Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska Why subsistence?

While in Fairbanks it is noted with some despair that milk prices rise by 20 cents or so every few months so that now they are around $3.79/gallon, meanwhile, in the village, milk prices have barely budged in over 5 years, staying well below $16/gallon at just $7.69/half-gallon. Before tax anyway.

I could go on.

And there are people who actually think that they can get by without subsistence. Thankful for life in other universes! 🤪

I'm just glad there are still places in our country where "subsistence" off the land is viable.

What did they do before subsistence allowed them to buy 16 dollar a gallon milk?

Kids were raised to be very ‘fluent’ in dry milk products, and before that, canned (condensed) milk.

Thankfully, there are some who have really good jobs: teachers, who make $50-60k and can afford to buy it outright.

I really have no pity for those who choose not to subsist and live lives of hopelessness and envy.

I was wondering. I happen to actually prefer dry milk once its aged a few days. I like it much more than fresh milk.

Sometimes you make choices, and our upcoming choice would be to eat hot dogs every day for the rest of our lives rather than steak, to be able to live where we would like to enjoy our last days.

Hence the question, did folks adapt, do without, etc...

Actually at this point I"m not sure that there is much of anything I"d miss. I prefer to have some flavor to my water. Tang or such. Prefer to have some alcohol at times. Wife probably would find it tough to live without shrimp now and then. Much more than that... I think we could tough er out.

If you live in the right spot, you can catch your own shrimp



and if you have good well water, no need to add anything to it.

I never really got used to dry milk, but I really don't drink that much milk anymore.

Substance abuse is no replacement for subsistence living. And it doesn't have to be subsistence living, it just takes honest hard work to put food on your families table whether or not you caught it or you bought it.

As we've discussed before, there is a complex dynamic of the social problems in Alaska. Somehow we're the government and we're hear to help you has a history of enshrining social problems in regulations and agencies staffed by bureaucrats. The problems are just as prevalent in urban areas and every ethnic group. The cities just manage to hide it to some degree.

The “we’re here to help” folks.... I don’t question their motives, but they really can’t get it until they’ve ‘lived it’ (which is why someone like Bernie really can’t be trusted.) Dot-gub, as one addicted elder once said about the Gub-programs before they were prefaced by ‘dot’, really “hurt us more than help us”. All that said, if you refuse to subsist because “it’s too much work”, (it is a lot of work - and often expensive, though it doesn’t have to be), it really makes no sense not to move to a place (like Anchorage) where you aren’t paying 2, 3, or 4 times as much for staple items. But for rural folks, the ones beyond the roads anyway, subsistence is vital. I don’t think we could have done without it, raising our kids, even with what I thought were good incomes. (I have , since, been enlightened.)

The social problems, not entirely unrelated, are a whole nuther ball of yarn.

What 458 Lott said.

I will admit to mixed feelings about "subsistence", which I have used to personal benefit, tho we personally would have been OK without said use.

Not the situation for many in the villages, tho one wonders when one sees $30,000 boats used a few months of the year for "subsistence"... Or not used for several years...

Amortised over years of course. Or new $12,000 snow machines every few years- sometimes 4 or 5 to a family. ( I used my '93 Yamaha Bravo - plenty enough machine to get to (at 15-30 mph - top end is 45!... . ), and ambush caribou or moose, and get them home - I don't "need" to run them down with a high end machine .... as is commonly done by many "subsistence" users in the Bush. (Machinery trumps ethics.... )

"Positioning" animals with a snowmachine is enshrined in the regulations...

A few actually do it ethically. Even when no one is watching!

That said, locally caught wild fish and game is far preferable to store-bought products, both nutritionally and often economically for many.

In the 8 years we lived in Kotzebue ....on a 1 to 3 year plan.... (I came home to Kenai Peninsula home a month ago, my wife comes back end of June), I "subsistence" hunted 2 moose and 18 caribou, much of which I shared with family and friends, some locally, some within Alaska, some Outside.

Even with shared salaries of over $100,000, I sure as hell would not have been eating that much "store-bought" beef vis-a-vis wild, whether bought in Kotzebue, or Anchorage, where it about 65% Kotz prices. I did buy chicken and pork for variety in Anchorage Costco whenever passing through, if needed. (mostly wine and chocolate, tho.... man cannot live by meat alone, and some other things not available in Kotz at any price. )

I "personal use" caught red salmon, with a gill-net here on the Kenai and took them to Kotzebue, despite a plethora of "subsistence" chum salmon for the catching there. Nothing wrong with chums, we just prefer reds if available. I could have taken my net up there...

What bugs me is when "subsistence" is used as an excuse on a racial/cultural level to needlessly ( operative word there) lock out other non-local folks, or needlessly lock in cultural biases in the game regulations, having nothing to do with actual game management.

Such as the "pregnant cows only" 3 1/2 month long caribou thing in GMU23

Hey, I did my part (preserving the herd), taking 3 cows this past winter in December and January, during that "cows only" period, and a bull on Feb 2nd, the day after they became legal again, tho edible from the 2nd week of November, after rut. Yeah, he had no fat on him. I don't eat fat...

I stocked up for my "sport hunting" lifestyle change....... . My freezer here in Sterling is full with various cow cuts, and bull sausage/hotdogs....

I'm not sorry, either. This "sport hunting" schtick sucks....

Below is a result of stupid regs..... and cultural preference - orphaned calves of the year that come back looking for their mother, vs running off with the group. thern they die of lonelineess, exposure, lack of knowledge, (don't know where they are or where they are supposed to go - just missing Mom) or whatever...

Those calves are best eating!.. One of the 3 cows I killed this year, despite my care to pick out a lone one (Locals refer to them as "barren" - they probably are not, and are already pregnant again - just lost their calf of the year), had a calf come running back to find her. Then it ran back to rejoin the leaving group. Fortunately.

Me, If allowed, I'll take both to avoid orphaning such a dependant calf as necessary. For the last 3 years, I wasn't allowed.

Legally.

Dozens such orphaned calf-cases every year out of Kotzebue (that were found) - multiply that by 20-30 villages. Do the math.

Ravens and foxes gotta eat too, I guess...

And then there are those rural recreational hunters.......

I know it varies some from place to place, and I don’t intend to broad-brush things, but it seems quite common among the 20-30 age group in some places that “free” is an actual concept that costs no one anything. I have a couple of step sons who are perfect examples. One has crossed the 30 threshold, has inserted three children into a woman , who squirted them into the world. I brought him and s friend up to camp over a dozen years ago to help move materials for the cabin we were building. It was just occasional assistance I needed so the boys went down and tried to ‘catch’ a seal... which eventually happened, but, since it was late enough in the spring that we were boating, the seals were already losing their buoyant blubber and it sank. I helped them skewer it with a screw-tipped harpoon and retrieve it in relatively shallow water, but after many tries. I showed him how to skin it and prepare the the oil, meat, etc. As far as I know, that is the last time he’s fired a gun. I’m sure he’s glad I came home... brought his oldest son too 8 years old. We ‘rescued’ him from the mom (in Anchorage) over a year ago - when she was hospitalized for cutting herself, but before OCS got there hands on him. So Dad, whose had a year to try to get his $11,000 child support whittled down, now has his son to look after. (Mother’s sister adopted second son, and another sister has custody of the daughter.) So step son really doesn’t have a big load, but doesn’t/won’t hunt, lives rent free in our village home, can’t keep the lights on or heat so it is squalid and unfit. And that is not an en entirely unusual deal other than the fact that the chess pieces aren’t being played by OCS. The younger step son isn’t much better. Told the boys to move our old fish rack up a bit last summer so they can cut and dry some fish for winter. I’m pretty sure the storms will knock it over before they ever get to it. Gotta sleep enough you know.

And then there are those young guys who lose all or some of their kids to ‘the State’, won’t drive an old used sno go (cause they’re not cool enough). Won’t hunt when it’s cold (not so much of a problem recently), mostly uses the rig when choosing between “dope or diapers?’ and puts more miles on along the same few miles of local trail. But that machine is “vital for hunting.” (It gets used in springtime to hunt waterfowl, a traditional subsistence source that has become a recreational activity for many of such young bucks.)

Of course there are other who have more dignity, honor, and respect too, but it seems like they are fading with each passing generation. How long they will hold on is anyone’s guess. Some of these guys will put 3000-5000 miles on their rigs in a year. Yeah, I think they can justify the 12 grand or so that they cost... perhaps.

I don’t know what the answers are. I don’t even begin to understand how all the factors fit together. But I do know that some places appear to be dying out (were it not for the Gov, perhaps already dead), but for too many the drain on society as the unwilling move ‘inward’ ( to the city) isn’t much of a solution... and it’s happening. But for the moment, if there are no fish I the net today, it will be rice... and maybe beans. It’s too darned expensive to buy the stuff that is largely price supported through government aid.


......end of long, largely point-lost rant........ for now!🙄

Much reading here, and much of it totally on point, if not all of it.

The problem is, I think we are often to far gone to be able to have a solid solution, at least not without major suffering and even death involved.

A shame it is.

I've met so damned many that do it because they can, for no other reason.

Me, I don't need anyone to tell me if I can or can't kill something to feed my family. I'll do it without the king's permission.

not proud of this fact, but growing up I probably consumed more venison that had been taken out of season than in season. We were farmers and raised and sold beef. Beef costs money, those dang deer were free for the taking. It was a different time and money not as ready available as it's been in my adult life.

one of the last trips home when my dad was still alive, he, myself and my 10 year old rode around his farm, I had a new to me 7mm'08 and shooting off the tailgate for a rest, made a nice lil cloverleaf group @ around 100 yds, with the first shots I fired out of the thing. Dad was impressed with the accuracy of the lil rifle.

We came across some wild turkeys and he encouraged me to head shoot one, I declined by asking do we really need the meat? And I've got a 10 year old lad in the back of the pickup, I'm trying to raise him to obey the game laws. Dad mulled it over and said you're right, old habits die hard, growing up farming there was always a rifle handy, usually a .22 magnum and that dispatched most of those deer we ate with a neck shot. I didn't see a wild turkey until I was 12 years old. But once they started showing up they were fair game too.

When we were hungry and relatively poor, we used game as it was intended. These days it's probably cheaper for me to buy beef than eat moose, but we prefer moose and I still like to hunt. Our regs here leave me shaking my head quite often though.

I kind of hate to admit that I have what some might call miserly traits. I prefer to think it’s more about being resourceful. (Shouldn’t that be a big element in one’s education anyway?). Anyhow, I did spring for a short length of subsistence king net a few years ago, a small investment but one that is expected to pay one back over several years. Well, that net lasted 2 years, getting ‘blown’ by whales a few times in the second year. Then that winter a reindeer carried the whole thing away on his antlers, a fact I learned when I was informed that someone had harvested a reindeer that was carrying a king net. Apparently the net slid off the sled somewhere so it was lost. But I’ve caught all the fish we’ve ever needed by using scraps and salvaged nets including herring web. So I’m back to that method until an 80 foot “hung wrong” 5” net arrives. Yesterday I dropped a scrap: about 30 feet of 3 1/2 inch web in a protected spot that has always produced fish....so we’re eating king, or queens, hens, whatever term is preferred. One nice washtub sized fish made my day. But the net was still heavy, so I pulled a bit more and found another at least double in size.

The point I wish a few would note is that it doesn’t absolutely require $10k machines or skiffs, hundreds of dollars in equipment, but one does have to get after it and try. But you can’t exist out here without a decent income (few and hard to come by), government assistance of some sort ( and still suffer IMO), or you have to subsist.

"Homesteader" season.

Big difference 'tween subsistence and assistance.

Too many trade their dignity for “ass”.

I hope that means what I mean. 😬


(Dang I better edit that previous post. Good heavens this “smart phone” acts like one of my teenage sons some times! 🤪)

"Resourceful" - yeah I like that.

My wife doesn't let me go to the dump alone anymore. Much.

Whoa!.......Copper River dipnetting shut down.......that run of reds and kings
is a big part of "subsistence" in interior Alaska.

we called tag ' year long farmer tags" milk = we always got are fresh milk from the bulk tank " the tasty thick bubbly cream on top "