The Alaska Board of Game is considering more than 250 proposals at its meeting in Kodiak this week. The decisions made at the meeting could have long-term impacts on how locals, Alaska residents, and tourists can hunt and trap in the Kodiak Archipelago.
The Board’s Southcentral Region meeting will be held at the Kodiak Marketplace from March 20-25. The Board rotates between different Alaska regions every year; the last meeting for the Southcentral region was in 2023.
This month’s proposals concern hunting and trapping regulations in the Southcentral region, which includes Cordova, the Kenai Peninsula, Kodiak, and Anchorage. The Kodiak-specific proposals cover eight different animals, including brown bears, elk and Sitka black-tailed deer, as well as mountain goats, foxes, mink, river otters, and sea ducks.
"Deer is going to be a big, big topic, and not unexpected," said Ryan Scott, Director of the Division of Wildlife Conservation for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
He said that deer proposals for the Kodiak region, which ADF&G categorizes as Unit 8, could have implications for people across Alaska and beyond.
“Deer are an important game species for the folks in Unit 8, and frankly for folks who travel to Unit 8," he said. "A lot of Alaska residents go there to hunt, but it's an economic machine as well: there are nonresidents who are interested in going to Kodiak.”
During the March 2023 Southcentral Board of Game meeting in Soldotna, Board members voted to reduce the nonresident bag limit from three bucks to one buck in Unit 8. There are several proposals hoping to increase that number to either two or three this year. Other proposals include requests to shorten the nonresident season. Proposals 205 and 206 argue that the use of side by side offroad vehicles has made it easier to hunt deer in some areas than before.
According to Scott, there are fewer brown bear proposals this year for Kodiak than he expected. One of the main proposals, number 236, asks the Board to count wounded bears towards a hunter’s bag limit for four regulatory years instead of one. Regulatory years start in July, so as it stands, a hunter could technically wound a bear in the spring season and then wound or kill another bear in the fall season. Scott said that similar proposals have come up in other regions across the state.
Other proposals have to do with resident versus nonresident hunters. Several request that the restriction on the hunting of sows should be lifted for residents. Another asks the Board to revisit the draw system for nonresident permits. The authors of the proposal argue that in the current system, nonresidents skip the draw permit system entirely, giving them better odds of getting a permit than residents.
There are also a few proposals asking for changes to trapping policies, including two that would require a breakaway system and ID tag for snares placed along the Kodiak road system. According to the proposals, 243 and 244, there have been cases of animals like bears, deer, and dogs getting caught in snares meant to trap other animals.
Another, proposal 240, asks that the Board ban the use of infrared devices for hunting in Kodiak. According to Scott, this is also a hot topic across the state.
“It's come up primarily in places where we have extensive deer hunting," Scott said. "There is concern that those devices might be used illegally to take deer and other big game too.”
The deadline to submit written public comments has already passed. But people can still make their voice heard during the oral testimony, which will start on March 20. If you want to provide oral testimony for any proposal, you must sign up in person between March 20th at 8:30 am and March 21st at 10am.
Scott said the meeting will be streamed live on the Board of Game website and on YouTube for those who cannot attend in person.
“I just encourage people, if you have any interest, to swing by or tune in, and if you do, we'll try to get out and introduce ourselves and get a chance to meet folks," he said. "We're very much looking forward to being in Kodiak here in the next week.”
According to Scott, meetings will start at 8:30 am every day at the Kodiak Marketplace and run until around 5 pm.
