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Posted by PatrickH on Oct 09 2005
Hunting in Alaska has long been an elitist pastime. Those who have money can get almost anywhere they want to hunt. The poor person living in Fairbanks squeaking out a living does not have the means to buy his way into good hunting areas. He has to rely on the road system along with most of the other resident hunters. It could be argued that bush residents are among an elite as well. They are the few that get to live out there all the time. True subsistence dwellers are few and far between. In fact they may not exist any more. In many villages social assistance (welfare, corporation dividends) has replaced self reliance and the real risk of starvation that goes with a true subsistence life. Yet the residents still claim the rights of their nomadic forbearers who lived lightly on the land or paid the ultimate price if things went wrong. I am not suggesting that village or bush life is easy. It is just that they can fall back on society and government assistance when necessary.
When the state's population was low, the road system may have been marginally adequate. Since the State of Alaska has fewer miles of road than Fairfax County Virginia, we have long outstripped the road system's ability to provide decent big game hunting opportunities. In a state that is 20 percent of the land mass of the entire USA the lack of roads is mind boggling.
The average person's only realistic option is to use boats or atvs to gain access to better hunting. It is far from a perfect answer. Most people try to be environmentally sensitive and stay on established trails. But as with any group a small percent of people are "fat slob hunters" or "fat slob" atv riders or "fat slob" boaters. Is it reasonable to outlaw motorized access to everyone because a small segment of society does not care about anything but themselves?
For the record I do hunt the road system and am incredibly frustrated. I do have an atv, but it did not get used this season. I hunt on foot and use the atv to help haul out meat. None of the hunters I know were able to take a moose this year. There are too many hunters for the road system to support. The pressure will continue to build until something drastic happens. After all the majority of the state's population lives on the road system. Do we shut down ALL hunting for five years to allow game populations to rebound? I can see the ballot proposition coming.
For hunting access do you discriminate based on where someone lives? It is ok for a bush dweller to use a motor boat or atv, but not for someone who does not live there? How about race? It is ok for white people to use boats and atvs, but not natives (or the other way around)? What about history? Special privileges for those whose forbearers hunted in an area? Do their descendants have to live there, or can they fly in from Seattle to hunt their "traditional" area? I think the Alaska Constitution has it right and does not allow any discrimination.
Roads will never be built to allow hunters to access better hunting. If there is no economic benefit, there is no road. Much of Alaska will never have a road within hundreds of miles. It would be possible however to have established trails to allow people to spread their impact out over a larger area. No matter what happens there will be more people here next year than there was last year. Humans are a plague upon nature. Should we hope for a bird flu pandemic than eliminates 80% of us?
It has been over a century since Alaska's population could live off the land. We need to have far fewer hunters, or we will have to have much more intensive game management (or farming as some will call it.) I am not going to volunteer to quit hunting. Will you?
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