Blackpowder matches and hunter education

The Alaska State Territorial blackpowder matches are history for this year. I managed to get a little bit of shooting in on Thursday afternoon and a little more on Friday. I was gone to Anchorage all day Saturday picking up our little dog from the doggie hospital, trying to find one of the drugs she needs to take daily, and buying some other medical supplies Suzie uses on a regular basis.

To be honest, I got frustrated waiting two hours to pick up Suzie from the hospital, finally finding the medications she needed at the fourth veterinary clinic we checked and then waiting another hour for our “home” clinic to FAX the signed prescription to the clinic where we found the drug, so we could purchase it. By the time we got home, it was too late in the day to drive to Talkeetna to do more shooting in the territorial match.

I spent Sunday morning packing and getting organized to drive into Anchorage later that afternoon to attend the International Hunter Education Association conference. I hold a seat on the state hunter education advisory committee and my presence was required to help with various jobs through the week to help the conference flow smoothly.

The 2018 Alaska Territorial is over, and I was only able to shoot five matches. Four of those constituted the sighted smoothbore aggregate and I was able to complete one of the three matches which make up the musket aggregate. At this point in time, I have no idea whether I medaled in any of the matches in which I was able to complete. Such is life!

I’m writing this column while sitting in my hotel room at the IHEA conference. So far, we’ve listened to Dallas Seavey as the keynote speaker, had a tour of the new Fish and Game hatchery in Anchorage, participated in a field day at Rabbit Creek Rifle Range, and visited the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center. Let’s start with the keynote speaker.

I have always been a DeeDee Jonrowe and Martin Buser fan amongst the Iditarod dog mushers. These two mushers are both from the “older” generation, with Seavey being a relative youngster. Jonrowe has announced her retirement from the Iditarod and Buser has not been as competitive in recent years as he used to be.

I was interested to hear what Seavey had to say. He explained his strategy for running the last several Iditarod races, winning four in the past few years. Quite frankly, I was impressed with the way he tried to look at things from his dogs’ point of view while attempting to understand what motivated his dogs to enjoy running.

He figured out both a training and racing approach which worked well for his dog teams and gave them all the credit for his success. His dogs ran because he made it fun for them to run and listened to his team when they needed to rest and eat. He did what worked for the dogs and didn’t follow his preconceived notions of how to win a race.

I may have found a new favorite to root for in future Iditarod races!

I worked from the late 1970’s through the early 1990’s in hatcheries while employed by Fish and Game. Going on the Anchorage hatchery tour was a sort of “bus man’s holiday” for me, but things have really changed in how a state-of-the-art hatchery functions today!

Improvements in technology, hatchery equipment, and facility design have made this new hatchery about as comparable to the facilities I worked in as day to night! Things are designed to be more efficient in operation and less physically stressful on staff working at the hatchery. I might not be as “broken down” as I am physically if I had worked at a state-of-the-art facility like this!

At Rabbit Creek, I was one of several instructors who showed folks how a crossbow works and instructed them on how to shoot it. There were other stations presenting subjects like: big game rifles, Alaska trapping, being bear and moose aware, the ADF&G bear firearms safety training, and sport fishing information among other topics. There was even an atlatl information and target contest, but I missed that because of the crossbow presentation.

The group then took a 45-minute bus ride to the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center near Portage. I had never visited that facility. I was impressed with the scope of their operations and the variety of species they had on hand.