrun with urban hunters.

However, it has become obvious that keeping this hunt in place and making continuous attempts to tweak it is not going to work. Urban hunters will always be able to meet any new requirements that are implemented as well as rural folks. And they generally have more toys to hunt with.

Reality is that the Ahtna have 3.7 million acres of their own on which they are the only hunters. There are also more than a million acres of federal land in the area open to rural users. A reasonable suggestion is to make these lands work for the locals and go back to a general hunt that is fair for all users.

Last winter, a special Board of Game meeting was held in Glennallen to address the community hunt issue. One hundred percent of the Fish and Game Advisory Committees advocated eliminating the community hunt. The board took only the single proposal in favor of the hunt and accepted it. Whatever happened to a Board of Game that is supposed to "rely heavily" on the advice of its advisory committees?

The Board of Game meets Feb. 2 in Dillingham. The meeting is in Southwest Alaska because that area has proposals that are also up for discussion.

I encourage all advisory committees, independent hunting organizations and local Native groups to attend. I honestly believe that if all affected user-groups sit down together for an open discussion, some sort of compromise could be hammered out.

Like Julia Roberts of the movie, I think the Princess is a reasonable gal. If she can come up with the right line, maybe we can all put a little pressure on the Prince and achieve a true happily ever after.

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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