Alaska Sheep Harvest 2023

[Bambistew]

Plenty of discussion of Alaska sheep harvest over the years. I received the preliminary 2023 harvest stats from ADFG a few days ago. These are preliminary (based on the past couple years they may be about 5% less than final numbers), but its depressing. The draw tags and the HT areas saw similar success rates. Some draw tags in the Chugach didn't report a single sheep killed for the entire season(s).

 

[ColeyG]

It was another very depressing year wandering around in sheep country. I found myself constantly shaking my head in disbelief knowing how many animals used to live in areas now inhabited by few, or in some cases, no sheep.

I will be very curious to see two more pieces of data out of these years final stats, the number of sub-legal rams taken, and the average age of rams taken.

The age has been trending down pretty significantly the last few years with 6-7 year olds making up over half of the harvest if I remember correctly. That is not good. I feel like I've heard about at least a dozen sub-legals so far and I wouldn't be surprised if the total is double that.

The big question is, what will the managers do about it. People can be managed, animals can't really. I am curious what if any changes are headed our way.

I am also very curious about overall participation, which has also been trending down. Interesting to see the N and R harvest moving much closer together than in years past.

Thanks for sharing this.

 

[Bambistew]

The age has been trending down pretty significantly the last few years with 6-7 year olds making up over half of the harvest if I remember correctly.

I am also very curious about overall participation, which has also been trending down. Interesting to see the N and R harvest moving much closer together than in years past.

I'll post some other information later. Age has declined pretty much in every unit. It's not going back up any time soon. When we see the winter of 21/22 hit the bottom is going to fall out. There are basically no rams on the landscape between 1-3. More than 1/3 of the rams came from the wrangles this year, and harvest there was down 25%...

77% of the rams taken this year were 8 or less. It's usually 50%. Not sure if you remember but a few years ago ADFG looked at age of harvest and determined that more than half of legal (by age) rams were left on the mountain each year. Not the case anymore. The average age of harvest for a few units is in the low 7s in some areas.

We won't know participation totals until all residents turn in their HT. Based on the last 2 years of prelim stats... Total participation this year is around 220nr and 1450 res, but we won't know for a while. Both are down a bit but not a lot.

Sublegal take was a bit lower than last year, but not much. 7-8%. Used to be about 5%.

I'm done playing the blame game. Love in the moment because no one cares enough to do anything, not is there anything we can do. Smoke'm if you got em.

 

[Choogiak]

Hard not to feel fatalistic and depressed when you hear the numbers and see the decline year after year. That said I was on three sheep hunts this year and we did find three rams. One 7 and two 8 year olds. Really did not see any older rams this year.
I know that winter weather and factors other than hunting has caused the recent die offs, however I think it's an open question whether unlimited hunting under the full curl regulation will slow or hamper population recovery. There was a Fairbanks meeting recently where the area biologist described a new project in the brooks range looking at that question. In the meantime I'll still be in the mountains looking every year until they tell me I cant, but maybe feeling a bit guilty about hunting down the last survivors...

 

[Atigun]

Hard not to feel fatalistic and depressed when you hear the numbers and see the decline year after year. That said I was on three sheep hunts this year and we did find three rams. One 7 and two 8 year olds. Really did not see any older rams this year.
I know that winter weather and factors other than hunting has caused the recent die offs, however I think it's an open question whether unlimited hunting under the full curl regulation will slow or hamper population recovery. There was a Fairbanks meeting recently where the area biologist described a new project in the brooks range looking at that question. In the meantime I'll still be in the mountains looking every year until they tell me I cant, but maybe feeling a bit guilty about hunting down the last survivors...

Is there any video or notes somewhere to be seen from this meeting? I had heard of this meeting recently and have been wondering if anything would be shared regarding it. Do you know any details on what the Brooks project would entail?

 

[Choogiak]

I don't know if it was recorded. It was very similar to the presentation from last year. The new stuff was the harvest data from this year, survey data from this year and the project in the brooks.
Brooks project seems really interesting. Collared two groups of rams, one in the national park and one across the haul road in an area that sees heavy hunting pressure.
They will then look at ram mortality over the next years and see what effect hunting has. They also have money to collar ewes and do population surveys to compare lambing rates etc.

A couple issues I see are that there is subsistence hunting going on in the park, and it sounds like it is somehow hard to get the harvest numbers. Also predators are not hunted in the park and maybe that makes a difference

 

[Atigun]

I don't know if it was recorded. It was very similar to the presentation from last year. The new stuff was the harvest data from this year, survey data from this year and the project in the brooks.
Brooks project seems really interesting. Collared two groups of rams, one in the national park and one across the haul road in an area that sees heavy hunting pressure.
They will then look at ram mortality over the next years and see what effect hunting has. They also have money to collar ewes and do population surveys to compare lambing rates etc.

A couple issues I see are that there is subsistence hunting going on in the park, and it sounds like it is somehow hard to get the harvest numbers. Also predators are not hunted in the park and maybe that makes a difference

Interesting. Thank you for sharing that.

 

[Kyle91]

Interesting info

 

[wantj43]

I'll post some other information later. Age has declined pretty much in every unit. It's not going back up any time soon. When we see the winter of 21/22 hit the bottom is going to fall out. There are basically no rams on the landscape between 1-3. More than 1/3 of the rams came from the wrangles this year, and harvest there was down 25%...

77% of the rams taken this year were 8 or less. It's usually 50%. Not sure if you remember but a few years ago ADFG looked at age of harvest and determined that more than half of legal (by age) rams were left on the mountain each year. Not the case anymore. The average age of harvest for a few units is in the low 7s in some areas.

We won't know participation totals until all residents turn in their HT. Based on the last 2 years of prelim stats... Total participation this year is around 220nr and 1450 res, but we won't know for a while. Both are down a bit but not a lot.

Sublegal take was a bit lower than last year, but not much. 7-8%. Used to be about 5%.

I'm done playing the blame game. Love in the moment because no one cares enough to do anything, not is there anything we can do. Smoke'm if you got em.

Thought we know there is history of sheep populations experiencing serveral extreme lows in the past, we don’t have age data from the harvest for those periods.

 

[VernAK]

Is there any data for 2023 sublegals taken?

 

[wantj43]

I'll post some other information later. Age has declined pretty much in every unit. It's not going back up any time soon. When we see the winter of 21/22 hit the bottom is going to fall out. There are basically no rams on the landscape between 1-3. More than 1/3 of the rams came from the wrangles this year, and harvest there was down 25%...

77% of the rams taken this year were 8 or less. It's usually 50%. Not sure if you remember but a few years ago ADFG looked at age of harvest and determined that more than half of legal (by age) rams were left on the mountain each year. Not the case anymore. The average age of harvest for a few units is in the low 7s in some areas.

We won't know participation totals until all residents turn in their HT. Based on the last 2 years of prelim stats... Total participation this year is around 220nr and 1450 res, but we won't know for a while. Both are down a bit but not a lot.

Sublegal take was a bit lower than last year, but not much. 7-8%. Used to be about 5%.

I'm done playing the blame game. Love in the moment because no one cares enough to do anything, not is there anything we can do. Smoke'm if you got em.

Thanks for posting. I would just say from my experience a lot of people and managing agencies do CARE- however, to say the options are severely limited is a gross understatement.

 

[Bambistew]

Thanks for posting. I would just say from my experience a lot of people and managing agencies do CARE- however, to say the options are severely limited is a gross understatement.

I was being a bit cynical about no one caring. Not much we can do.

 

[Yellowknife]

Man, those Mentasta numbers are brutal. 26 lambs? !

 

[Clarktar]

Man, those Mentasta numbers are brutal. 26 lambs? !

No kidding. I wonder what the minimum is for a ecologically viable population....

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[ColeyG]

Not to throw rocks but there’s more info from the Feds than the State…

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Good grief that is unbelievably bad. Heart breaking.

 

[Yellowknife]

I'd be surprised if we don't see more federal land closures for 2024. State land closures and/or shutting down draw areas also seem possible at this point.

 

[TWHrunner]

Plenty of discussion of Alaska sheep harvest over the years. I received the preliminary 2023 harvest stats from ADFG a few days ago. These are preliminary (based on the past couple years they may be about 5% less than final numbers), but its depressing. The draw tags and the HT areas saw similar success rates. Some draw tags in the Chugach didn't report a single sheep killed for the entire season(s).

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Apologies, but what is “blank”?

 

[wantj43]

Thanks for posting. I would just say from my experience a lot of people and managing agencies do CARE- however, to say the options are severely limited is a gross understatement.

De minimis in the Wrangells. Not sure elsewhere. Ironically, success rates are about on point with most of the State areas.

**I found the 2022 harvest data as well, 2 rams were killed in Unit 11 and 0 rams were killed in Unit 12.**

Good grief that is unbelievably bad. Heart breaking.

Certainly the populations are low - but we have seen some very dramatic swings in the past - such as McKinley Park in the forties and the HulaHula. In the early 50s on the HulaHulla survey they observed 75 sheep and estimated 150 - in the 70s or early 80s the survey counted over 3000.

 

[Confluentus]

De minimis in the Wrangells. Not sure elsewhere. Ironically, success rates are about on point with most of the State areas.

**I found the 2022 harvest data as well, 2 rams were killed in Unit 11 and 0 rams were killed in Unit 12.**

So my impression was that most rams taken under subsistence harvest in the national parks are still sealed and measured by ADFG, and that a harvest ticket is punched. They then show up in the ADFG database like such:

So in these harvest stats from 2021 for unit 11, all of those 3-5yo rams with 14”-25” horns are harvested under “any ram” subsistence regs. Of course some subsistence guys also kill big rams and those numbers are in this table somewhere too, but otherwise unidentifiable as subsistence harvest (except for the rams harvested in MtnHerd D, referring to Chugach, and 100% of the Chugach in unit 11 is Hard Park). Anyway I figure that at least a dozen or so of the rams in the unit 11 stats shown here are subsistence harvest.


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[Choogiak]

Maybe I misunderstood, but the area biologist at the meeting in Fairbanks seemed to indicate it was hard to get subsistence harvest numbers, I think he was referencing the eastern brooks at the time. Does anyone know if subsistence hunters are required to seal/report their ram or harvest? And what/who sets the regulations, or are there any regulations? I was reading on the national park website that because of recent declines they are asking subs hunters to limit ewe harvest?!?