I am considering a move to Alaska, and I currently have interest from employers in a variety of places including Juneau, Valdez, Soldotna, Anchorage, Bethel, and Dillingham. I am curious as to which cities have the best and easiest access to hunting & fishing. Also, the jobs all pay similar, so what's the cost of living comparison? I've heard Juneau is high rent, but much lower utilities than somewhere like Bethel. All things considered and given a choice, from a hunting/fishing perspective, where is the beat place to live in Alaska? All replies are appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Tha's supposed to ask, "where is the BEST place to live in Alaska?"

Thanks.

Bethel is really not the best of places to live. The others you have listed have many positives and some negatives. Depends on what your interests are and how long you want to be away from population.

Valdez or Soldotna are the only two decent choices in the group. Dillingham is in the middle of great hunting and fishing, you can't drive to it!! Better like to drink

Cost of living in all of Alaska is high, especially when you get off the road system.

You need to prioritize your hunting and fishing to get a better recomendation. What's more important, fishing or hunting. What type of fishing, ocean, river, lake? What do you want to hunt, bears, moose, caribou, deer?

Anchorage has the advantage of all the amenities of modern life, and reasonbly priced goods when shopping, same would go for Soldotna, and it's only a few hours from Anchorage to get what you need, Valdez is a bit longer treck and housing is expensive due to the high salaries of the folks working on the pipeline. I would not buy a house in Valdez, because when Alyeska finishes the reconfig of the pipeline, there will be quite few folks layed off, and a big hit in the housing market. That said, Valdez is a great place if you have a decent saltwater boat for fishing, and hunting the islands for black bear and blacktail deer.

Hunting in Alaska is expensive for residents, and any one on the road system is usually looking at alot of transportation costs, ie flying out or boating out.

Not attempting to hijack the thread, but may I ask where off the road system would you folks suggest? I have relatives up there in Anchorage, and have been told some of the bush villages have significant substance abuse issues. Don't need to be around that.

I'm partial to the Islands for off the road locations, Kodiak would be highest on my list, then Sitka, and there are some other nice potential locations in Southeast.

If I was looking for locations truly away from towns, then I'd look at spots that didn't have any villages, and were fly in only. There are some old homesteads and small mining opperations that would truly get one out on there own.

Most any location, on the road system or off (and not just Alaska) where there is little to no employment opportunities, and public assistance to keep folks from having to move to where the work is will lead to subsistance abuse problems.

I have traveled with High School athletic teams
to virtually every place in Alaska. Your question has been answered very well in different ways thus far and appears to me that you must prioritize what you want and what you are willing to put up with to get it.
Cordova without exception is the best hunt for everything I have experienced. Must fly
a couple hours north for sheep. Everything else is there. SO is an incredible yearly rainfall and monster bugs. Fishing and hunting
right off the road system.

Kodiak I would rate as second for everything
with a big and small city atmosphere. Safeway, Walmart MC D's drive to hunting and fishing. Boat or plane to travel to nearby islands for elk. Much dryer climate than Cordova and a totally different vegitation pattern here on the island. Depending on what you do for a living is where you land.

I will say that there are 250,000 in the Anchorage area with Wasilla a bedroom community for Anchorage. It is like a little Anchorage with a very modern town and 40 miles from ANchorage. All these people in the ANchorage bowl causes much traffic and especially when the salmon are running and you are traveling to a fishing spot? Have you ever seen combat hunting or fishing? I do like Palmer a lot but there again, if it weren't for friends I would not have much use for Palmer as the hunting is somewhat competitive for Moose and sheep as well as black bear.
Forget the fly to only villages unless you are financially independant and do not mind paying $6.00 per gallon for heating oil?

Many places to see but I moved to Kodiak Island
3 decades ago for a reason.

Neal

ncooper, so what is the vegitation pattern there on Kodiac? I just spen 10 days traveling the Kenai peninsula (liked Seward) to Talkeetna. The alders and devils club are thick! Nothing like here in CO where you can go anywhere.

Hi There

If you do not know where to go the vegitation is pretty harsh. I pre-cut hidden trails in the spring time so when the grass grows up no one knows where the trailers are until I get there first. AT my cabin there isn't any brush. Just grass! Where the caribou are its only grass to alpine and then short grass and lichen is everywhere above 1500 feetany where you go on the island.

I have several places I go that I follow game trails to 1500 feet and then walking is alpine and pleasant.

Neal

Supershot

I just recently moved to Wyoming after 22 years in Dillingham. While there I was fortunate enough to travel quite a bit around the state. No place offers everything as far as hunting and fishing goes but I think Dillingham may offer the best variety and the weather is not terrible.

Moose, caribou and brown bear literally abound there. All 5 varieties of Pacific salmon return in hunge numbers to the Nushagak and Wood rivers right in Dillingam. Char and rainbow fishing is excellent and you are in striking distance of the biggest rainbows in the world.

There is jet service to Anchorage everyday so you can get to other areas quite easily for sheep, goats etc.

Living in a bush community is not for everyone but if you are adaptable you can make it work and you don't have to be a drunk nor is everyonea drunk.

If you'd like to know more send me a pm.

Mark

I would say Cordova, Dillingham, Kodiak, or Nome. It depends on what you are looking for, what you do for a living, and your tolerance for weather, cold, rain, prices, etc.

Off the road system is the only way to go if you really want to live AK, and it doesn't have to be as expensive as it might first appear. Costs more, but the hunting/fishing are there every day instead of only weekends/vacations and people bumping your elbows on the stream.

My 2 cents

Bob (sadly back on the road system, but counting the days)

I like the Interior best .It has its draw backs though.It has good hunting and you can always drive to Valdez.Anchorage is just like any other big city crime ridden and rotten.It does not even seem like your in Alaska there.I have lived in Fairbanks,Juneau , Kenai ,Wasilla and mostly in the interior.I liked Fairbanks the best for the larger cities if you have to live in a big city.I like the smaller towns alot better it feels way more like your in Alaska.Its kinda hard to get excelent fishing and hunting together usually you get one or the other.Its way more slower paced life in the small towns but jobs are harder to find there.

There is supposed to be a natural gas pipeline job opening up paralleling the crude oil pipeline.

I'm in Petersburg in southeast. It is really nice here. About 3000 people with around 100 miles of road (you can only go 30 or so mile in one direction however). Fishing is wonderful and hunting is good. You can locally hunt for deer, black bear, moose, wolf and with a little travel (by boat) brown bear and Mt. goat. The nice thing about Alaska is you can always go somewhere else for different species. You won't get everything in one place. I've lived in the Alutians, Kodiak, Ketchikan, Prince of Wales, many other countries in the world and in most of the States. Petersburg is as close to ideal as I have found. Jim

I lived in Barrow and Sitka.

Yes some villages have some drug problems. The bottom line is take a look at what that village is;

Native village= more drugs and alcahol problems.

Company towns like Valdez, Prudhoe Bay, Nome, and the like are the opposite end of the spectrum. Mostly folks working their ass off toward never working again, Alcohol is usually a problem, and drugs can be if the company doesn't test for it.

I really liked living in Sitka, it is a coast guard town and has the police academy, and more cops per capita than anywhere else in Alaska (or it did when I was there). It's a pretty little postcard with decent hunting for deer, goats, and bears with awesomefishing IF YOU HAVE A BOAT! The same thing could be said for most of the smaller towns in SE, Kodiak, and the Southern coast.

Barrow is an Inupiat Eskimo subsistance village 450 miles north of the Artic circle on the Artic Ocean. Barrow and Bethel are very similar (except location and terrain), they have lots of Natives that don't have jobs, and like anyplace else where folks don't have to work, they tend to get into trouble.

Their are native villages I would love to live in for hunting alone, like Anatuvik Pass and Nuiqsuit. Most like Bethel and Barrow I would probably avoid. Just too much drama, and I would definantly stay the hell out of Point Lay, Point Hope, Atkasuk, and Wainright.

I was a police officer for a very short time in Barrow, I travelled around a little, and I can honestly say that I like most of Alaska. I would still rather live in Anchorage than most places in the lower 48.