Hunting after the Funny River Fire?

[anchorrivercrowds]

Hunting after a fire while more productive "sucks". Go hunt some burned areas around Delta and Tok. It's been 20 plus years and the dead fall still makes walking nearly impossible. The dead fall from Beatle kill was bad enough in the funny river area now with all the trees down yuck.

I hunted that burn above Tustamena a couple years. Movement was brutal.

 

[4merguide]

This image was captured June 5. You can see the areas that got scorched and those that didn't. It got pretty hot when the fire made the initial run to the lake, then it was less intense as it smoldered along to the east.

View attachment 82501

Wow thanks.....what a great shot that is...!!! Where'd ya find it...???

 

[SkinnyD]

Wow thanks.....what a great shot that is...!!! Where'd ya find it...???

It's just Landsat8. USGS produces it.

 

[Erik in AK]

Moose eat willows, primarily, and young birch.
Given that these two species tend to pioneer burned areas, the moose population will begin to increase once the acre-yield, in terms of calories, begins to exceed the net consumption of the present population. Call it 5 years for Joe Hunter to notice the change.

The moose population (and hunting) on the bench will steadily improve for another 5-7 years where it will hold for another 7-10 years before it begins to decline again as it follows the loss in caloric acre-yield of the browse maturing beyond optimum moose feed. This general trajectory doesn't account for unseasonal weather, of course.

In the early 2030s or so, if we're still alive along with the AOD forum, we will see a new generation of moose hunters excoriating the ADF&G for the decline in moose on the KP. They will bemoan the loss of the "old days" of "epic" moose hunting "back in the '20s". They will cite all the 60+ bulls they've killed as proof positive the bios are complete idiots who don't know sh** about moose.

So, basically, nothing will change.

 

[twodux]

I'm sorry I have to wait to pass along some more reputation Erik. Excellent post.

 

[iofthetaiga]

I'm sorry I have to wait to pass along some more reputation Erik. Excellent post.

.....Ditto.

 

[4merguide]

So, basically, nothing will change.

Well, we do have a bear season now so we should probably take that into consideration as well.

For hundreds of years the Tustumena bench produced incredible moose hunting. Obviously habitat sustained them quite well during all that time. One BIG change that did occur almost 30 years ago now was that they decided to not let people hunt brown bears anymore except for a handful of permits. The fact is that back then, for all those great moose that were being killed, there were a lot of bears being killed as well. IMO, you couple lousy habitat due to no recent burns, then decide to let the bears procreate like bunnies and live long happy moose killin' lives.....maybe toss in a few bad winter kill years at the same time, and you're bound to throw something outta whack if you don't pay attention. Personally I think "somebody" wasn't paying attention.

So let us keep killin' as many bears as we can, and let the aftermath of the fire do it's thing for the next 5-10 years, then maybe we'll see if there is any change.....

(PS.....I won't even get into the wolf control thing. Some believe that too many wolves is one big reason our sheep population is down to almost nothing)

 

[Meanderthal]

Based on the portions of the burn area that I've seen up close I tend to fall into the camp with those who are skeptical of a big positive effect due to the fact that the fire was too "superficial" as Dave put it.

I'm not much of a scientist but I've been hunting my whole life and generally have a pretty good sense for these things. I also worked fighting wildfires on a Hotshot crew in the 90's so I've seen a few fires.


This fire will quite effectively encumber future fires so it may actually prove to be a net negative over the next few decades. I hope I'm wrong.

 

[Genna-AK]

There is an educated school of thought that the funny river fire is not going to be anywhere near as good for habitat regeneration as the old skilak fires were, mainly because the burn is mostly superficial. Much of the ground was still frozen, so the fire did not scarify the soil by burning down to the mineral layer. No doubt there will be positive impact, but it isn't a panacea.

I agree, homerdave. We hiked a ways out into the north end this fall and early winter. The fire jumped around a lot, and there are not many places where it really burned hard, right down the the dirt. It burned the twigs off the spruce, but left a lot untouched. There were few places that we saw where it had even come close to burning a large area. There were whole swaths of green grass/birch/spruce, like it zig-zagged, and jumped around. Given the winds back when the fire was burning, I guess I can understand. It was moving really fast.