The events in Wasilla at last week’s election of the Mat-Su Fish and Game Advisory committee were mostly predictable. People stood in line about a half hour to vote, following a similar record turnout in Anchorage. Candidates pledged support for idealistic goals such as “abundance management” and specifics like state-sanctioned predator control. A few pledged their support for Second Amendment rights, which seemed platitudinous since the Alaska Board of Game is such an unlikely arena for a gun control debate.

In the end, eight people were elected to the 15-member panel that meets almost every week to discuss hunting and fishing regulations and adopt proposals to be forwarded to the boards that control those regulations.

Less predictable was a donation to local Department of Fish and Game biologist Tony Kavalok presented by Donnie Darilek of the Mat-Su chapter of the Alaska Moose Federation. Darilek is one of two people charged with game violations last year for “rescuing” orphan moose. (Her ticket would’ve cost $375, but the state failed to prosecute its case.) Darilek didn’t give the state an olive branch. She presented a rifle that shoots tranquilizer darts, citing the Moose Federation’s “Three Rs: rescue, rehab and release” and telling the audience in the Wasilla High School theater she raised donations for the gun. She wrote in an email later that the Moose Federation is “not trying to buck the department” and wants to help biologists who work in the field.

The tranquilizer gun is from a manufacturer called Pneu-Dart. Darilek says her group first asked Kavalok what tools he could use before they made the purchase.

The gun is pretty cool. And like any weapon, it sort of demands respect from anyone who lays eyes on it. Kavalok is no stranger to rifles, and said handling the tranquilizing drugs is what requires special training. “To tell you the truth, the handling and the control of the chemicals and the darts scares me more than the use of the firearm,” he says.

Kavalok told Flashlight that state biologists work with a state veterinarian for training in the use of the drugs, and that he has access to two other similar guns (he calls them dart “projectors”), but with the new one he can custom-load both the dart and the charge that propels it. Some of the drugs are powerful enough to kill if a person makes a mistake with the dart needles. “We have to have quite a bit of training [to use the darts]” he says. “It’s pretty complicated and very regulated.”

The Pneu-Dart rifle looks similar to an over-and-under double-barrel gun, but its underside barrel is a sealed tube shorter than the rifle barrel. A small charge—the model presented to Kavalok takes .22 caliber blanks—creates pressure in the tube, and the pressure is channeled to the rifle barrel to propel the dart without smashing it. It fires in a fashion not unlike a pneumatic cordless nail-gun, although it doesn’t have a magazine full of darts for rapid firing.

Kavalok say his first project for the gun might be to capture bears for radio collaring and tracking in state Game Management Unit 16.

Unit 16 includes the Susitna Valley west of the Big Susitna River and extends to the Alaska Range. It’s one of the areas where state-sanctioned predator control included several strategies to kill wolves and bears in an effort to increase the moose population. Relaxed rules for bear bait stations are part of the strategy. (Bait station hunters can land in an airplane and shoot the same day in Unit 16.) Another part is aerial wolf hunting, which has been part of the Unit 16 plan since the winter of 2004-05.

Kavalok says that in the last two years about 33 wolves a year were killed in Unit 16. He credits SDA teams—pilot/gunner teams approved by the state but privately funded—with taking about two-thirds of those wolves. Hunters and trappers under traditional rules take the rest. “We have a handful of people who still trap wolves in that part of the world,” Kavalok says.

scott@anchoragepress.com

See the PneuDart gun in action here.