Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska GMU23 and GMU26A

Just saw that Biden’s admin wants to close these two units to non-resident hunting. Any truth to that and if so, why?

Because the dem's want to turn Alaska into one big national park.

Yes, it is in the works.

It's the Natives living there who want it closed. Dem. admin. will rubber stamp anything the Natives want, as it's a block vote for them. Has nothing to do with actual game management in those areas, on a scientific basis. NR have virtually NO impact in those units, except to piss off the locals.

Which, by the way, is a violation of Alaska's StateHood Act, which guaranteed the State management over fish and game. Then the Feds decided THEY had jurisdiction over said resources on Federally administered lands within the state (see above). Buncha Indian Givers, so to speak.

I expect that sometime in the future, it will be proposed to close 23 and 26, and perhaps others, to everyone not actually living in those units, except for Natives from those areas, living outside those areas.

Anchorage actually is the largest Native community in Alaska, but they will want to go "home" for "subsistence" hunting and fishing. And do.

I personally miss those 8 years of "subsistence hunting" I did while living in Kotzebue (GMU23)......... but I'm white, so.....

And consider our Senator Murkowski as one of those Democrats even though she ran as a Republican. She is indebted to the native community for her reelection. GMU 13 in the AHTNA area will follow.

Gentlemen,
Thank you for your thoughtful responses. I had guessed that was the goings-on but hoped for better.

Kind of a switch- Natives putting themselves on "reservations". So to speak. Ironic, but they aren't being shipped off to some badlands hellhole hundreds of miles away - it's their homeland, and they (preferably without white-eyes) like it.

So do I.

That’s a good way to look at it. I grew up going to an “Indian School” so I know what you mean. I’ve also seen what hellholes Can be created on reservations…very large reservations. Drugs, booze and politics are the real enemies of us all.

I lived in 26a for the past 3 years(I’m in Nome now). Many of the smaller villages depend on the caribou migrations for their food.

Hunting outfits fly (mostly non resident)hunters in to hunt caribou. The natives don’t like it because they believe that it disrupts the migration patterns, and also goes against some of their hunting traditions(letting the first herd pass unmolested, etc).

The natives don’t feel that the outfitters listen to their concerns. So they have been lobbying the game t
Department to keep the outsiders out. They have been able to enact “no fly zones” near the villages, but when the migration bypasses the village for a year the villages pled for more safeguards.

And now their concerns are being heard in Washington.

I have my own opinions on the whole thing. But I’ll keep them to myself. What I posted is the facts as I see them. I did live in a small village and I can tell you that when the caribou don’t come, the village is an unhappy place.

Ballot box biology

So they developed a code of ethics way back before white men came... when caribou migration patterns were fickle... and now they want to blame the fickle patterns on us. Got it...

Had a native gal out of kotzebue arguing with me on Facebook say ever since they built the pipeline yes the pipeline from prudhoe to Valdez the caribou no longer migrate through korzebue. Lol I cannot make this chit up. I said that pipeline is hundreds of miles from
Kotzebue and that herd is the central arctic herd, the herd in kotzebue was the western arctic herd. She pretty much said (insert native accent) I don’t care what herd it is we don’t need anwr open to oil drilling. At the point I realized talking to my labs would be better..

Click general season you will see how big an impact those outsiders are having on the caribou herds up north

http://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=caribouhunting.harvest

Spot on, Jason

And they will probably get it, as I've said, for political reasons.

I just talked to my former landlord(ess) in Kotz. I probably would not have, except she was using her land line to find her cell phone , which is one digit off from mine. BTDT!

She says the herd is still far north in the Brooks Range, so the up-river villages, who are normally hammering the caribou as they pass by the villages at this time, often as the animals attempt to cross rivers, are getting nothing, as yet. Caribou go where and when caribou feel like, but no doubt this will be blamed on the outfitters and NR. Again.

Somehow the caribou remember from year to year a few NRs picking off a few selected bulls far from the villages or river crossings, but can't remember getting hammered while swimming, by fast-moving gunboats in the fall, and run all winter via snow machine.

Must be Democrats. Selective memory.

79S.

Nope, the caribou never get near Kotz anymore. In 2018, the last year I was there, I shot my first caribou below and on the village side of the radar? dome 2 miles west, the 2nd one a mile farther out, the third one about 5 miles out., on successive weekends. All pregnant cows, as I was helping stabilize the declining herd by regulation, as mandated by Native cultural influences.

Any way I can help.......

Don't forget climate change.

Well, that is real - has been for 4 billion years and three different atmospheres. Don't be a hater....

We got our first hard frost night before last. 50 years ago, it would have been 2-3 weeks earlier, and this is not an anomaly. Ditto leaves changing color and dropping.

Problem is we had a cool spring and early summer, with a hot spell in mid summer. My strawberries produced an early ho-hum crop, and are now just loaded with a bumper crop of green berries tfrom he second blooming. I covered them with plastic to try to get a few more ripe ones, but mostly they they are likely to freeze green in a few days. Too bad they aren't tomatoes (also covered nights), which will soon have to come in to ripen on the counter, both the passive green house and outdoors ones.

Must be NR fault. Somehow. All that damned summer traffic for the fishing.

I hate to say it natives will be natives. The Rez I grew up on they always blamed the white eyes for their declining deer and elk herds. Not the known native poachers who shoot 8-10 deer and leave them lay. I can hear them now (insert native accent) them white guys shooting all our deer and elk.

Where I'm from we've always referred to climate change as weather.

As in, "How's your weather today?" ...or, "What's the weather supposed to be like next week?"

They didn't have a good argument at the hearing. They're will always be airplanes due to rafters, hikers, park employees... hunters not the only ones who fly. Doubt they'll get their wishes next year either

squeeky wheel usually gets the greesw