Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska Rural waiver for duck stamps

Was anyone else bothered by the Alaska Delegation's self congratulatory statements about getting rural Alaskans exempted from having to buy a Fed. duck stamp? I think this is so bogus. Yes, I know that food and fuel are expensive in rural Alaska; I used to live out there. But I've also stood at airports in the bush where the freight plane unloaded merchandise for the local store. You know what the major items were? Cigarettes, chew, candy and pop. Everybody smokes or chews, or both, out in the villages, and that chit is expensive! If they can afford to buy a carton of cigarettes (or worse), they can fricken pony up the money to by a duck stamp.
Ridiculous political pandering.

Agree 1000% sayak. Not to mention, how much waterfowl gets taken in the springtime and the harvest "limits"...

I'm all for subsistence, but there's no reason they can't buy a stamp like anyone else. That must drive the DU folks nuts!

I live in bush Alaska and I don't understand why they waived the duck stamps. Anyone using a resource should be paying their share to safeguard it, if that payment is required for anyone else to participate.

I love how were all separated into different groups with different rules..... by .gov !$%^&*&^%$#

Not only did they drop the requirement for the Bush but they raised the price for the rest of us... What better way to show the divisions they are looking to build?

I also like the official "situational and discretionary" enforcement of the steel shot rules also.

I will offer this�.the majority of waterfowl are taken in springtime in some/many parts, and one of the frustrations for vendors has been that the Fed stamp often isn't available for purchase.

Pop is too much of what gets unloaded from planes in rural parts, that's for sure, along with Nitro-Steel shells which sell for $1.50/ a pop. It doesn't make a lot of sense financially, especially after you factor in a lot of other costs. People do pay their way on the ammo taxes, I'll give them that.

I spent more than several hundred dollars on shot shells this year, so someone else's decision to live where freight costs are higher does not hold any water with me. And living in AK is a substantial incremental cost of living increase based on freight rates, anyway.

Double edged sword on this one to me... I think steel shot has contributed far more mortality in the form of crippled and lost birds than lead shot would across the vast majority of the US.

The discretionary enforcement is disgusting though...

Maybe if you only looked at crippled and lost figured I am sure steel cripples more than lead --- but the science is pretty solid on lead poisoning in feeding waterfowl and when they are shot over breeding areas it can make a lot more impact than a few extra wounded birds escaping.

The obscurity of my point was that people still pay substantially in Pittman-Robertson fees in spite of the already high prices on ammo - I'm taking neither side on those costs. If money spent for restoration and enhancement is part of the argument, the money taken in from sales of ammo in the springtime in rural parts is a lot greater when these hunts happen despite lack of stamps than if they weren't hunting, stamps or no stamps.

USFWS has been pretty effective in getting the "steel shot" advocacy out to rural. There was resistance at first but I don't hear much comment about it after people figured out how to make it work. My doubts about whether the birds were finding spent shot have been dismissed by all the lead shot I've found in gizzards.

This flies in direct contradiction to the State Constitution as does the other rulings setting up special considerations for hunting regulations based on geographic or P.O. Box residency.

I imagine it was pretty hard to envision the influence of a pipeline, 10,000 people in Fairbanks, and 100,000 people in Anchorage when that was all set in place too, or that catch-and-release would be the order of the day in Alaska's waters, or that hook sizes would matter. 1956 (when the Constitution was ratified) was not so far removed from the time when southeast Alaska called the shots on F&G seasons and birds were gone in the fall before the season opened in many areas.

There are plenty of things that need to be fixed. But thinking people need to be doing it. Having a "bull" moose season in the fall (and not needing to retrieve the head/antlers) but making the late winter season an "antlered bull only" season - when the moose are already dropping antlers isn't exactly smart thinking - assuming the intent is actually to allow a harvest at all in the later season. Neither is opening legal spring hunting for birds, requiring 'duck' stamps, and not issuing those same stamps until after the spring harvests are past.

Every part of the state has some advantages and disadvantages over other places. There's no reason a person can't move rural if those are things that are important to them.

Historically speaking, it was probably hard to envision the influence of Costco, Walmart, bush delivery etc. too. What you're saying is that just because someone lives in a particular area of the state that they get rights to the state's resources that others can't have. That is not the law and doesn't make sense. The only people who support that are the "got mine, the rest of you piss up a rope" people.

It makes as much sense as saying rural people can't shop in Costco or Best Buy because they don't live as close. People always call it Los Anchorage yet they sure know how to find it every time they want something.

I can agree that a lot of the game laws are goofy and need fixing.

Whatever controversy surrounds this waiver I'm all for it,,simply because we only shoot about a dozen mallard drakes in the spring. From the $$ standpoint only. In the fall the ducks eat rotten salmon and eggs here and taste like death.

I'd much rather see 'them' give on the stamp and keep encouraging/enforcing non-toxic shot as they seem to be doing in some parts of the Yukon Delta. BTW, I just noticed that there are "shooting hours" listed in some of the stuff. I didn't see anything for springtime however. What's up with that? (Heck, it almost peeves me too that they've even outlawed some of the older traditional methods for bird harvest�.like nets. Oh well, modern stuff works too I reckon.)



Oh, oh. Looks like we're busted! I guess we'll have to quite feeding those mallards their stale bread portions on the open honey bucket lagoon. (I've always wondered what those birds taste like. )

Those shooting times are in the fall, feral regulations. The reason they aren't part of the spring season is that technically the spring season doesn't exist. It's only accommodated because enforcement would be an overwhelming and losing proposition.

My point was never in regard to urban v rural. Mt point was that if you've got money to spend on alcohol, junk food and cigarettes, you have money to spend on a freaking duck stamp.

I don't smoke!

oh hades, I bet that's what Richard Pryor thought too! (grin)