AK Jeff

Transportation is the big expense for hunting in Alaska. The state is huge and sparsely populated but there are very few roads and the ones that we do have get heavy hunting pressure. More remote hunts usually require air taxis which usually cost thousands of dollars. Winters are very long up here. Today is May 8th and the snow is still knee deep around my house. Tags for the most part are free for residents (with the exception of musk ox which is $500). Cost of living up here is some of the highest in the country even though we don't have state sales tax or a state income tax and when you're eligible you can receive the PFD payment. If you live in the bush the cost of living is exponentially higher still. It's cheaper for me to fly to Montana to hunt deer and elk as a non-resident than it is for me to hunt them as a resident here in Alaska. The scale of everything up here is hard to grasp for people that haven't been here. Take the Haul Road caribou hunt for example. That's one of the most affordable caribou hunts available, but it still requires an 800+ mile round trip drive on one of the most rugged roads in the country and there's still a lot of hunting pressure. Last fall the 40-mile caribou season near Fairbanks was only open for 24 hours. In terms of moose hunting some of the most productive moose habitat up here only has 1 or 2 moose per square mile so you can look long and hard before you even see one. I hunted a walk-in caribou area last fall and that still required a 250 mile round trip drive and over 20 miles of hiking, and that's considered pretty easy. If you like the lower 48 style of drive a few miles to a hunting area, walk a 1/4 mile and sit in a tree stand then Alaska probably isn't your cup of tea. If you like hardcore adventure that requires a lot of backbreaking work without seeing many animals then it might suit you just fine. There's opportunities here they just don't come easy.