Common Ground: Third eye duck blind

Photo courtesy of Christine Cunningham. Duck-hunting success comes from patient peace and quiet. Just don’t crow too loudly about it.

By Christine Cunningham, for the Redoubt Reporter

Conversations in the duck blind are the most profound conversations a person can have in life. If the topic is not pertinent or amusing, it doesn’t get talked about in the duck blind. Sound is too precious. If it has to be said in a whisper, it’s got to be relevant or hilarious.

Nothing else rises to the level of communication. If ducks are coming in or over, all idle chatter must cease. It doesn’t matter if you were about to present the punch line to the funniest joke you’d heard all year. It doesn’t matter if you were about to reveal a secret that could cure the ails of all mankind. If ducks are coming in and you’re in a duck blind, the ducks have to take precedence.

For a while, when duck hunting was new to me, it was impossible for me to know that the appearance of ducks in the sky, the sound of ducks on a pond nearby, or even the random thought of ducks that might arise was cause for instant pause. The ducks “have the floor,” is what my fifth-grade teacher would say. Whoever is running the show is the one that gets to talk.

So, if you’re hunting ducks, they have your attention. You’re supposed to be scanning the sky. You’re supposed to be listening. You’re supposed to be using your duck call. And if a duck wants to join the conversation, that’s the best kind of talk.

But I didn’t know this when I started. It seemed like, if the story was good enough, it wouldn’t matter if a few flocks of ducks failed to land on the pond. I was wrong. Those could be the only ducks that fly by all day. In my case, they were.

When the measure of my conversational ability is how well I can stop talking at the mere suggestion of ducks, I had a long way to go. I had to learn to talk in shorter sentences. I had to learn to pick up where the story left off after a 45-minute duck interruption. This not only helped me in the duck blind, it could possibly help me in life.

On the hunt — Game board loosens bear, wolf, moose restrictions

By Jenny Neyman

Redoubt Reporter

Moose numbers may not be what they once were on the Kenai Peninsula, but hunting regulations moved a small, spiked step closer to what they have been in the past, as the Alaska Board of Game enacted measures liberalizing harvest opportunities for several species and extending predator control measures on the Kenai Peninsula, during its Southcentral Region meeting March 15 to 19 in Kenai.

Moose

The board passed several measures relating to moose hunting, meant to balance harvest opportunity while protecting the diminished population.

Moose numbers in Units 15A and 15C have fluctuated over the decades but have shown consistent decline since the 1980s, largely due to limited habitat availability — particularly in 15A in the northwestern central peninsula, and also predation, road kills and hunting pressure. Two years ago the board enacted strict hunting regulations to limit the moose harvest and improve the ratios of bulls and calves to cows, with only bulls with a 50-inch-or-greater antler spread or four brow tines on one side being eligible for harvest. According to ongoing studies done by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, moose are still struggling in 15A.

“To me the most telling statistic is the declining moose abundance trend we are seeing. Not only are we well below our intensive management objective, but our population is declining annually with no sign of stabilization or growth,” said Doug Vincent-Lang, director of the Alaska Division of Wildlife Conservation.

There’s better news in Unit 15C, south of Tustumena Lake, where moose numbers are higher and the bull-to-cow ratio has improved since 2011.

“We have information that suggests habitat is not limiting moose production in this unit to the extent that it is in 15A. Bottom line is that we’re below harvest goals but within population goals,” Vincent-Lang said.

Proposal 143 suggested loosening the hunting restriction to bulls with a 50-inch or greater antler spread, or four brow tines or a spike on one side — essentially moving some of the wiggle room in the rebuilding moose population to potential harvest.

“It’s been stated that you can’t bank moose, and I think that’s very true, particularly in 15A,” said Jeff Selinger, Kenai area wildlife manager for Fish and Game. The department recommended adoption of the amended Proposal 143.

Not all hunters want the extra wiggle room in harvest, however. Several members of the public and representatives of area Fish and Game Advisory Committees requested that the board leave the 2011 restriction in place to help the moose population continue to rebound.

“An overwhelming majority of the moose-hunting public supports leaving the restriction as it is. They’ve seen it has had a positive impact. Let’s leave it in place a good four to five years to make a big impact,” said Bob Ermold, with the Kenai-Soldotna Advisory Committee.

Board members, rather, saw the population as stable enough to support additional harvest.

“There has been public testimony asking us to retain (the current regulation). That being said, I think it’s important to retain the structure but allow opportunity to harvest a few more moose. I think that’s an appropriate step for now,” said Nate Turner, vice chair.

Board seeks moose boost — Few solutions seen to declining browse habitat

Photos by Jenny Neyman, Redoubt Reporter. A Kenai Peninsula hunter testifies Friday to the Alaska Board of Game during its Southcentral Region meeting held Friday through Tuesday in Kenai.

The Alaska Board of Game worked its way through the Kenai Peninsula portion of its agenda Tuesday, liberalizing hunting and trapping opportunities on moose, wolves and bears.

The following are measures regarding moose adopted at Tuesday’s meeting:

• Proposal 143 — Modify the bag limit for moose to one bull per year with an antler spread of 50 inches or greater, or a spike or four brow tines on one side in Game Management Units 7 and 15. The season will stay the same — Aug. 10 to 17 for bow hunting and Aug. 20 to Sept. 20 for the general hunt. The requirement that antlers be sealed by a department representative within 10 days also is retained, except in the Placer River/Placer Creek permit hunt, which is open to retention of any bulls. The proposal also adds a definition of a spike as “antlers of a bull moose with only one tine on at least one side; male calves are not spike bulls.”
• Proposal 147 was adopted, lowering the intensive management population objective for moose in Unit 15A from a range of 3,000 to 3,500 to a range of 2,000 to 2,900, and lowering the intensive management harvest objective for moose in 15A from a range of 180 to 350 to a range of 120 to 290. The proposal retains Fish and Game’s ability to conduct aerial shooting of wolves in Units 15A and 15C as a measure of predator control to benefit moose populations, although this has not been implemented since the board first OK’d aerial wolf kills at its meeting in 2011. This proposal also approves allowing Fish and Game to employ or contract with trappers to target wolves and increase their harvest within the established wolf-trapping season and related regulations, as another measure of predator control.
• Proposal 148 reauthorizes the antlerless moose season in a portion of Unit 15C — the roughly 100-square-mile bench area around Homer.
• Proposal 150 failed. It would have allowed the use of motorized vehicles to retrieve harvested moose meat during certain hours — 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and during the “dark of night” — in the Lower Kenai Controlled Use Area.
• Proposal 151 failed. It would have reinstituted a closure of the Palmer Creek/Lower Resurrection Creek areas in Unit 7 to moose hunting. The area, near Hope, will remain open to moose hunting.

By Jenny Neyman

Redoubt Reporter

Thirty years ago, moose on the Kenai Peninsula were legendary for their size and abundance. Now, however, it appears increasingly likely that those historic days are, indeed, history, as land and wildlife managers wrestle with measures to boost the dwindled ungulate population.

In the halcyon days, the peninsula’s moose population was estimated at around 4,000. Nowadays, it’s far less than that. A recent census, conducted just a few weeks ago by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, estimates 1,600 moose in Game Management Unit 15A, covering 1,300 square miles of the northwestern Kenai Peninsula. That’s down from about 2,000 in 2008, and that, in turn, is about 40 percent less than census estimates in the 1990s. Just four moose were harvested by hunters in 15A last year, and just four the previous year, down from the once-typical 350 to 360 a year. That’s in part due to the smaller population, and in part due to decreased hunter participation after the Alaska Board of Game enacted stepped-up hunting restrictions in 2011 to protect the population.

The Board of Game met in Kenai from Friday through Tuesday to consider proposals covering Game Management Units in Southeast, Cordova, Kodiak, the Anchorage area and the Kenai Peninsula. Nine proposals were submitted regarding moose on the peninsula, aimed at finding a balance between bolstering the population with the hope of increasing hunter opportunity.

The proposed changes are largely incremental — measured tweaks to conditions and regulations, which, if results come as intended, would effect incremental changes to the population. But the biggest contributing factor to the decline in moose population is far more substantial, than incremental, in scale.

Moose are not werewolves, yet there is believed to be a silver-bullet solution to the most significant problem of their decline. What’s needed, say land and wildlife managers, is fire, but not just any fire. This would be the Goldilocks of wildland fire — hot enough to burn down to mineral soil but not too hot so as to burn out of control, widespread enough to regenerate tens of thousands of acres of forest that has matured beyond the point of providing good moose browse, yet not so big that it poses too big a threat to human health, habitation, development and transportation, and occurring under just the right conditions and timing so as to not overtax available firefighting resources.

That solution is proving to be as mythical as werewolves.

“The Kenai has had harvest well in excess of 1,200 moose alone, historically, and you’re going to hear from a lot of folks who have been here a long time and remember the good old days and want those days back,” said Ted Spraker, chair of the Board of Game and retired Kenai-area Fish and Game wildlife biologist, in starting off the meeting Friday.

Common Ground: High times for highcountry bird hunting

Photo courtesy of Christine Cunningham. Winchester the magnificent shows his prowess at upland bird hunting.

Buy Christine Cunningham, for the Redoubt Reporter

There are times, like in the Kenai Mountains, when the ptarmigan are all around you. Their fresh tracks are visible in the snow at the base of shrub willow and along the trail.

All the days they weren’t there before disappear, and you know that any second you will hear a cluck and a bird will materialize or the dog will flush 20 birds into the sky. “This is the place,” I think. “We’ll just spend the day here and find our birds at an easy elevation.”

But my hunting partner is walking fast to keep up with his English setter. Both of them have their eyes on a mountain peak. It doesn’t matter if we might just be walking past 300 birds, they are not hunting those easy birds. They are hunting the birds at the very top.

I finally catch up enough so that I can tug an article of clothing. “Hey,” I say. “I think there’s birds right around here.”
“Well,” he says, “If they’re still here when we get back… .”

Before I could argue, he was already out of earshot ahead of me on the trail. His dog was a mile ahead and running the snow-brushed rocks a hundred yards above us. I wondered if I had missed an important meeting about exactly what it was we were doing.

When my English setter was the bird dog on task, she would do appropriate-looking things, like sniff the air for birds. His dog, on the other hand, was considered the Olympic athlete of the bird dog family because he could find the lone bird perched on the summit or hold a point for the half hour it took to catch up to him on an avalanche chute two valleys away.

The vein on my forehead started to protrude as I realized that this was not the first time I’d followed these two sheep hunters all the way to the top of a mountain just to eat a sandwich and hear my hunting partner say, “It doesn’t matter if I get a bird, I just enjoy watching the dog.”

Old Duck Hunter: History in the gaming — Board to meet in Soldotna

By Steve Meyer, for the Redoubt Reporter

From March 15 to 19, the residents of the Kenai will have a rare opportunity to listen to and address the Alaska Board of Game on their own turf. It has been around 20 years since the BOG met in Soldotna, and there is every chance it will be 20 years after this session before we see them here again. Put another way, old folks like me will likely be pushing up daisies before it happens again.

Alaska residents have the unique ability to directly impact the regulations that govern the way they can put meat on the family table. They may address the BOG with written proposals for changes in regulations, written opposition to other proposals and in-person public testimony directly to the BOG.

Alaskans have 83 Fish and Game Advisory Committees statewide that address the BOG in all of the above listed manners and do so in representation of the individuals who elected them. Their meetings are announced and open to the public, and public opinion does make a difference.

Some folks would suggest that it is all political and what one might present will have no impact. Not true. The brown bear issue on the Kenai Peninsula is a case in point.

The 2010 and 2011 seasons were rife with brown bear issues in town, around rural home sites and in areas where anglers congregate. It was becoming increasingly evident that the population of brown bears had grown beyond anything anyone alive had ever seen on the Kenai.

In those years, and years before them, there was a limited amount of drawing permits issued for harvest of brown bears. Drawing permits have never been successful in taking many bears on the Kenai. There is too much heavy cover where they live, making spot and stalk virtually impossible.

Area hunters who have spent their lives on the Kenai were well aware of the population explosion since the unnecessary restrictions were placed on brown bear hunting years ago. In earlier times there was an open brown bear season in the spring, and in the fall there were a minimal number of bears taken and most were taken incidentally to other hunting.

But it was enough to keep them in check and there were virtually no brown bear issues before the restrictions were placed. Most folks who lived on the Kenai between 1970 and 2005 never saw a brown bear in the wild. Since 2005, it is not uncommon to see more than one in an afternoon drive from Kenai to Seward.

Common Ground: Ruff course in vocabulary

By Christine Cunningham, for the Redoubt Reporter

Photo courtesy of Christine Cunningham. Christine Cunningham and Parker, working on speaking the same hunting language.

Just as I was about to press the trigger of my 1-gauge over/under shotgun, the image of my English setter bobbed into view. The white tail ptarmigan I’d been holding on, waiting for it to fly, startled from its perch. And, instead of firing, I watched as my 1-year-old setter bounded in the air after it as if she were happily chasing a butterfly.

Parker’s tongue hung from the side of her mouth as she ran the length of its takeoff and beneath its white-winged glide down the mountain. They had made it past the effective range of my shot by the time they parted ways — the ptarmigan higher in the sky than it would have otherwise gone, and Parker keeping pace with it on the ground. She was so proud of herself. If the point of having a pointer was to watch a dog startle a flock of birds, she was on the job.

She ran back toward me for her congratulations and, since I do not have the sternness required of first-rate dog trainers, I melted under her charms. She was so happy I just didn’t know how to tell her that she really, really screwed up. Instead, I wanted to give her a prize for participation. She was my little effort all-star.

We were having a happy reunion when I looked up to see the still-frozen expressions of shock on my hunting partner and his professional hunting dog’s face. Winchester, a well-trained English setter who approached his bird-hunting work with the sophistication of an expert, and my hunting partner, who had experienced countless mornings on the same mountain where everything went right, were staring at the two of us amateurs like we had just crashed a black tie party dressed as zombies.

Good grousing — Bird hunting trip is successful culmination of youth training

By Joseph Robertia

Photos courtesy of Joseph Robertia. Billy and Grace Morrow show off their quarry during a hunting trip with their aunt and uncle, Colleen and Joseph (at right) Robertia.

Redoubt Reporter

“They’ll never do it,” “That’s asking a lot,” and “I think your plan is a little over-ambitious,” were the responses I got when discussing my plans to take my niece and nephew, 9 and 11, respectively, on a three-day grouse-hunting and backpacking trip earlier this month.

To be fair, our tentative schedule was a little rigorous. It entailed gaining more than 2,000 feet of elevation while hiking 7.5 miles a day for the first two days, and then a full 15-mile hike on the third day. And this wasn’t hiking, it was backpacking, so we were carrying all our camping supplies, hunting equipment, ammo and food for three days in the woods.

This could be challenging for anyone, but for two little kids, people were starting to make me wonder if, indeed, we had bitten off more than we could chew. But I had faith in our plan because of how my niece and nephew were raised.

Since the time they were in diapers they have been coming out to visit on weekends every few weeks, and a big part of spending time around my wife and I meant doing chores. But to keep them engaged and as a reward for their share of the hard work, we’ve always tried to do something fun afterward, such as taking them hiking.

Old Duck Hunter: Care to spare — Appreciate hunting dogs? Prepare to have home expand to ensure enough pups to go around

By Steve Meyer, for the Redoubt Reporter

Photo courtesy of Steve Meyer. Red, an Irish setter, has fit in easily with the rest of his new hunting and home pack, after being adopted from the Kenai Animal Shelter.

There are several reasons one might want to have a spare dog. Of course, if you just really like dogs, then you don’t really need more than that as a good reason to have spares. But in the world of hunting dogs, where oftentimes their performance in the field is the only reason their two-legged hunting partner has any success, it is a bit different.

Someone once said, “They cannot think, they cannot reason, but they can suffer,” when talking about hunting dogs. I remain unconvinced that they cannot, at least in a very primeval way, reason. I’ve seen it too many times in hunting dogs working out problems and seemingly “reasoning” for themselves. I suppose one could argue that until hell freezes over, or at least until we’ve solved the brown bear explosion on the Kenai Peninsula. There is no arguing that dogs suffer, that oftentimes they will not obviously show it and that as their “thinking” partners, we need to pay attention.

After hunting my first English setter, Winchester, in the rugged shale country pursuing Whitetail ptarmigan, it became clear that it wasn’t a matter of if he injured himself, it was a matter of when. These big running dogs attack the country they hunt with intensity that I’ve not seen matched in another domestic living animal. Their prey drive, to find the game centuries of breeding has told them is their mission in life, is astonishing. This desire is seen in many hunting dog breeds. Good Chesapeake retrievers and Labs (and a multitude of others that would get too lengthy to list) are virtually unstoppable on retrieves. Freezing water, breaking ice, swift currents — pick the circumstance and they will go to the point of near death to complete the task at hand.

Back before the setters, my hunting partner and I each had a chocolate Labrador retriever, Jack and Gunner. Jack is one of those dogs who operated on the edge of nowhere. His heart, it turned out, was much bigger and much stronger than his body could take. One day Jack bailed off a high rock cliff in the high country and injured himself. During his recovery it was discovered he had a bone spur, an injury that had a very small chance of success to correct with surgery, and a high probability of leaving him more severely crippled than he already was. With medication and (he loves this) regular back massages, he is happy and gets around home pretty well. But he was never going to hunt again.

Bear hunt draws crowd — Hundreds register for chance to bag Kenai brown bear

By Joseph Robertia

Redoubt Reporter

With nearly 600 people participating in a fall brown bear registration hunt — the first in several years on the Kenai Peninsula — it may be an understatement to say those looking to bag a bruin were eager to take to the woods in something other than a drawing hunt.

“I knew we’d issue more than the last one, since it’s been a number of years, but 569 is a little higher than anticipated,” said Jeff Selinger, area biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

As of Monday morning, Selinger said that 569 was the number of registered hunters, with the vast majority being peninsula residents. Only 95 hunters were from other parts of the state, and only two were nonresidents, from Nebraska and New York.

Although, Selinger added that people were still registering daily for the hunt, which has no limit to the number of people who can register, so the number of overall hunters participating could grow even higher before the end of what is scheduled to be, at its longest, a 60-day hunt.

The hunt officially began Oct. 1 and is scheduled through Nov 30, although Selinger said that registration hunts for brown bears rarely go the full duration.

“They tend to be short, generally between two days and a week,” he said.

The last registration hunt for brown bear in more than a decade on the peninsula was in 2004. The hunt only lasted two days and had 274 hunters registered. With so many eager to bag a brown bear, the hunt was closed by emergency order to prevent an overharvest.

Bully into record books — Giant moose bound to go down in history

By Joseph Robertia

Photos courtesy of Bob Condon. Bob Condon, of Soldotna, poses with the 1,500-pound bull moose he shot in the Brooks Range in September.

Redoubt Reporter

Hunters who take to the woods in pursuit of moose harbor some sort of hope for success — whether it’s a modest desire to fill a freezer with meat or daydreams of a record-setting specimen. The moose Bob Condon, of Soldotna, bagged last month exceeded even his wildest wildlife daydreams.

Weighing more than 1,500 pounds with an antler spread of more than 73 inches, beams measuring roughly 10 inches in circumference at the base, and palms large enough to hammock a grown man, Condon’s bull was nothing short of a behemoth. In fact, it may end up being the second largest ever taken down.

“I knew he was a real shooter, but I didn’t know the true caliber of animal he was until I got up on him. I’ve hunted and guided nearly all my life and never gotten one over 950 (pounds), so getting one weighing 1,500 was a real treat, and it’ll be in the all-time books for sure,” Condon said.

The moose is surely awe-inspiring, though Condon himself is worthy of some amazement, as well.

At 73, an age when many might retire from the difficulty and discomfort of a hunt, Condon keeps doing what he

Bob Condon puts his moose’s antler spread — more than 73 inches — in perspective.

loves doing, even in spite of health setbacks. He’s had five bypass surgeries in the last few years and just had a heart attack in March.

“My doctors told me not to hunt, so this was a real blessing,” he said.

While pursuing moose, Condon has also been at the receiving end of bull’s antlers. Two years ago after he dropped a bull with a 56-inch antler spread, he made a mistake of setting his rifle down a little too far away when he went in to ensure the beast was dead. It was not.

“It was a stupid mistake, and I paid for it,” he said. “He picked me up by the antlers and flung me around three or four times, gored me, tore my boots.”

Common Ground: Hares snare populations of other animals

By Steve Meyer, for the Redoubt Reporter

Photo by Joseph Robertia, Redoubt Reporter. High hare years can mean low grouse numbers, which appears to be the case this hunting season.

The varying hare, more commonly known as the snowshoe rabbit, is an influential little bugger. Their peculiar cycle is noticeable, in their absence when they are in a low cycle of abundance, and eating of all your flowers and vegetables when they are in an up cycle.

Their cycle is commonly thought to run in seven-year increments, which is only generally true. Until three years ago the hares had not shown a traditional up cycle since the 1980s. A traditional up cycle means the hares are everywhere, when you can’t throw the proverbial dead cat without hitting one. After so many years of seemingly low numbers, they have been prolific for three seasons now.

Nature, in its remarkable way, quickly detects when the hares are cycling up, and the result is a proliferation of predators. Lynx populations on the Kenai the past two seasons have exploded, resulting in record numbers of catches by trappers. Lynx sightings are common even in areas that support human populations.

The astonishing increase in the number of hawks, falcons and owls on the Kenai in the past two years is no coincidence, either. Coyote numbers are clearly up, as well. Again, the hares are to blame, or to thank, depending on your perspective.

All of this abundance of predators is great for wildlife viewers, fur trappers and predator hunters. It isn’t so great for young hunters out learning the ropes on spruce grouse, big game hunters looking for camp meat or upland bird hunters and their dogs.

Common Ground: Mocha mettle — Brewing interest in outdoors supplants need for convenience, comfort, fancy coffee

By Christine Cunningham, for the Redoubt Reporter

A friend once told me that she never wanted to live a life where she couldn’t have a mocha every day. This would limit her in several ways, I thought. She’d either be forced to live in areas populated enough to support an espresso culture, or she would have to invest in a professional-grade machine that could exert enough pressure to yield an ounce of liquid in 18 to 26 seconds. If she wanted to be entirely self-sustaining, she’d have to get a cow.

As she was sipping her mocha from a paper cup, I guessed it was the former of the two options. “I think I could go without a mocha for a few days,” I said.

“How many days?” she asked.

When I was 19, the thought of not having a mocha every day was a bit frightening. Especially since I worked at a coffee shop and required seven shots of espresso to achieve a baseline. I pondered her question.

“I guess two days,” I said. “A week at the most.”

This answer only applied to professionally crafted mochas by certified baristas. If I had to get a cow so that I could have a mocha, I wanted the opportunity to change my answer.