The Alaska Board of Game reduced the number of sea ducks nonresidents can harvest and rejected increases for deer bag limits during its meeting in Kodiak from March 19-25.
Some Kodiak locals are happy that the Board’s decisions tended to favor residents and subsistence users. But others in the island’s outdoor hunting and guiding industries say those decisions may hurt their businesses.
The biggest topic for the Kodiak region was Sitka black-tailed deer, with eight proposals focused on deer in the archipelago. Of those proposals, the seven board members took no action on four, and voted down the rest unanimously.
Most of the deer proposals focused on upping the nonresident bag limit. Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologists said that there was “no shortage of deer” on the Kodiak archipelago. But the Board decided not to increase the nonresident number.
“I won't be supporting the amendment," Board member Stosh Hoffman said. "I know the charts showed that the population can take more harvest. If I were going to add more harvest, I would add it on the resident end.”
Some locals were also supportive of keeping the one-buck limit for nonresidents, which has been in place since the last Southcentral board meeting in 2023.
Sam Rohrer, a bear guide on Kodiak and a member of the Kodiak and Aleutians Regional Subsistence Council, said that the 2023 reduction hasn’t hurt the number of nonresidents coming to the island.
“In fact, it continued to increase," he said. "So nonresidents are still coming to Kodiak, they're still spending money here.”
ADF&G biologists also noted at the meeting that there have been complaints from residents about the number of transporters, like planes and water taxis, that have been coming into bays near local villages. Rohrer said the hunters coming in on those transporters are often hunting in the same spots as locals, making for some stiff competition.
“It's not so much about conserving deer," he said. "It's more about just dealing with hunter conflicts in the field, and localized overcrowding.”
According to data from Fish and Game, the number of residents hunting deer has gone down since 2023, and so has their hunting success rate.
Not everyone agrees with the Board’s decision. Casey Harver owns a remote hunting and fishing lodge on Raspberry Island, which is about 35 miles northwest of Kodiak. Harver said he wasn’t surprised the Board didn’t change the nonresident limit back to what it was. But he was hoping they would find a happy medium, like two deer instead of three.
“We don’t want to over harvest," he said. "We want to make sure that all the residents are cared for, because we’re residents too, and yes, they should have priority. But the unintended consequences of some of these regulatory actions and allocations are going to be felt.”
The Board also placed limits on nonresident hunting for other species such as sea ducks; lowering the bag limit from seven birds to four.
Additionally, they set a limit on the number of nonresident permits to 10% of the total permits for elk and 20% for goat hunts. In a situation where there are ten or fewer permits available for elk, all of them will go to residents.
Harver said that limiting nonresidents’ hunting opportunities has unintended consequences for local businesses like his.
“When you start to take little slices from the sea duck population, from the deer population, from the elk population, because of what is perceived as a problem coming out of the mainland, the collateral damage is the remote lodges," he said.
Harver said that the changes might not be immediate, but that eventually more nonresidents might start taking their business elsewhere.
Board members said they might reconsider reupping at least the nonresident deer bag limit at the next Southcentral meeting, when they have a bit more data.
