New Alaska Sheep Regulations

[Bambistew]

The sheep working group couldn't get all guide to agree on a 5 day reduction in the season. Good luck with a 3 week reduction. The Brooks sheep hunts would be weathered out. Thus as the reluctance of the 5 day reduction.

Guides everywhere else in the world manage to make a draw hunt work, but in AK they're inept? How do those guides working in the Chugach and Tok manage? The ones with the better business skills seem to stay in business. I've heard the concession opponents state that they want a draw over a concession... so which is it?

I wouldn't be surprised to see an inititve on the ballot in coming years with a mandate for limiting NR for all game. If so it will easily pass, and the window of compromise which guides are so unwilling to open will get slammed in their face. I could be wrong, but we won't be seeing a resident draw any time soon, certainly not before NR are limited.

The guide requirement is welfare plain and simple. I would be willing to bet for every 20 NR sheep enthusiasts, 19 can't afford to hunt with a guide, but could afford DIY. If guides are so in favor of NR opportunity why don't they help the less fortunate? Because they wouldn't be in control...

Setting a limit at the current amount of tags issued and dropping the guide requirement, would allow many NR the opportunity to chase sheep that would otherwise never be able to. Heck we could maybe even increase the total number of permits if we were looking at harvest %.

As I've said before, guides really could give two shit's about NR, unless they have money. An example includes set aside "guide only" moose tags. Got to make sure you get your $$$, and keep those pesky DIY or "no hunting" NR from get'n your tags. Or allowing unguided NR to kill brown bears in predator control units. Oh, but those NR would "ruin" a residents experience, but then again I keep hearing that residents don't hunt bears and we need to be thanking our guides/NR for saving the moose... which is it?

 

[Alaskan89]

I'll never understand the NR guide rule, the whole safety thing is just a line of BS that the guide industry used to justify it. When a NR guide has to hire a guide to hunt sheep, goat or bear, you know it isn't about safety, it's about the money.

 

[BRWNBR]

Interesting points bambistew....what do you do for a living by the way?

 

[ericfamilee]

I hate to open up this can of worms but I just read through this whole thread and decided I have to comment.

The implied premise of many/most of the comments on this thread is false. That false premise is that the decline in sheep numbers throughout the state is due (largely or partly) to over-harvest by sportsmen in general. The data has proven over and over that there is simply no basis for this assumption. The recent decline in sheep numbers in some parts of the state is due mostly, in my understanding, to weather – particularly the drastic winter freeze thaw cycles we have seen. Although some decline in sheep numbers in some areas MIGHT be attributed to subsistence hunters who can harvest any sheep, sport hunters, with their full-curl/double-broomed/8 growth ring requirements, have little to no impact on the long-term health of sheep populations. In fact some suggest that harvest of only the mature rams can help the sheep population as it leaves more habitat for younger rams and ewes/lambs who contribute more to the reproductivity and health of the herds. Even if that were not true, the data also suggests that there are plenty of legal rams left in the mountains after hunting season every year (seems like I read somewhere that ~50% of legal rams get harvested every year).

So there is no data that suggests any sheep sport-hunter, whether resident or non-resident, needs to be limited under the current rules. I do agree that if there were data which suggested a need to limit sport hunters, NR should be limited first. But again, the simple fact is that there are no data which suggest a need to limit sport hunters. That is the main reason the BoG have not made drastic changes, and so good for them btw.