After record-breaking heat over the summer, and with the memory of a sun-drenched September moose season a year ago still fresh in biologists’ minds, it appears that this year’s moose hunt will begin with more traditional late-September conditions.
A total of 835 moose hunters will head into the woods early Monday morning on the first of four hunting sessions to be staged this year. Long-range forecasts for Aroostook County, where many of the hunters hold permits, call for low temperatures close to freezing early in the week and daytime highs in the 50s.
“Last year we had a record hot hunt with four days in a row that were warmer than 80 degrees,” said state moose biologist Lee Kantar of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. “[Next week] we’re going to have some very cold nights, which means that at legal hunting time in the morning it’s going to be prime hunting.”
This year’s season dates:
— Sept. 24-29, with 835 bull permits allotted in 11 of the state’s Wildlife Management Districts.
— Oct. 8-13, with 1,170 bull permits allotted in 18 WMDs.
— Oct. 22-27, with 450 cow permits allotted in six WMDs.
— Oct. 29-Nov. 24 (including Oct. 27 for Maine residents), with 45 permits allotted in two WMDs.
Kantar said despite some warm weather that has lingered, he’d advise hunters to look for moose in typical fall spots rather than in summer haunts such as ponds.
“We have moose that like to take their summer vacation and go elsewhere, but they’re now back to what is their prime home range, which is really areas where there are timber harvests — cuts — that are between five to 15 years old,” Kantar said. “That’s prime habitat. And as we progress into fall, those are areas where we will find moose, because they’ll be feeding on browse as everything begins to die back.”
Kantar said that even though the weather is expected to be good, hunters need to be ready to process their moose quickly to avoid meat spoiling. And he reminded hunters that they’re allowed to quarter their moose and take it out of the woods in pieces.
The 2,500 permit-winners were chosen through a state-run lottery, with nonresidents receiving 10 percent of the permits and Maine residents taking the other 90 percent. After having their names drawn, Mainers were required to purchase a moose hunting permit for $52. Nonresidents had to pay $585 for their moose permits.
The September hunt and the first October hunt account for the bulk of the allotted permits — 2,005 of the 2,500 — and each of those sessions has something special to offer.
“September is the prime time to call in a bull, and that’s an incredibly enjoyable experience to go out, moose hunt, and call in a bull moose at a beautiful time of year when the leaves are changing and hopefully the weather’s cooling down,” Kantar said.
“The first October season tends to be on the tail end of the rut. There’s still some calling opportunity,” Kantar said. “People tend to experience that it’s harder to bring in a bull at that point, but for many people you can hear the bulls and cows calling, still, if you’re in the right spot.”
Kantar said a couple of changes are in store for this year’s hunt. One involves adding September hunting opportunities in some Wildlife Management Districts — 10, 18, 27 and 28 — that have been closed during September for several years. Kantar said that will allow hunters to have a better chance of calling in a moose than they might have in October.
“Another big change is that anyone who drew a permit in 27 and 28 can hunt either one of those areas,” Kantar said. “It’s a reciprocal zone right now. It’s basically one big zone [for this moose season].”
This year 57,141 applicants applied for a Maine moose permit. The breakdown: 39,396 of the applicants were Maine residents and 17,745 were nonresidents.
The overall odds of winning a permit were 1 in 20 this year. After those bonus “preference points” were added in, the odds of a single random number (chance) in the lottery being drawn was 1 in 81 for residents and 1 in 1,217 for nonresidents.
Maine’s modern moose hunt — the first since 1935 — began on an experimental basis back in 1980. That year, 39,269 Mainers applied for the drawing, seeking one of 700 available permits for a six-day September hunt.
After a one-year hiatus, the hunt returned in 1982 and has been held annually ever since.
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