No shooting from boat, if we see one we take tender to shore a few hundred yards away. It's pretty expensive out of state, however I'm pretty lucky to have an Alaska resident as a brother because it significantly lowers the cost (as long as he pulls the trigger), which I am totally fine with. He basically needs to get his hunting license and then he can shoot 5 black bears and 4 deer, just has to have a harvest permit/report. ( No extra cost just has to get the physical paper and cut the date, get the hide sealed for the bear etc afterwards). That's a bit of an oversimplification, but close enough. Future trips where I want to hunt instead of being spotter/hopefully pack mule I'll have to get a license (160 out of state) and then a permit/locking tags for whatever we want to hunt. Deer is 300, bear 1k, moose 1200, muskox is like 3k but I have no interest etc. Then you can shoot any lesser cost animal with your tag if you want, so you can shoot a deer and use your bear locking tag on it, but it's a very expensive deer then. Better than tag soup I suppose. There's extra rules for some animals as well like you have to be with a family member that's a resident, but if not, have to be with a guide for bear. The hunting and fishing regulations books are somewhat long, but go into lots of great detail, and I like how they have regs about meat salvage etc as well.
The different areas up here all have slightly different rega about sex/numbers etc. We can shoot either sex, just haven't been able to make it happen yet. today's my last day here I fly out tomorrow but the rest of the crew stays another week, perhaps they will be able to find fish or bears then. We're making a last push out to a halibut spot right now after getting skunked other than shaker (baby) kings trolling this AM. We saw another bear after that griz but it disappeared into the woods, and then yesterday we hiked a few miles up into the alpine on Douglas Island looking for a deer, but didn't see any, likely the storms that kept us off the water keeps them bedded down pretty tightly.
All in all the trip is panning out as expected, we'd hoped there would still be some fish around but the tail end of the season is proving to be pretty slim pickings. Can't complain, catching rockfish and crab and raising my brothers freezer for fish from earlier in the season has translated to many a delicious meal, even though we aren't filling boxes to bring home like we did last July.
