The Brownshirts (although the fish cops are now having to switch to blue shirts to match the regular state cops) _have_ repeatedly indulged in harassment, intimidation, and outright falsification in their effort to bag another hunter. Last autumn, a judge in the interior of AK threw out several cases for falsified evidence and gave the fish cops a thorough dressing down. Sad to say, the LE folk tasked with enforcement of the F&G rags are not necessarily anybody's friend.

Guys,

You're right, it's changing quickly..............but it's still better than the lower 48 by a wide margin. Be thankful for what we have and do something about the changes by getting active, get involved...............DGR416 you should be commended for teaching the kids to hunt and enjoy the outdoors but, unless we all band together, those young people won't have a place to hunt. Outdoorsman are famous for being of different factions instead of one strong group. I visited the east coast several months ago, for an extended period of time...........almost all of the places I used to hunt in eastern N.C. are gone...........while visiting several other states in the south I found the same. If you want to see sad, do a search for the N.J. bear hunt debacle from last season; Fish and Game didn't let young people hunt, even though they successfully passed a hunters safety class, because of a feared confrontation with the antis, of which there were plenty bordering on criminal; there was even a candlelight vigil at the Governors Mansion for the bears. I'm proud to be an Alaskan............get to know you state officials and representatives.........take the time......write your congressman and senators...........if you don't sacrifice the time now, you'll have plenty of time later during what used to be hunting season.

Joe

I was stationed in Alaska during my military service and again as a wildlife field researcher in Kenai.The comments posted all point fingers at people; alcoholic, pot smoking teachers, overzealous F&G officers, anti hunting groups, indigenous natives with special hunting rights. Now lets look in the mirror. I see a closed community not unlike a circle of Musk Ox.How many people have actually introduced themselves to any of these groups,extended a smile and handshake and said " We all care about the animals. Maybe we can both learn from each other for their benefit?" As hunters, we must take the moral high ground or crawl through the zero visibility of alder and get ambushed by a bear called poor P.R. I helped in the prosecution of a bobcat poacher here in California.I voluntarilly switched to Barnes Bullets locally, the California Condor recovery station being nearby, and lead ingestion a major cause in their deaths.I join beach cleanups, habitat restoration efforts and utterly humiliated the county Green Party chairman after his rant about people not needing elephant guns by producing the cartridge used by the famed hunter of that magnificent and endangered animal.I submit that I have gained more understanding and mutual sense of purpose than any ranting NRA Ted Nugent wannabee.

Has anyone hear ever heard of the Step Outside program? It is part of the National Shooting sports Foundation. They can help with all of these issues that relate to getting new folks involved in the shooting sports (www.stepoutside.org) . I do alot of these events in my home town and work with my chapters that have them all across the country.

They will help you with publicizing events, t-shirts, hats etc. I work with local gun clubs, shooting ranges to make it all come together and we occasionally have bird shoots, pheasants, quail etc. that are in most cases donated for the cause.

I have never had any trouble finding assistance or donors from those that make a living in the shooting sports as these new shooters will ultimately benefit their bottom line.

If I can help anyone with something like this don't hesitate to shoot me an email.

Doug

ChrisKav,

Very well put!

I have done the same thing and dealt with the same greenies getting upset with me. I make a living in this industry and deal with these folks on a national level. Nothing drives them crazier than proving to them that we are not all toothless, beer can throwing, chew all over the chin, shoot whatever walks, red necks.

Has anyone ever invited their local news person out to a range shoot? We do it all over the country and you would be amazed at those that are instantly turned around, if they bust one bird on the trap range you have them hooked and they will stay and shoot box after box! They also have a chance to meet the real hunters, shooters and gun owners and not the bad guys that even a few of them now shooting have made us out to be.

my 2 cents

Doug

I have always found it ironic that many hunters view concerns about population growth, industrial development, air and water pollution, global warming, and clear cut logging (to list a few topics) as the ignorant ravings of wacko environmentalists. Alaska's population has increased by a huge amount in the past few decades but that's a good thing. Just get some serious logging and mining going, toss out the complicated hunting regulations, put the Natives in their place, neuter the cops and enforcement officers, and we will all be able to fill our freezers with a fat moose. After all, as wally hickel pointed out, alaska it so big that it cannot be damaged no matter what we do.

Put the natives in their place and not ONE non_native Alaskan could be in AK.

Just an opinion of course.

I FULLY SUPPORT ANY Law Enforcement officer doing their job, but I also FULLY SUPPORT firing or prosecuting any type of LE officer abusing their position.

The bottom line is our home is under terrific strain from overpopulation.100 years ago a New England farmer who wore out his farm simply moved west. We only have one planet.Grandios schemes of moving into space are just that. No one,be they ; native americans, hunters, wall street greedheads or latte sucking yuppie asphalt pounders are free of culpability, critiscism or the need to adapt, change,sacrifice .Recycling sodie pop cans and protecting specific glamour species (whales, wolves, Bighorn sheep) and buying a hybrid isn't going to do anything. Not when Red China is gearing up to a consumer society that will require at least another earth's worth of raw materials just to maintain that illusion for 50 years tops.We as hunters can wax nostalgic over old Remington Arms calenders,blame others, vote Republican and still see onerous laws enforced till the genetically engineered cows come home.WE ARE GOING TO LOSE.The only way to save,preserve,protect is to find common ground with others. At the population rate we will be stepping on each other's toes on that gound soon enough.

Here is something that really pissed me off.A russian where I live ,shot a cow moose and calf in a friends driveway out of season..He told my friend when he caught he doing it he would kill him if he told.The fined the russian only $250.There was a grizzly shot in my neighborhood by russians in july when its closed.They shot it at night off of 4 wheelers.I went to fish and game and they wouyld not come out.The have really wiped out the moose and bears around town with fish and game doing nothing about it.
I am taking a 16 year old boy shooting for the first time in his life tonight.I am going to take him moose and caribou hunting after he takes his hunter safety course.I am also teaching a 17 year old girl why hunting is important to the animals.She read Robert Ruarks Old Man and the Boy and The Old mans Boy Grows Older.She loved the books.I am taking her bird hunting with my English Setters.If we all got 20 kids started in hunting we can save our sport.I turned my Farm in ga into a Wildlfe Conservation farm.I planted lots of trees and made lots of food plots and brush piles for the animals.We cant just go hunting any more.We have to get involved in saving hunting for the future!

RupertBear: What numbers are you looking at? Of course the population has grown, and spectacularly. Pre WW II population was something around 50,000 and today's is 650,000. In the past few decades alone, it has doubled.

I don't know how old you are, but if you are my age (61), what is apparent is how spectacularly the population of the US has grown. The growth is primarily due to immigration, both legal and "undocumented" and has now given the US the 3rd highest growth rate in the world. The places that I hunted and trapped as a boy in Pa are now all subdivisions.

I was considering the population change over the past 10 and 20 years. As I said, the location within the state of the population has changed greatly (heck, Nuiqsut didn't even exist prior to '72), but the overall numbers haven't changed much.

The development in AK differs from that in the lower 48. Although it does remove a bit of the state from the huntable area, as it does in the Lower 48, it almost always results in improved access. That lets previously lightly hunted areas get hammered quickly.

as far as the regs. go, if anyone has a doubt that they are a cluster@#$% then just look at the regs for fishing on the Kenai River and the daily updates.

Look at unit 20 for moose.You better know where the north bank of the southfork of the east bank of the middle river is.Then you throw in army land thats closed ,State land thats open,native land thats closed and little pieces of BLM land mixed in its confusing as hell.They always add new regs hardly ever take away any.I hope some one does something before its too late.There was a guy who wrote a book about rafting rivers for moose .The F&G took his maps and banned all nonresidents from one of the units.This 4 brow tine rule really sucks.The moose that are legal are about too tough to eat unless you grind the whole thing.There are too many moose hit by cars in alaska.I would bet the # is way higher than the legal kill.I have had many friends just give up hunting due to the impossible regs.If you got to the F&G offices it takes them a while to explain the regs because they usually dont know them theirselves.It would ne way easier to use roads as boundies where there are roads and main rivers where their are no roads.There is a dry creek here used as a boundry I have only seen water in it once.Its a shame that Alaska of all places has to be this way.

Boys, while we're looking for someone to blame, lets take a look at ourselves, too. When was the last time anyone that you know was willing to throw on a pack, hike in 10-15 miles, hunt until he found the animal that would feed his family, butcher it properly and protect the meat from the blow flies and dirt, then pack it out, take it home, and distribute it or freeze it as needed........ OR pass up a shot because it was just too good to still see that animal still in his natural state...... when it was too cold last night to sleep much in your -5 degree down bag..... and you are carrying around a little too much of your own weight because you don't get out like you should or want to. When was the last time you didn't use your 4 wheeler to get to that moose pasture. When was the last time that you used a spike camp without a hot water shower. When was the last time that you sat around the campfire at night with your buds and your sons and ate pork & beans and drank a little whiskey and told about things that you remembered as being good. When was the last time that you cleaned your rifle just because you wanted to touch it and look down the bore. When was the last time that you weighed each powder charge by hand so that your hunting loads would be as accurate as you were capable of producing. When was the last time that you scouted an area all summer before the season and knew where that animal was going to be EXACTLY on opening morning. When was the last time that you made a kill and didn't like seeing the animal down but struggling to stay alive.

I hunt. I've hunted all my life. I've hunted rabbits with a beagle, raccoon with pack dogs, squirrels alone, deer in the pre-dawn with frost on the ground, pheasants that startled hell out of me when they came off the ground just in front of me, moose that i had to pack a mile, moose that i had to pack 15 miles, caribou, sheep, and even the lowly black bear. I watched my son take his first moose 3 days past his 12th birthday when he was still a chubby little kid. Then I gave him the 12 guage to keep the bears off of me while I performed pack duties. (The last night of that pack, we saw McKinley close in the moonlight and were bonded for life) If you can't tell, I also work for it and have taught my kids that part of the experience is to work for it, to earn the privilege of taking that life in a fair struggle for survival.

Sure, I know that what we have now sucks. There is no respect for the quiet, the solitude, the experience. You have to pack in a week early just to be ahead of the 4-wheelers. And Fish and Game spend most of their time sucking up to the politicians who just happen to be invested in travel companies and have tour related ties. AND ESPECIALLY THE POLITICIANS WHO HAVE THE WHERE-WITHAL TO STOP IT BUT NOT THE BALLS (it would cost them votes or campaign dollars or seats on boards)("But you just don't understand." BS) And the monied tourist hunters who pay their guides thousands to have successful hunts at the expense of the Alaskan hunter. And the people who live out who take the animals in their own back yard. And the urban sprawl and development that has taken the habitat away from game who need it. (I used to visit a muskeg area where resided a native Alaskan venus fly trap but mosquito sized. The area is now filled with zero-lot-line homes.)... "But I moved to Alaska because I thought it would be different."

SO .... WHAT IS NEW ??? THAT IS LIFE.... GET OVER IT. i can't change it and neither can you. We can fight the urbal sprawl by fighting the developers and the politicians by not selling our land to them and by not selling out. We can vote NO. We can educate. We can be a pain in the ass to the city counsel or the borough counsel. If we are strong enough and it means enough, we can even put our behinds on the line by challenging the politicians and taking control of our government. We can make what is left..anything that we want it to be......... We can even call a halt to hunting until the game population is large enough to support us......If we are not too selfish, too lazy, too weak, too stupid. Folks, sometime you gotta quit crying.... and stand up for what you think is right. ALWAYS...SOMEBODY HAS TO SAY "NO MORE"

And, at the very least, go hunting on foot with your kid. And don't make it easy for him. You will be shocked at what a fine hunting companion he is. You will be shocked at what his young eyes can find that yours can't. And you will be very pleasantly surprised at what he tells his buddies about you and his hunting trip...and how you roughed it. Most of all, let him carry his own load so that he can honestly feel what it is all about, so that he can experience, so he can know the truth.
I'm old now. I have to use a scope cause i can't see the front sight, let alone the peep. My son will graduate from dental school in another year... my daughter is working on her doctorate in education......Yet, every year they come dragging spouses into camp (and some day, grandchildren) whom they teach about camp life and how we hunt and function as a family and how we feel about things. And the pictures that we take are now of family, not of the six caribou hanging and curing on the a-frame. We have learned to be grateful for what we got, not to cry about what we don't got.
Good luck. It is here. Hope you find it.

Grape Creek,

Great post and I applaude you for all that you do with your kids. I too have done the same with my kids, they have all been to Alaska with me and learned the difference between a Texas feeder hunt and a real bush hunt, they prefer the bush.

Doug

Grape Creek: You ask when was the last time to soooo many questions...I answer you with "LAST YEAR, Last Month,Last Week"!!! That is EXACTLY how my family and I do it all the time. My family = my wife & 3 grown childern, my father & MOTHER ( they are in their mid 60's and still pack moose MILES ON THEIR BACKS!)BB

You guys know the truth. It's about what we get to experience while we pass thru this life that counts. Makes you feel good inside, don't it ........

I do walk in on every hunt I go on in alaska.It pisses me off when FISH & Game circles out good hunting areas and makes it almost inpossible to hunt.The Gerstle River was inpassible this year on the caribou hunt I went on.The fish & game does not care weather we hunt or not.I told them that the caribou had disapeared on the flats due to Russian poachers here .They just sit at there desk 99% of the time.Hunting is just a pain in the butt to them now.If they have their way hunting will be a way of the past.I have tried to turn in poachers they dont want to even come out.A friend of mine just told me yesturday he got pissed at F&G enough to do something.A grizzley had killed a cow moose in his garden and he called them about the calf.They said they would do nothing so he roped the calf and loaded it in the truck and brought it to fish and game.They tried to give him a ticket for doing so.I have had lots of friends call on moose and bear problems who called them also.They told them to squirt the moose with a super soaker and to pepper spray the bears.The F&G wont touch poachers but will nail hunters for being a 1/4" short on moose.I hope some way they will listen to hunters some day.