‘Things don’t look (too) good’

I’ve been looking at this year’s king salmon escapement numbers for the Deshka River and other related information on the Sport Fish Division website. Things don’t look good.

Normally, about 12 percent of the returning kings would have passed the Deshka weir by June 9, this past Wednesday. That percentage translates to about 3,500 kings. The actual count is only 544 Chinook as of that date. Fish and Game issued an emergency order Wednesday evening announcing the closure of bait for the Deshka, effective beginning at 6 a.m. Saturday morning and continuing through the season closure on July 13.

The restriction on the use of bait is intended to slow down the sport catch until more of the run has returned and projections on returns have reached a greater precision point. At that time, the department will decide if further restrictions are warranted. For you hardcore king salmon anglers reading this, in my opinion, you should expect to see further restrictions and possible closures of large portions of the Northern District to king salmon fishing. Look for the possible announcements beginning sometime around June 15.

I need to correct a statement I made in this column a couple of weeks ago. I was talking about interesting conversion units available for different firearms which allow changing calibers or converting from a handgun to a carbine using the same firearms frame.

I mentioned shooting a 45 ACP carbine which utilized a 1911 handgun frame as the functioning action in the carbine. In discussing the various conversions, I stated that I wasn’t sure if the carbine was currently being made since I had not seen it advertized in a while.

As a follow-up to that statement, I did an online search for the manufacturer and they not only still exist, but have made significant improvements to the carbine units currently available. If you’re wondering, the manufacturer is Mech Tech out of Montana. The changes involve adjustable stocks to the carbine unit along with several add-on accessories and sight options that simply didn’t exist when I bought my carbine unit a decade ago.

Most of the accessories will fit and function just fine on the “original” carbine I have. The big change comes with the two different styles of adjustable stocks now used. If I wanted to upgrade my carbine to utilize one of the newer stocks, I would need to return the unit to the manufacturer for a major overhaul of the firing mechanism housing. My vintage carbine has a non-adjustable stock, which is welded to the housing, hence the need to replace the housing with one designed to use an adjustable stock.

The adjustable stock option would be nice if I was buying a new unit, but for the uses I have for that carbine, I don’t see any need to change from the current welded stock I have. If I wanted a shorter gun, I’d just mount the original barrel and slide assembly on the 1911 frame. Since I’m a little old to be playing commando and I don’t anticipate any urban shootouts using the carbine, I’ll just enjoy shooting the “vintage” gun as it was originally manufactured.

Speaking of firearms, some interesting legislation is pending in the Canadian Legislature that could directly affect folks travelling through Canada or going to hunt in Canada. For the past 15 years, Canada has required that all long guns (shotguns and hunting rifles) owned by residents or brought into the country by non-residents must be registered. Canada does not allow private ownership or use of handguns and many types of long guns are illegal as well. I don’t have a list, but I suspect the illegal long guns are mainly semi-automatics, especially those models with large magazine capacities.

Canada has spent nearly $2 billion on implementing this Long-Gun Registry, as the law is called, and it has done virtually nothing to assist law enforcement in solving crimes — big surprise there! Criminals don’t usually use legally owned and registered firearms.

Another problem internally is, while about 7 million guns are currently registered in Canada, an estimated 8 million more firearms are not.

Their Canadian owners refuse to register the guns. The government has repeatedly extended an amnesty period to allow the Canadian owners of these guns to comply with the law without fear of penalty. You’d think after 15 years the Canadian government might take the hint that those owners are not going to comply.

The bill repealing the Long-Gun Registry law has already passed a second reading last November in the Canadian House of Commons. A third and final reading will happen sometime later this year.

The prognosis is that the bill will probably also pass the Canadian Senate as well. If the repeal bill passes, it may or may not include non-residents bringing firearms into Canada, but most of the observers of this legislation feel that all firearms registration will be eliminated upon passage.

A further provision would require that all data collected since the original gun registration law went into effect must be destroyed.

Let’s hope our neighbors to the east show some common sense and pass this bill.

Howard Delo is a retired fisheries biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. You can leave him a message by e-mailing sports@frontiersman.com.