QUESTION - Alaska, your personal experience?

Trapping is same as everywhere, start out with marten, like muskrats in trees. Lynx & wolverine easy in cubbys with conibear & runs with snares. Wolves are sharp, got to get them near kills, especially in sloughs along river. If your near caribou migration, you see old wolf.

If your in the valley, big lake, stay there, more opportunity and access to sking, decent hunting, and fishing. I worked up slope for 2 years when I first got here, got tired of not seeing my kids grow but was decent employment.

THe bush is quite difrferent than talkeetna & valley. That's suburbia. I did like willow and also felt at home in sutton, still have a place there and might go back in the future. Pretty tough living off the land in alaska and getting tougher by the year. I have a buddy that traps nov & dec 80 miles outside of red devil, has cabin there and deal with local village. Locals always shoot on making 10 gran off trapline, but usually only half of that, easier ways to make money thAN fighting over trapline ownership and waving pistols around, thats what occurs out in sticks.

Ya know if you have a degree the corporations are always looking for guys that will work under what industry pays. A way to get out in indian village and have a fair income, have to be the only white boy in nativeland for a year to figure them out and then you won't look down on them ever again, as most whites do deep inside.

I had a dogteam for 10 years but knees gave out, miss them too but get a skandic.

I lived there for five years doing whatever I could to keep food on the table. Despite the long winters with no work except shoveling snow, it was the only time and place that I felt truly free and in control of my own destiny I left a 70k job in Calif. 5 years ago. We have lived poor since then, but always had food on the table. I used to feel free here, but it is growing too fast. I'm hoping I can get 20 -30 years out of AK before it spoils.
Thanks for the encouragement.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.