I posted this question to the AOD but apparently no one knows, so I thought I'd post it here as well.
I have a question regarding how F&G manages draw and registrations hunts, in particular, pertaining to Kodiak goat tags. For folks that don't know how this is done, F&G determines how many goats they would like to see taken from a specific subunit, then determines how many tags they are going to make available for the draw. If at the end of the draw season (Oct. 25 in this case), the quota was not met, F&G opens that subunit back up to registration hunting. This year I'll be headed down to Kodiak to hunt goats in early November and I started thinking about possibly hunting a draw area, if it were to open back up for registration hunting. I've drawn multiple goat tags on Kodiak in years past and I've drawn one particular tag 3 times, so I've become fairly familiar with that area. When looking back at years past, that area is/was made available to registration hunting pretty much every year.
Now if F&G opens that particular area up to registration hunting, and I want to hunt it, F&G requires that I first fly out to a village on Kodiak to acquire the registration tag, then I can only access the particular subunit from a state maintained airport, or the ocean/saltwater. It is illegal to fly into any fresh water lake to access the goats. So, in my case, I would first need to fly down to Kodiak city, then fly out to the village to get my permit, then fly out to the nearest beach and start hiking. For the area that I would like to hunt, that would require a hike of no less than about 8 miles as the crow flies, but in reality more like 12-14 miles, with multiple creek/river crossings.
When looking back at past years, many of these subunits would open back up to registration hunting, but either nobody attempted to get a permit, or sometimes a few permits were actually given out, but those permit holders didn't actually end up hunting, or very rarely, a permit was actually used, and even more rarely, a goat was actually killed.
So, my question is, if F&G wanted to see a certain number of goats removed from a certain area, and that number wasn't reached during the draw hunt, why would they open up to registration hunting (assuming that is the reason to open it up to registration hunting), then make it so difficult for someone to actually hunt that area, that nobody does it?
As a for instance, I went back and looked at a particular subunit's stats over the last 10 years. From 2010-2019, of the 5 years that this subunit opened up to registration hunting during this timeframe, a total of 19 registration permits were issued, of those 19 permit holders, only 4 people actually hunted, and a total of 2 goats were killed. Over the course of those 5 years, I'm assuming F&G was probably wanting to see a few more than just 2 goats taken out of this subunit. So again, my question is, why does F&G make it so difficult for hunters to acquire the permit and then access the unit, what am I missing?
