Well, I finally made it into the new Cabelas store in Anch; the Taylor is passable without chains.

I was impressed at the gun selection, especially the older used guns. Got a Win mod 88 in 308 (oak leaf) coming my way from Idaho Cabelas store. I let one go many years back and sales guy found me several at other stores. Will pick up nx trip to town in JUne; made my day for sure. They had all kinds of the levers the local Indians around my place favor, lots of Henrys one can handle, look over.

I think they will do quite well in Ak, and hope a second store will happen in Fairbanks.

What impressed me were the mounted animals--a huge number of them and all very well done. You could spend a couple of hours just looking at the taxidermy.

Vic, I've been living around Indians so long, Now I don't even like seeing heads hanging on walls. That Indian Mindset is even rubbing off on me. All my caribou & moose racks get cut up and used in knife handles. No joke, Athabaskans frown on seeing mounts & racks hanging; see it as immoral. They actually believe animals know their place in the scheme of things and their purpose which is to provide sustenance to man who respect nature and the creators vision. They believe the moose present themselves to be shot not hunters surprising the moose. My Indian buddies won't even talk about going hunting, they claim the moose can hear our plans; they'll say "Let take a walk in the woods across the river" and I know that means lets go get a moose. Buggers like talking to bear too, and always say don't shoot, he's our friend. We have a bunch of extra bedrooms, kids all grown, so when village has potlatch, usually some older Indians staying over a couple days, rather than tenting it on cold ground at village. They all use to let me know how wrong it was to have racks hanging, kinda bragging they believed. Yet use of hides is OK. I just eventually took most my racks down, just in case they were right.

Always seems to be more moose around the village providing fresh meat 24/7 than behind my place, and I do what I can to help the moose out, wouldn't ever shoot a local moose. So maybe there's something to what them Indians have to say. I'm sure they'd be quite disgusted seeing taxidermy mounts no matter how good they are, ha ha.

so the stuff i have seen in news reports about Inuits using snow mobiles in winter to run down moose/caribou for subsistence purposes is all BS? THAT'S GOOD TO HEAR.

I don't know about out in western Alaska, but along the Canadian Border, the Athabaskan Indians only run down wolves when they catch them in new deep snow; which isn't often. But if ya catch a pack crossing a lake, and new snow, you can open her up and dust wolves. The wolves split up, head for the brush. If you can run one down before they make it off the lake, you stun them, then shoot them; I've actually seen wolves turn and try biting the sled front cowling just as you hit them. We have way too many wolves and they take way more of the resource than man does.

Indians don't waste nothing, but they don't believe in bag limits either. Game regulations aren't of man's domain, at least how the Indians see it; they ignore game laws when they so desire. THey say we have done it this way for thousands of years, almost cultural with them. Truth is outside White hunters that show up by the thousands come hunting season take way more than the Indians do, just not enough Indians. If they didn't have subsistence seasons for locals, they'd shoot what they need anyway and pretty quick outside hunters would be restricted from rural areas. F&G is doing the best they can sharing the resource.

Indians will shoot as many as they can, then pass fresh meat out around the village to everybody. Hunting isn't sport to Indians, it's about fresh meat and thats all. Sport hunting is immoral to those guys.

Every once in awhile, Natives will shoot a bunch of caribou, planning on entire village coming out to cut up and haul back to village. Cops get wind of it and show up ready to bust Natives, then meat gets wasted as Indians can't go out and cut everything up without getting busted. Most times, F&G lets the Indians be, cause they know it's a fight they can't win. Actually F&G does good with what they have to deal with.

You only begin to understand Indians world view if you spent a year as the no good hated ugly White Boy in Nativeland. A little racism on ya does everybody good, the way you then look at other races. Vast majority of the Indians are a good bunch, even with all the cultural clashes sending them into extinction.

Zhurch-You probably know this. Pre 64 Win 88 had cut checkering and post 64 had the stamped basketweave and oak leaf. Either one the Win 88 locks on the last little bit of travel The front of the bolt twists in place making it more akin to the action of a bolt gun. I really like them. I had one in .308 and gave it to my grandson. He's had it about 10 years and I'd like to have the money it would take to buy it from him.

I saw a show on tv where a pile of caribou carcasses had been found rotting outside a village in Ak. The game wardens went to investigate. This really surprised me that someone knowing how important the caribou are to their survival would just wantonly waste them.

Carpetman, I think I'll find a pre 64 model 88 in a couple months also. I had a late 60's one as a kid myself.

What occurs is a group of hunters goes out on Indian Land and shoots as many as they can; with all intentions of spreading the meat out with everybody in the village. Somehow, the law finds out, rushes in to make big bust. The Indians are scared about going back to pack it all out cause the law is waiting there for them, meat goes bad and then a big deal is made. Then the entire village gets mad at the law & F&G and they'll get even. Indians don't waste anything though, it's like child abuse and most Whites wouldn't eat some of the meat the Indians do, no joke. Indians believe setting limits and seasons is completely immoral, sort of like playing God.

Indians see the word of poaching as foolish nonsense White Man being hypocritical. They see hordes of hunters showing up from urban Alaska every fall, and they take way more game than the Indians do hunting 24/7. If you lived around Indians awhile, you'd understand and respect most of their culture; seriously.

Zhurch--I had the Win 88 set up pretty good in my books. It has a Pachmyar Decellerator recoil pad. Leupold 2x-7x compact scope. I bought an extra magazine and made a leather pouch that attaches to the sling. It has been pretty much automatic with my grandson--if he shoots at something he gets it. In his book The Hunting Rifle, Jack O'Connor spoke highly of the Win 88.

Saw the Win 88s. Nice! Also saw an old Ruger No. 3 in 38-55 (I think). Haven't seen one of those in a while. Nice to see the large used gun section. That's what I like to look over.

Got to say, on dude who was working the "Gun Library" was talking a line of B.S. about a new SXS shotgun. "Handmade in Massachusetts". I thought he had confused a Connecticut Shotgun Manufacturing Company gun. Nope. A "Dickenson" shotgun - actually a Turkish shotgun (like a lot of shotguns) imported and stamped with the English sounding Dickenson name.

Still glad to see them. Didn't take long, the 22LR and powder didn't last past the weekend of the opener.

quote:

Originally posted by Zhurh:
No joke, Athabaskans frown on seeing mounts & racks hanging; see it as immoral. They believe the moose present themselves to be shot not hunters surprising the moose.
...My Indian buddies won't even talk about going hunting, they claim the moose can hear our plans; they'll say "Let take a walk in the woods across the river" and I know that means lets go get a moose.

Well, all cultures have their own customs developed over thousands of years. In European culture hunters have been displaying trophies ever since they started hunting--and also painting pictures on cave walls of "trophies." Of course, those traditions came to America with the first settlers.

In some cultures, head hunting, scalping and cannibalism were common practices, but not in our culture, not even 200 years ago.

And in our culture hunters aren't prohibited from discussing hunting plans openly. They get almost as much enjoyment out of planning as they do hunting.

I'm going back to Cabela's to look at all the mounts again. They are beautifully done and I'm not at all offended by them or by my own trophies.

quote:

Originally posted by Zhurh:
Carpetman, I think I'll find a pre 64 model 88 in a couple months also. I had a late 60's one as a kid myself.

What occurs is a group of hunters goes out on Indian Land and shoots as many as they can; with all intentions of spreading the meat out with everybody in the village. Somehow, the law finds out, rushes in to make big bust. The Indians are scared about going back to pack it all out cause the law is waiting there for them, meat goes bad and then a big deal is made. Then the entire village gets mad at the law & F&G and they'll get even. Indians don't waste anything though, it's like child abuse and most Whites wouldn't eat some of the meat the Indians do, no joke. Indians believe setting limits and seasons is completely immoral, sort of like playing God.

Indians see the word of poaching as foolish nonsense White Man being hypocritical. They see hordes of hunters showing up from urban Alaska every fall, and they take way more game than the Indians do hunting 24/7. If you lived around Indians awhile, you'd understand and respect most of their culture; seriously.

you need a dump truck to cart away all that bullshit!

Indians are like everyone else, they have their good and bad eggs. That bunch that left all those bou to rot in PT Hope were killing for fun and didn’t bother to pick them up. They were all mostly rotted out by the time the state boys showed up. I’ve seen indians waste a truckload of meat, and I’ve seen them respect nature. Sadly more and more of the youth are taking a wrong turn lately, not respecting anything let alone nature.

I have nothing against indians, have many good indian friends, but your gumdrop and rainbows editorial of them is a little over the top.

Ya, got to love their traditional ways, 6 drunks in a suburban with a barrel pointed out every window, slow rolling down a dirt road. I am sure their elders would be proud!

Don't mean to get off track, Gum Drops & Rainbows, ha; I once thought like you all, until wife and I taught in village. No good White People, Dirty White People, Hate You White People, all day long. I'd tell them you're 1000 years behind us. If we'd give the Russkies 50 more years, none of you would be here now, that would leave the kids thinking; but was as wrong of this proud White Boy as of them.

Thing is they don't think like we do, and we shouldn't judge them like we do each other; or you'd hate all of them and that ain't right.

The one's I'm around don't waste nothing and pride themselves on hanging onto their cultural ways; I respect them for it too. The have their problems like we have ours. Guess if ya live rural you get a different perception than if ya live urban; but to each his own and no bad vibes meant from me. Saw bear crap on the road home from Anch last night, time to set out trophy cam.

come on dude! Lay off the cool aid. People are people, native, white, black, yellow. Their all people. granted secluded concentrations of them tend to get a little different once in a while.

Too much of the “noble red man” BS has been perpetrated by the idealization of fiction novels. The early ones didn’t waste because they couldn’t afford to. Everything was needed. As they assimilated into our culture they tended to start sharing some of our vices, because for the first time doing so wouldn’t result in their deaths.

Some are moral, some are not. Some waste, some try not too, but at the end of the day their no different, better or worse.

They pick and choose their cultural ways. They like being able to hunt and fish at will, but have no desire to use slings, spears, or braining rocks. They instead perfer mini 14s and AR15s. They gladly run snow machines and 4x4s, and powerboats. It is easily 1000x easier for them to harvest these animals now than it was 200 years ago.

I’ve been urban, I’ve been rural, I’ve lived in big cities and native reservations. I don’t hate them, I understand some of their difficulties. They suffer from racism, both against native and them against white, blacks, and asians. One of the more racist guys I have ever known was a little old native tlinget named floyd. He was a hilarious old guy and I enjoyed his company very much.