Get ready it won’t be long before Chuck and his co-horts will be out to set up a data base and instant check on everyone’s antler collection.

Man allegedly stabs another with antlers

Anchorage Daily News

Published: July 1st, 2010 11:08 PM
Last Modified: July 1st, 2010 11:09 PM

An Anchorage man is accused of stabbing his roommate with deer antlers that he pulled off the wall in the heat of an argument. Jesse Harris, 27, was charged with domestic violence felony assault.
Police say that just after 3 p.m. Thursday they got calls from neighbors about the disturbance in the 2400 block of Douglas Drive in Turnagain. A man was calling for help, a neighbor told police.
When police arrived, they found the victim suffering from stab wounds to his back and ankle. The victim was not seriously hurt.
Police say the men were arguing about the ownership of a vehicle.

If he is nothing else Judge Holland is consistent, I can’t recall a single one of Judge Hollands decisions where he ruled  in favor of Alaskans than over predators. Now USFW can fiddle while Rome burns and the wolves of  Unimak feast on new born caribou calves.  The Unimak herd is crashing USFW doesn’t seem to give a damn about  people of Unimak.  The Unimak herd is the only island herd in Alaska and the people of Unimak’s only source of red meat. When will the desk jockeys get it through their heads, ungulates feed people not wolves. The Alaska Board of Game did extend the wolf hunting and trapping seasons so for now at least the locals can do what needs done.

Judge blocks state’s wolf kill on Unimak

UNIMAK ISLAND: Federal agency bound by environment regulations.By MARY PEMBERTONThe Associated PressPublished: June 7th, 2010 11:17 PMLast Modified: June 7th, 2010 11:18 PM

A federal judge on Monday denied the state’s request for a preliminary injunction that would let it kill wolves, a step it said was needed to protect a caribou herd on an Aleutian island that is a subsistence food source for Alaskans there.

U.S. District Judge H. Russel Holland said that while sympathetic to the state’s argument, he had to abide by law when ruling against the state’s request to immediately conduct predator control in the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge on Unimak Island. “Somebody’s governmental pride will be bruised here and there is no avoiding that,” Holland said, before ruling in favor of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.”It is the federal agency’s prerogative to decide what they have decided.”

Read more here….

I you have an extra 50 buck’s burning a hole in your pocket you could put it to a good cause. USSA is raffling off a gun a week starting this month and going through May 2011. They are only issuing 1000 tickets so you better hurry if you want a shot at one of the prizes. I’m not a big on national organizations I favor those closer to home. I go more for the grassroots organizations with local control and people involved however this is one I do support USSA puts a lot into big game hunting and our hunting heritage. So if you have it spend this is going to a good cause.

2010-11 52-Gun Raffle

Sportsmen can now purchase tickets for a weekly drawing that could put brand new firearms or bows in their hands while protecting their hunting rights. The U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation’s 52-Gun Raffle sponsored by Vance’s Shooters Supplies and Buckeye Outdoors.  Click here to see their current ad.

Only 1,000 3-digit tickets (numbered 000-999) will be sold for $50 each. Winning numbers will be determined by the Ohio Lottery’s Pick 3 drawing on Monday nights. Ticket holders can win more than once.

The raffle will begin June 7, 2010.  To purchase tickets, click here to visit our online store or contact the U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation at (614) 888-4868. Out of state participants may purchase tickets via the USSA online store only.

Learn more here

Alaska is probably one of the few places where you can view wildlife from your front porch. In the winter moose are a common sight in downtown Anchorage.  Summer bring in the bears, bear’s are so common place in Anchorage the cities web site has a special map for bear activity.   All  human/bear encounters have the potential to go bad as in this Anchorage Daily News article. In this case it was the bear that got the short end but things could have turned the other way had it not been for the ladies dog and her quick thinking husband.

Anchorage Daily News photo

Dog intervenes in grizzly attack, but bear is eventually shot
EAGLE RIVER: Woman hid behind a truck; bruin returns after husband fires warning.
By LISA DEMER
ldemer@adn.com
Published: June 1st, 2010 06:58 AM
Last Modified: June 1st, 2010 06:58 AM

A longtime Alaskan says his dog probably saved his wife’s life after a young grizzly bear charged her Sunday night by their home in the Eagle River canyon, near the nature center.

Michael Weiman, 64, scared the bear off with warning shots, then, when it returned, he shot and killed the bear, Anchorage police said.

Weiman said his wife, Marianne Hamilton, was walking their 10-year-old boxer, Mojabe, on an abandoned airstrip that’s part of their property on Bear Ridge Circle. It’s an area of big lots where homeowners are used to seeing a lot of wildlife, including moose and grizzly bears, he said. They had seen a bigger grizzly earlier in the day on Sunday.

That evening, they were enjoying the sunshine. Around 9 p.m., Hamilton went to walk the dog.

“The dog stopped and wheeled around. Marianne turns around, and here comes a bear,” Weiman said.

It was on the airstrip, in the open. Its ears were back, and it was coming at her, he said. “She kept remarking about the eyes, the eyes. The eyes were big and coming,” Weiman said.

He heard her screaming, grabbed his .44 pistol, ran outside and saw the boxer “intervene and cut the bear off.” Hamilton ran behind a pickup truck. The dog chased the bear across the road.

The bear turned toward the dog, and Weiman fired three shots into the ground next to the bear, each one closer, as he tells the story.

“Over the hill it went,” he said. But as soon as they all got inside, the bear was back.

“The words I said were ‘Hell no,’ and I grabbed my .30-30,” Weiman said.

He fired. “Very swiftly it was done and I’m not sorry,” he said.

He said he’s lived in Alaska 41 years, been a hunter all his life, but never hunted bears. He said he’s a nature lover. That bear, though, was acting dangerously. The grizzly was young and smallish, maybe 150 pounds, but its claws were 3-inches long and razor sharp.

He called 911 and Anchorage police officers came to his home and told him what he needed to do. He skinned the bear and will turn the hide in to the state Department of Fish and Game, which auctions the hides of bears killed in defense of life or property.

Residents of the area are used to seeing bears, most of which never cause a problem. Most people carry a gun or pepper spray when they are out walking in the spring and summer, Weiman said. But on Sunday, winds would have whipped spray into the user’s eyes and the bear could have attacked, he said.

“People get so complacent and they think the bear is a little teddy bear. They aren’t.”

Find Lisa Demer online at adn.com/contact/ldemer or call 257-4390.

Read more: http://www.adn.com/2010/05/31/1301997/dog-intervenes-in-grizzly-attack.html#ixzz0pcAy2ZIn

When I decided to start this blog I planned to do more lifestyle than politics. However there are so many hot ticket wildlife issues going on in Alaska right now it’s hard not to jump on my soapbox. The attached Anchorage Daily New article is about one more example of on group who are offering a caribou herd to the alter of gia. This really irritates me you have a food source that people depend on is being decimated by wolves yet it is the wolves that are being protected. In the video I posted yesterday Ashley Judd blabbed about managing wolves with scientific principals. She’s right they should be, but they are not they are being managed by a bunch of gia worshipers who treat them, wolves and other predators, like gods while ungulates become the blood sacrifice. It is the ungulate herds that traditionally feed people over the eons not wolves. In Alaska wildlife has and is the traditional mainstay for both rural and urban, courts have even ruled that all Alaskans are subsistence hunters. Alaska is unique among the states in that all resources are jointly own by the people. This includes wildlife, making the Alaska Department of Fish & Game the primary manager of all wildlife in Alaska including federal land. However in Katie John v Alaska the Ninth Circuit gave the federal land managers control of subsistence hunting & fishing on all federal lands and certain waters in Alaska. Title VIII of ANILCA set up the Federal Subsistence Board and Regional Advisory Councils. The regional Councils are made up of local users who meet twice a year to discuss local subsistence needs as well as other subsistence issues then advise the full Board whose job, among other duties, is to allocate fish & game for subsistence uses.

Last spring Secretary of Interior Salazar met with the chairs of all ten of the regional council’s. One of the items discussed was predator control on federal land. The chairs urged the secretary to align federal predator control programs with those of the state. Too many federal land managers look at this as the state usurping their authority when they should be looking out for the interest of the people. Until federal and state managers come together on predator control predators will continue to win and gia will get his sacrificial caribou.

All that said the people of Unimak should not have waited for the wolves to destroy one of their primary sources of food before acting. They were the ones there they should have been hunting and trapping the wolves long before they got out of control. People have gone to long believing the government will fix all their problems when they had the means to take care of them before things got out of hand.

Anchorage Daily News
Legal action threatened over state predator control in refuge
By MARY PEMBERTON
The Associated Press
Published: May 24th, 2010 06:45 PM
Last Modified: May 24th, 2010 06:45 PM
A federal agency threatened legal action if Alaska moves ahead with plans to kill wolves.
In a letter Monday, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service cautioned the Alaska Department of Fish and Game about proceeding with plans to kill wolves on refuge land on Unimak Island without a federal special-use permit.
Doing so would be considered as a trespass on the refuge and such action would be referred to the U.S. attorney, according to a Fish & Wildlife Service news release.
The letter was in response to one that state wildlife officials sent last week to Rowan Gould, the Fish & Wildlife Service’s acting director.
In that letter, Corey Rossi, director of the state Division of Wildlife Conservation, said, “Immediate action is required to protect the herd, specifically this year’s calves.
“Waiting to take action places this year’s calves in too great a jeopardy,” wrote Rossi, a strong proponent of aerial predator control where wolves and bears are killed to increase moose and caribou numbers. Federal agency is required by law to follow a certain process — a process the state is well aware of but apparently doesn’t want to wait for, said Fish & Wildlife Service spokesman Bruce Woods.State Fish and Game Department officials declined Monday to answer questions or comment.
Wade Willis, a former state wildlife biologist and a vocal player on the conservation side of Alaska wildlife politics, supported Fish & Wildlife’s action.
“Fish and Wildlife cannot tolerate the state’s attempts to obliterate the last 30 wolves remaining on Unimak Island,” he said.
“Federal management authority always takes preference over state management mandates. The USFWS is mandated to protect natural diversity and abundance. Alaska prefers to manage for a game farm, where wolves and bears are decimated to allow unchecked commercial guiding and trophy hunting.”
Last week, the state Fish and Game Department announced that beginning about June 1 it will shoot some wolves on Unimak to protect caribou calving grounds under its aerial predator-control program.
The department plans to use two biologists and four pilots to kill wolves over three weeks on Unimak, which is part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge.
It would be the first time in recent history that aerial predator control was used inside a national refuge in Alaska.
Caribou are a subsistence food for people living on the island, but their numbers have declined sharply. In 2002, there were more than 1,200 caribou. Last year, fewer than 300 were counted. The state has an unofficial estimate of up to 30 wolves.
In its letter, the Fish & Wildlife Service said it recognizes the urgency of the situation but is required to follow federal law when initiating new management programs on its refuges.
It also points out that the federal agency has been working with the state to better understand the biological factors in the herd’s decline since concerns were raised in December. To that end, it has issued permits to allow additional radio collaring and biological sampling of wolves and caribou, the letter says.
The federal agency hopes the jurisdictional issue can be resolved without going to court. If it can’t, maybe the court could resolve it “once and for all,” Woods said.

The arrogance of some people amaze me. You have to listen to Ashley Judd expel her vast knowledge on wolves and wildlife management. This woman is clueless to listen to her you would think the wolf is a helpless house dog I’ll never understand the mindset of gia worshipers . Wolves are far from helpless they are one of the most efficient predators on the planet earth. If Ashley and her cohorts up at the Defenders of Wildlife could only watch a pack of wolves take a moose down and eat it alive. Or watch a pack hamstring 10 or 12 caribou then eat 2 or 3 of them awhile the others are left to die. The second video is the Alaska answer to this nonsense.

State to shoot wolves on island

UNIMAK: Dwindling caribou prompt cull on calving grounds.

By MIKE CAMPBELL
mcampbell@adn.com

Published: May 20th, 2010 09:36 PM
Last Modified: May 20th, 2010 09:36 PM

Concerned that wolf predation may imperil the remaining caribou on Unimak Island, managers with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game said Thursday afternoon they’ll launch predator control in less than two weeks on the largest island in the Aleutians, preferably by helicopter.

“The situation constitutes a dire conservation emergency,” Fish and Game Commissioner Denby Lloyd said in a letter sent to Rowan Gould, acting director of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. “Immediate action is necessary.”

Missing from the announcement at U.S. Fish and Game headquarters was any representation by Fish & Wildlife, on whose land wolf control would take place. Unimak Island, the only island in the Aleutians with a native caribou population, is dominated by the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge. Federal managers are in the midst of making an environmental assessment of reducing wolf numbers.

“I’ve heard nothing about a response today,” said Bruce Woods, a spokesman for Fish & Wildlife in Alaska. “We’re conducting a review and continue that process.”

But the state intends to act.

“We will do something by about June 1,” said Pat Valkenberg of Fish and Game. “We are the primary wildlife managers on all federal lands in the state.”

The two agencies have been meeting since November, and Fish and Game officials described the sessions as cordial.

Although no official estimate of wolf numbers on the 1,571-square-mile island exists, biologists who often encounter wolves during caribou surveys believe there are no more than 30 animals in three to five packs.

Under Fish and Game’s plan, two biologists and four pilots would kill wolves by shotgun during a three-week effort focused on the caribou calving period, shooting nearby wolves while collaring calves as part of a mortality study.

“The targeted technique limits the number of wolves taken to those on the calving grounds,” said Lem Butler, a state area management biologist from King Salmon. “This technique allows us to achieve our caribou objectives while removing the fewest number of wolves possible.”

Once numbering about 5,000 animals, Unimak caribou have declined from more than 1,200 animals in 2002 to about 400 seven years later — roughly 20 percent a year.

Ninty-nine percent of the calves perish before they reach 1 month, Butler said. And there are only five bulls for every 100 cows, many of them older animals.

“That’s the heart of the issue,” Butler said.

Moving bulls to Unimak from the nearby Southern Alaska Peninsula caribou herd is also being considered.

“Without taking action this spring to remove wolves on the calving grounds, an extremely low level of calf survival due to wolf predation will accelerate the downward spiral of the (caribou) and eventually the wolves themselves,” Lloyd predicted.

The state Board of Game closed all caribou hunting last year.

Fewer than 100 people live in False Pass, the major town on the island.

“Residents of False Pass are extremely concerned about the precipitous decline in caribou on the island because caribou have been an important part of our subsistence lifestyle for thousands of years,” wrote Nancy Dushkin, president of Isanotski, the Native village corporation in False Pass, in a letter to Fish and Game. “Now we see no caribou at all and … the number of wolves and bear appear to be at all-time highs.”

Fish and Wildlife has conducted several predator control programs to protect and enhance bird populations in recent years, including a $3 million effort to poison the rats that overran Rat Island on the western edge of the refuge. But virtually no predator management programs have been conducted to protect ungulates on national wildlife refuges in Alaska.

http://www.adn.com/2010/05/20/1287728/state-to-shoot-wolves-on-island.html?