Sometimes, things just don't go correctly

This has been an interesting week for me in trying to gather material for this column. I intended to write about the drawing permit hunt application period for the 2023-2024 hunting season, which began this past Nov. 1st. I still will, eventually, but I need to lodge a few complaints beforehand. I have downloaded the current drawing hunt brochure from the Fish and Game website, so I do have access to the current information.

I’m one of these types that likes to have a “hard” copy in my hand when I’m reviewing hunts and deciding which ones I want to apply for. I also find it easier when writing about a topic like this to have a hard copy in hand when working, eliminating jumping back and forth between electronic pages for information to present and then writing about it.

You’ll remember that in a recent column, I stated that Fish and Game had announced there would be no drawing permit hunt for Unit 13 Nelchina caribou in 2023 because the numbers of animals were well below what department biologists felt was a healthy herd size. That information spurred me to investigate the upcoming drawing hunt brochure to see what else would be different from this recent year’s brochure.

With the Nov. 1st opening of the application period, I figured the brochures would be out beginning a week or so before the opening date. I started my search on Oct. 31st in Big Lake and found, to my surprise, that nobody in Big Lake had the new drawing hunt application brochure. Nobody!

I asked at a couple of businesses why they didn’t have the brochures and was told that Fish and Game didn’t send them any. However, a few of these businesses had hunting licenses available for sale. That struck me as odd.

I had reason to call Fish and Game in Palmer about another matter later that day. After dealing with the other topic, I asked the receptionist who had answered the phone why nobody in Big Lake had any drawing hunt brochures. I was told that these businesses probably didn’t ask to have the brochures sent to them. That caught me off guard because I had always assumed (and therein may lie my error) that businesses which sold hunting and fishing licenses for the state automatically were sent regulation booklets for fishing, hunting, and trapping.

The receptionist told me the current brochure was posted online, which I already knew. I explained that I preferred working with a hard copy, as I explained before, and which the receptionist agreed can make things easier for us older hunters. She also told me that they had stacks of brochures in the Palmer Fish and Game office. That’s nice but in this age of $5/gallon fuel, a 54-mile round trip from Big Lake to Palmer to pick up a, supposedly, commonly available brochure wasn’t the best use of a limited resource. She offered to mail me a copy, but I was planning to be in Wasilla the next day and figured I could pick up some brochures while in town and save the state a little postage money.

My wife and I made the shopping trip and, sure enough, the grocery store had a nice stack of both the drawing hunt brochures and the subsistence drawing brochures. I picked up a few copies of each and left a happy camper – that is, until I actually started to read the brochure that evening to begin putting together my column.

The headline on the brochure threw me for a moment. It stated: “2022-2023 Alaska Drawing Permit Hunt Supplement.” The wording started out, “All hunts listed in this supplement take place in 2022, unless designated as 2023.” Further down, it states, “The online application period begins November 1 and ends December 15, 2021, at 5pm (AKST).”

I can be a little slow at times, but even I had figured out, after reading those two lines, that the store had put out LAST YEAR’S brochure, not the current version. Hopefully, you either have not applied yet or that you were working off the Fish and Game website’s version, which is titled, “2023-2024 Alaska Drawing Permit Hunt Supplement.”

There are several “new” hunts for bull moose, permit numbers for some hunts have changed, and some hunts, like the afore stated Unit 13 caribou hunt, have been discontinued.

I’ll probably be calling Fish and Game to let them know at least one business in Wasilla is distributing last year’s brochure.