The beginning of hunting season, a disappointing fishing season and celebrating an anniversary

My tenure with this newspaper constantly amazes me. My first column appeared in the Aug. 4, 2002 edition. When I accepted the offer to write a weekly column, I wasn’t sure I could come up with an interesting topic on a weekly basis. Once I got immersed in the program, however, I was surprised at how much there really was to write about!

I want to thank you, the readers, and the editors at the Frontiersman newspaper, especially Jeremiah Bartz, for giving me this opportunity and believing in me to do a good job. Some columns have been more interesting than others to the general readership, but I’m still learning. Thanks again for bearing with me!

To date, salmon fishing in the Valley could easily be described as a “bust” this year. Not only did the king salmon fail to show up in numbers as hoped, but now the Fish and Game Commercial Fisheries managers have turned the drifters loose to harvest salmon at the peak time when we would be looking for our northern bound silver runs to show in force.

Last year, the managers overestimated the sockeye run strength but failed to throttle back the drifters’ fishing efforts as mandated by the management plan governing that fishery. This year, the managers are ramping up the commercial harvest effort using the “late run” scenario to justify additional harvest by the drifters.

With the changes the Board of Fisheries (BOF) made at the last Upper Cook Inlet meeting, the drifters will most probably be fishing on our northern bound stocks of silvers and reds through at least the middle of August. I’m disgusted with both the BOF and the Commercial Fisheries Division managers in Soldotna for their total disregard toward managing the salmon resources of Cook Inlet in a fair and equitable manner amongst the user groups dependent on that resource.

I better switch topics before I say more than I should!

August marks the opening of big game hunting for multiple species across Alaska. The sheep hunters are already headed into the mountains to set up base camps and scout for that full curl ram. Moose and caribou hunters are getting ready for opening day which is only a few days away, depending on which game management unit you hunt.

I’ve bow hunted for moose, Dall sheep, and grizzly (I must have lost my mind on that permit application!) without success. However, just having the opportunity to hunt was fun and I got outside and saw some beautiful country. Because of my shoulder replacement surgery, I have been told that my days of shooting a “vertical” bow of the required poundage for big game are over. I hope to prove the medical folks wrong, but it will take some time to rebuild the needed strength to shoot my “vertical” hunting bow.

In the interim, I have a crossbow and have applied for and received the Fish and Game exemption allowing me to use the crossbow during any bow-and-arrow hunts or seasons. I have also signed up to participate in the first crossbow hunter education (HE) class the ADF&G will be putting on. In addition to the student certification, I plan to continue through the program to become certified to teach the hunter education crossbow course.

If you hunt with a crossbow, either by choice or because of a disability situation, beginning July 1, 2018, you will be required to have successfully completed the department’s crossbow HE course to use a crossbow for the 2018 season and beyond. Crossbows are currently legal hunting tools for big game during the general season. Crossbows are defined as a separate and distinct category from “bow-and-arrow” hunting tools. If the regulations don’t state “crossbow” along with bow-and-arrow, you may not use a crossbow during a bow-and-arrow hunt.

This distinction is puzzling to me. About 35 other states classify bow-and-arrow and crossbow equipment in the same category and allow the use of either interchangeably. Ohio, for instance, has allowed crossbows since back in the early 1970’s and have found about equal use among “archery” hunters, with neither type of equipment dominating archery hunting in that state.

I don’t understand the animosity many of my bow-and-arrow hunting friends have toward crossbows. If I was making the classifications, I would lump compound vertical bows and crossbows together, since they are very similar in performance. The traditional longbows and recurves would be the other category because of their “weaker” performance. I would then have separate seasons for each category.