Fears that lenient laws allowing the shooting of Alaska big game for religious purposes might be leading Native hunters to lay waste to the moose of the 49th state appear to have proven unfounded.

Because of concerns about potlatch hunts, the Alaska Board of Game listened to a lengthy report Friday on the funeral practices of Alaska Native peoples. Author Bill Simeon of the Division of Subsistence told the board that potlatches, which involve mourning and feasting, are a deep-seated tradition that feature recently killed wildlife -- moose, caribou or deer -- as food.

Almost every time anyone of importance in the Native community dies, he said, a moose or two is shot for a potlatch to mourn his or her passing. A month to a year later, he added, another moose is shot for a second potlatch that ends the period of grieving.

Some in Alaska have wondered just how many moose are now being shot for these potlatches, and Simeon's presentation made it appear there could be conservation concerns about the number of moose killed. It didn't help matters when he told the board he didn't know how many of the big animals are being shot each year for this reason.

The Division of Wildlife Conservation did, however, manage to come up with some numbers. In a written report it supplied to the board, wildlife biologists totaled the statewide potlatch kill -- both reported and an estimate of unreported kills -- at less than 400 animals.

For comparison's sake, the department even included a list of moose kills around the state by means other than legal hunting. Those figures indicated the statewide kill for potlatch hunts is in the range of the number of moose shot illegally by poachers in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley each year, and a fraction of the moose killed by motor vehicles in the Municipality of Anchorage.

The road kill for Game Management Unit 14C, which basically comprises all of the sprawling Anchorage municipality, was pegged at 850 moose -- more than twice the statewide potlatch take. Statewide, cars killed a total of 3,308 moose, according to the report. That's close to 10 times as many moose as are shot, at this point in time, for potlaches. Trains kill a couple hundred more moose.

The report notes kills of caribou and Sitka black-tailed deer for potlatches were tiny: 51 caribou and 36 deer. Alaska State Fish and Wildlife Troopers have claimed more than twice as many caribou were killed and then left to rot after just one subsistence hunt went badly wrong near Point Hope in 2009. And biologists have, on occasion, counted more than 36 winter-killed deer on one or two Kodiak Island beaches after a particularly harsh winter.

Contact Craig Medred at craig(at)alaskadispatch.com.