Ah Cheechako, I'm am thankful someone here is at least sympathetic to subsistence and also has obvious respect for the land, animals and people in rural AK (and MT). Thank you sincerely for your input. In no order I'd like to engage with you on some of your valid points.
1. "those mutherfuckers" should have been more clearly defined by me as any rural subsistence user of Alaska resources using the federal system (financed by all tax paying Americans) to unnecessarily restrict non-local tax payers the right to gather food resources without provocation or legitimacy.
2. Subsistence hunters rely on meat the SAME way as I do. My zip code defines me as "sport hunter" yet my physiology defines me as a selective and effective hunter gather. That's social politics and it is what it is. Intentions prove the weight of a man's soul and I have been engaged with these issues for more than a decade and have met complete resistance from NW locals because I am white and not right. My 3-year term serving a chair for Fairbanks Hunters on the Western Arctic Caribou Herd Working Group opened my eyes to how and why the system was designed, how it works and how it is currently being manipulated to illegally thwart transporters and non-local hunters by falsely interpreting ANILCA Title 8 and using the federal system as a means to effect their agenda. Your point was that subsistence is different than sport hunting because it provides food and maintains relationships with the people. We are not people to those rural communities, we are obstacles and perceived nuisances, and we are sport hunters and not non-local subsistence hunters because that's what they like to use for wrapping up the context of a non-local hunter. That sir, is driven by prejudice not equality and not subsistence. I've left more antlers in the field than I can count, so what makes me a sport hunter?
3. If the locals anywhere in the region, which is the geographical size of at least 5 (five) US states, has evidence of a "disruption of subsistence ways of life" I assure you that it has not been submitted. No photo yet everyone above the age of 12 has an i-phone. no video, no police reports, nothing. Every shred of complaint against non-local hunters is anecdotal and social gossip with a chain of local support to believe such nonsense is real. Their ways of life have not been disrupted, sir, they have been boosted by not only the municipalities and jobs created by federal presence, water, sewer, airport maint...typcial stuff where our tax dollars are spent, but also several attempts have been agreed upon to appease their anecdotal complaints by way of NO HUNTING SUPPORTED ACTIVITIES along the first 120 miles of the Noatak River. They have been granted extensions of this corridor over the decades to the point where non-local hunters simply do not exists within a hundred miles of their hunting and fishing camps during season. The only disruption that is definable and tangible is that taken from federal public land owners and their right to access remote hunting opportunities for their food (a state resource) on shared public lands.
4. If non-local hunters have "affected their ability to provide food for themselves" where is the proof of our wrong doing? They cut the backs of skinny caribou shot in the kobuk river, and if the fat isn't thick enough they let that carcass float down the river and collect like rotting driftwood. Thats not what ancient NW hunter gathers did before zip codes were created. That is behavior the modern rural Alaskan has adopted because they believe those caribou and moose are theirs, and they are constitutionally wrong. It's "ours" and that requires some effort on both parties to understand when there exists a shortage of resources, and that's why ANILCA was created. The state and federal biologists study these animals and make suggestions on bag limits and harvest quotas to the Alaska BOG. ANILCA doesn't do that and it should not be used by subsistence peoples to defy science and state law just to prove those animals are theirs. It's a dangerous precedent to set, period.
5. Be cognizant of our privilege to hunt that land? Yes sir, I am not only cognizant but also willing to defend my rights to hunt that land the same way I have for 26 years, when those rights are unfairly in question of disappearing year by year and mile by mile.
6. Show respect for people who lived there thousands of years. I agree. No one in that region can name a relative who lived there before the Russians and European whalers and fur hunters arrived 150 years. We are now living with a peoples lacking the same lifestyle opportunities and methods of operation than ancient Native Alaskan. Respect is earned. Respect is shared, not proprietary and not decided by the color of your skin or the zip code in which you live. If they want respect, share the resource and allow the system to remain a tool for guidance and authority when times are truly dire; but don't assume people owe you respect for deciding to live in a rural community where caribou live hundreds of miles from your zip code and then complain that you can't reach them and they wont come to me. That's not hunting, that's waiting for a hand out. You want caribou, go find them like we do. I won't buy a $4000 four wheeler or $25,000 jet boat to get them like they will, but I'll hire a transporter to get me over Native lands and onto my lands. That doesn't make me a sport hunter it makes me determined.
