Board looks at Tier II

As the Alaska Board of Game takes a look at the Tier II subsistence-permit application process during its winter 2002 meeting, many Southcentral Alaska hunters are paying close attention.

The meeting began yesterday with a board and staff work session yesterday, and continues in meetings today and tomorrow. Public comment on changes to Tier II hunts -- and specifically how permits are doled out according to a point system determined by a hunter's application -- are expected to draw a great deal of public comment during the Friday and Saturday sessions of the meeting. The comments could extend into Sunday.

Many of the comments will come from hunters who harvest Nelchina caribou herd, a herd which calves in the eastern Talkeetna Mountains north of the Glenn Highway and spends its summer together in the Nelchina River Basin.

In the mid-1990s, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game issued anywhere from 6,000 to 10,000 permits for the Nelchina Tier II hunt.

Bob Tobey, a fish and game biologist based in Glennallen, has been watching and hunting Nelchina caribou for 27 years.

"In the mid '90s we issued a lot of permits and we knew it was higher than the sustainable yield," Tobey said. "We told people at the time that those were kind of one-time shots."

Tobey said Fish and Game biologists have set a goal of 35,000 to 40,000 animals in the herd. If the population is kept there, Tobey believes the hunter harvest would fluctuate between 2,000 to 3,000 animals every year, depending on calf survival and the herd's bull-to-cow ratio.

"What determines number of permits is calf production, calf survival and herd size," Tobey explained. State biologists set goals for the herd's population and release permits accordingly.

The bottom line from Tobey is that the number of permits should go up sometime in the future, but won't likely ever be as high as when the herd --and the hunt -- was at its peak in the mid-1990s.

As for who ultimately gets the permits, biologists such as Tobey don't have a say in the matter.

"I don't get involved with who gets the permits," he said. "I've got 27 years [of hunting the Nelchina] and I didn't get a permit the last couple of years … There's a lot of people who have been hunting this herd for a very long time."

Fish and Game spokesman Bruce Bartley said there are about a dozen Tier II hunts in Alaska but none as popular as the Nelchina caribou hunt.

"In all of the other Tier II hunts combined, we don't have the number of permits we have with the Nelchina hunt," Bartley said. At least part of the reason for that is the Nelchina herd's range is accessible form Alaska's road system.

"There's nowhere else in Alaska where you have an area that's boxed in by four highways," Bartley said.

Bartley estimated that about 17,000 applications are received for the hunt each year. Hunters fill out forms with questions such as "How many years have you hunted or eaten meat from this game population from this hunt area?" Applications are scored, and each hunter is ranked according to their score.

Bartley said he can empathize with hunters who get frustrated with the system -- he even pointed out that the system creates some frustration. It's inevitable that many hunters will receive exactly the same score, and as the permits are being awarded there is a point at which applicants who are next in rank will out-number the available permits.

"Once there are more people with the same score than there are permits left, it goes to a lottery," Bartley said. And according to Bartley, the randomness of the lottery make the system appear unfair to many people.

"It leads to people who in past years got a permit, but didn't get one this year. It also happens that there are people who are equally situated and one person gets a permit and the other doesn't -- it happens to husband and wife sometimes, even if they sit down and fill out the forms identically," Bartley said.

Bartley said he couldn't predict if the Board of Game would make any changes to the Tier II point system. Any changes that are made will apply to all of the Tier II hunts in the state, but Bartley said that the Nelchina caribou hunt would likely draw the most public comments.

Eddie Grasser of Palmer is the Alaska field representative for National Rifle Association. Grasser has served on the Board of Game in the past and has worked as a legislative assistant in Juneau for a number of Valley legislators.

Grasser doesn't believe the current system puts enough value on where the hunter lives when points are assigned. He also believes some parts of the form, such as questions about gas and grocery purchases, are inappropriate.

"They can go through all the machinations they want to try and solve the Tier II problem and try to make it more fair," Grasser said. "But in my mind, there are two things to do that will make the problem go away, and that's make it all based on longevity, and I think there should be a way to transfer your longevity to the younger hunters."

Grasser said he wouldn't dare predict what the board will do as it considers Tier II issues and listens to hunters who are concerned about the application questions and the point system. He also put the concerns of many hunters into a nutshell.

"For better or for worse, I'm not sure that people are being honest when they fill those forms out," Grasser said. "And if you ask the average guy that didn't get a permit, 100 percent of them are convinced that everybody else is lying."

The Board of Game meets today at the Sheraton Anchorage Hotel at 401 E. Sixth Ave. in Anchorage. The board will take public comments on several game management proposals starting at 1 p.m. today, and continuing Saturday. The deadline to sign up to comment to the board is 3 p.m. Saturday.