Opinion ID: 1445031
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: introduction

Text: Alaska's big game tag regulation requires a brown bear hunter to purchase a numbered, nontransferable tag before hunting and then, after taking a bear, affix and keep the tag on the animal until it is stored, consumed, or exported from the state. 5 AAC 92.012(c). Brown bear sealing regulations require that a hunter keep the skin and skull of a bear if taken in certain game management units, and within thirty days, have a state official stamp a seal on these parts. At sealing, the official obtains a tooth from the skull, and the hunter signs a sealing certificate. 5 AAC 92.165. [1] At issue in this appeal is the validity of these regulations under Alaska's subsistence preference law. In July 1985, appellee/cross-appellant, Riley T. Morry, an Inupiat subsistence hunter, was charged with shooting a brown bear without complying with the above regulations. As a result of a criminal prosecution brought against him for failure to comply with the regulations (later dismissed), Morry filed for declaratory relief and damages against the State of Alaska and Trooper Don Wilson, challenging the validity of 5 AAC 92.012 and 5 AAC 92.165 under both federal and state subsistence laws. Kwethluk IRA Council is the governing body for the Yup'ik Eskimos of the Native Village of Kwethluk which is located in the Lower Kuskokwim area of Southwest Alaska. Kwethluk intervened in this case following unsuccessful rule-making proposals it had made to the Board of Game seeking changes in various regulations which were being applied to the subsistence hunting of brown bears by the people of Kwethluk.