Fish and Game takes caribou permits to three Bristol Bay villages

Alaska Department of Fish and Game staff will hand out caribou hunting permits in Levelock and Igiugig on Thursday and in Kokhanok on Nov. 16, ahead of a winter hunt that opens Dec. 1 south of Iliamna Lake and the Kvichak River.

The harvest quota is 100 caribou, the department said in an announcement Monday. It will close the hunt by emergency order when hunters reach it. When the department announced the hunt in September, it hadn't yet set a quota.

The three villages are in the Lake and Peninsula Borough, southwest of Anchorage. Iliamna Lake is the largest lake in Alaska, at 1,115 square miles, and the Kvichak River drains it, flowing 50 miles to Kvichak Bay in the Bristol Bay region, according to a Bureau of Land Management report. Igiugig sits on the river's south bank where it leaves the lake, according to the village's website. Kokhanok is on the lake's south shore, and Levelock is on the lower Kvichak.

The caribou belong to the Northern Alaska Peninsula herd. In the mid-1980s, when the herd numbered about 20,000, part of it began spending winters between the Naknek River and Iliamna Lake, according to the department's most recent management report on the herd. The herd later fell to about 2,000 caribou by 2008. Hunting of the herd closed entirely in 2005 and reopened in 2016 with a limited permit hunt for resident subsistence hunters farther south on the peninsula.

When the herd's numbers fell, one group of caribou stayed in this area, the department said in the emergency order that opened the hunt. Recent radio collar data shows no interaction between them and the East Mulchatna herd, which winters west and north of Iliamna Lake. Winter counts and fall surveys from the past three years show the group growing, with high numbers of bulls and calves relative to cows. The department recommended a limited hunt to reduce the chance of habitat damage and a later decline in the group's numbers.

The hunt is open only to Alaska residents with a state hunting license and an RC504 registration permit. Each hunter can take two caribou of either sex but needs a separate permit for each one. The TC505 permit, for the herd's limited hunt farther south, isn't valid here.

The hunt covers the drainage of the Alagnak River, which flows into the Kvichak and is known locally as the Branch River, in Game Management Unit 9C. It also covers the part of Unit 9B south of the Kvichak River, Iliamna Lake, the Kakhonak River, Kakhonak Lake and Moose Lake, and south of the stream feeding Moose Lake up to the subunit boundary.

The state's 2026-27 hunting regulations list no open caribou season in that area. The emergency order opened one. The season runs through March 15 in the Unit 9C portion and March 31 in Unit 9B, unless hunters reach the quota first.

Federal restrictions apply in Katmai National Park and Preserve, the department says. In the preserve, federal subsistence rules allow one caribou with a federal registration permit. A request from Robert Hill of Kokhanok asks the Federal Subsistence Board to make it two caribou by state registration permit this winter, saying matching limits on state and federal land would lessen confusion for hunters and increase subsistence use. The board is scheduled to take it up Nov. 16.

Permits will also be available in person at the department's King Salmon office starting Nov. 17. If weather stops a scheduled visit, staff will reschedule it.

Successful hunters must report a kill within two days, to the King Salmon office or through the department's online reporting site. Every permit holder must return a hunt report within 15 days after the season closes, even those who took no caribou. The department says the reports give wildlife managers the information they need to understand the harvest.