Wild Game Meat

For many, the hunt or the fishing trip itself is the primary reason for partaking in the event. For others, the ability to bring home the meat, hide or antlers represent the most meaningful part. As with flying firearms and other weapons into the sate, there are regulations for bringing the meat and other trophies out of the state as well.

Just as important as knowing the hunting or fishing regulations for a certain species is knowing what to do after a successful outing. In Alaska, there are specific restrictions governing the transportation of meat and trophy parts such as heads, antlers, horns or hides from big game animals. For example, successful bear hunters must bring the skull and hide, with the feet and proof of sex still attached, to an Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADFG) office to be sealed, typically within the Game Management Unit in which the animal was killed.

Tags are attached to the skull and hide after a biologist inspects them and removes a tooth for monitoring purposes. Severe penalties exist for not following these rules. Typically, if these regulations are followed, no special regulations are required for traveling with meat beyond that point, even on the airlines.

Fur and hides usually require a person to have one permit for travel within Alaska and another to take it outside Alaska. A hide to be taken out of Alaska to another state needs an export tag obtained from the ADF&G, post office or commercial shipping company.  The complexity increases if travel plans include traveling to another country or through Canada back to the lower 48 states. Taking a hide out of the United States requires a CITES permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Law Enforcement. CITES stands for the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora and is an international agreement designed to protect wild animals and plants from being over hunted or harvested. Another option is to obtain a personal effects exemption certificate if a final destination is within the U.S. after passing through Canada.

The simplest way of ensuring all regulations are met is to work with an experienced guide service. Most Alaska guide services include wild game meat care in their Alaska hunting packages, but many people prefer to handle this crucial part of the hunting experience themselves.

Books such as Care of Game Meat and Trophies by Charles Newton Elliott or the online guide published by ADF&G can be helpful. The information provided by Alaska Airlines lisst typical guidelines for flying with your meat and fish.

Glenn's Wild Game in Anchorage, is one example of a meat processing company experienced with big game. The hunter is typically responsible for getting the meat to the processor, but then the processor will ship to anywhere within Alaska or the lower 48 states. Their custom processing runs in the $0.40 to $0.50 per pound.

You'll most likely be far away from where you are staying when you succeed in your hunt. The most important thing to remember is proper care when bleeding, gutting, butchering, packaging and transporting in order to keep from introducing contaminants into the meat. Just as there are Alaska hunting regulations, rules apply to consumption as well. Alaska law states that all of the meat of caribou and moose must be salvaged for human consumption - this means everything but meat that is "blood-shot," internal organs, skin, bones, and the head. Fines are high for hunters caught wasting meat. A "Transfer of Possession" form must accompany any meat you give away to others.

Just remember that it takes time to bring down big game, and patience wins the day. As Jack London wrote in The Call of the Wild, "There is a patience of the wild - dogged, tireless, persistent as life itself - that holds motionless for endless hours the spider in its web, the snake in its coils, the panther in its ambuscade; this patience belongs peculiarly to life when it hunts its living food..."

And if you tire of trying to rustle animal protein, you can always trade in big game for big vegetables - Alaska's late-setting summer, midnight sun yields giant vegetables in the Matanuska Valley. Imagine broccoli as tall as your 10-year-old or cabbages that dwarf your neighbor's Miata.

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