How bad is the snow on Kodiak this year

[TBinKodiak]

Well if they were going to do anything they could just eliminate or reduce the antlerless harvest. Another thing that is unique about this herd is the number of sterile bucks. I believe its like 20% and up to 70% in some drainages. Most of them don't rut so they would have gone into the winter with a lot of fat reserves. Those bucks should have decent horns this fall, as long as you don't mind shooting a Eunich...
Brwnbr, did Larry or John happen to say anything about the elk herd? I was considering putting in for the draw over on Afognak.

 

[Hntnhrd]

TB, These sterile bucks you speak of, are the still in velvet?

 

[TBinKodiak]

Very few stay in velvet. If I remember correctly some even go through the rut, just shooting blanks though. There was a good write up about it in the paper a year or two ago. Sounds like the problem was from the original 15 or so deer that they used to populate the island. F&G did the study because they were concerned that the number of sterile bucks was increasing and they weren't sure why.
A while back a friend of mine that has done some transporting in the past and has hundreds of racks from over the years was showing me how to tell the difference. I have no idea if he was filling me full of **** or not, but he said if you look at the tips of the horns and they are real pointed its a sterile buck. He showed me a number of racks and at the time it made sense. He said he tried to target them when he hunted by looking for bucks that didn't have swollen necks.

 

[BRWNBR]

TB, john didn't mentioned the elk, he did say the goats will probably loose alot of kids this year and that they are wintering very different than usuall. he said the snow fall is pretty much area wide, so i'd guess afognak snow is just like kodiak, but the elk should be fine, moose can make it with alot of cold and snow, i'd imagine a long legged browser should have a decent shot at getting thru. or are elk grazers...? but no he didn't mention them.

 

[muskeg]

IIRR ... some university has been doing tissue samples for some years to try to figure out the growing sterile action going. They have been taking tissue samples from here also. The 2 theories were that the isolated gene pool was starting to take its toll. I guess they started the heard with only a dozen or so deer from down here somewhere. They were also looking into some diet causes, because it's not a natural range for Sitka and there could be something their eating. The jury is still out.

As for reducing the bag limit or stopping the Doe kill (here in SE) there will be major problems on the subsistence side of things. The Federal law says that on all federal lands ... Tongass and Chugach National Forest .... before you can restrict local subsistence hunters you must first restrict all non-federally qualified hunters then restrict non-local fed qualified hunters. That means that first you would cut off non-alaska residents and then Anchorage, Fairbanks, Juneau and Ketchikan residents and then only the local hunters can hunt their areas.

I'm not sure of Kodiak's subsistence status and what the scenario is for State lands.

I'm sure the State will proceed very cautiously into this. There will be at least 3 more months of field work and surveys before any decisions will be made.

 

[BRWNBR]

the kodiak guys said they'd have to call a special session just to change a deer reg and since they were right at the point of adding more deer to the bag limit, leaving it where it is might just balance out with the winter kill....

 

[TBinKodiak]

http://forums.outdoorsdirectory.com/showthread.php?t=13401

Looks like about 10,000 dead deer on the island. Main winter kill was on this end of the island (north) up to 80% in some areas. Oh well, take it as it comes.