I hunted off the road with the rest of the valley and ANC very few times when I was up there. Still killed stuff and had good hunts but tired of the crowds in motorized areas. Decided for me that it was worth it to fly to hunt, or at a minimum boat. Things were much quieter after I started doing that, still saw someone else occasionally but no crowds and caravans of wheelers. Much more enjoyable to me. Of course I wasn’t wealthy but I had the luxury of being in a business that helped me make friends with lots of people with boats and planes.
And oh how I miss the guys who’d tell me how badly they needed to kill a moose or caribou to get through the winter. As they climbed into their Platinum diesel pulling a toy hauler with a couple decked out SxSs as their buddy pulled the 36 foot 5th wheel with his lifted Duramax. Subsisting they were, and barely at that.
Ya, love that too. There used to be a camp on the Denali that would drive up a 40' motorhome, and a truck/trailer hauling quads, with freezers and everything to last the month they stayed. They hauled all that from Seldovia and got special "subsistence" tags because of their remote zip code. I just shook my head and laughed.
