Every three years, the Alaska Board of Game considers changes to Southeast’s hunting and trapping regulations. Right now, local communities are giving their input on what they’d like to see happen.
The Board of Game dictates much of what hunters can and can’t do. So folks in Wrangell want to have their say. Unless you’re able to go to Petersburg and shake hands with the board members, a good way to voice your opinion is through your local Fish and Game Advisory committee.
The Wrangell committee looked over a couple dozen proposed Southeast and Wrangell specific changes.
A lot of comments were made about proposal #5, regarding moose. The suggestion is to eliminate the antler restrictions, and instead allow hunters to take any bull.
“So the main issue with the antler restriction right now is it can turn an honest hunter into someone that killed an illegal moose accidentally,” says Chair Chris Guggenbickler.” He liked this idea.
“I don’t know anybody that’s really 100 percent sure. They’re 99.8 percent but you never really know until you walk up and physically grab the horns,” says Guggenbickler.
For Petersburg and Wrangell’s most recent hunt, about 10 percent of moose taken were illegal. That includes a moose left for dead on Wrangell Island.
But this proposal hoped to offset an increase in taken moose by cutting the season in half. The committee did not like this at all.
So they ultimately sided with keeping current moose regulations.
For other changes, the local group opposed deer feeding, hunting from a boat and requiring identification tags tor traps and snares.
The committee considered changes specific to hunting grounds near Wrangell and Petersburg, or unit 3 and 1B. They narrowly approved to eliminate the general elk season. And they suggested amending a proposal so that deer seasons are more uniform across all unit 3 areas.
The Board of Game will consider these proposals at its meeting in Petersburg on January 11 through the 15.
Aside from proposals for the Board of Game, the local committee discussed how folks in planes may be negatively impacting moose hunting as well as the protocol for distributing illegal moose meat.