Originally published on Sept. 20-21, 1980, the weekend before Maine’s first modern moose hunt began.
For the first time in 45 years, Maine will have an open season for moose — the world’s largest deer and the largest game animal in North America.
The six-day season begins at first light Monday and ends a week from today, Sept. 22-27, inclusive.
The legal moose-hunting zone embraces, roughly, the top two-thirds of the state, the area north of the East-West Canadian Pacific Railway line. Within that region there are certain areas closed to moose hunting, including Baxter Park and the Allagash Wilderness Waterway.
The Maine Fisheries and Wildlife Department has been monitoring the state’s herd that wildlife professionals say is growing at a rate unequalled on the continent.
Maine’s moose population is estimated at 20,000-plus, and in 1935, the last time the animal could be legally hunted, the estimate was 3,000.
Only 700 permits, for taking one moose each, were issued to the 32,269 Maine residents who applied. The permit applications, which cost $5, were drawn from a hopper in a televised public ceremony July 15 at the Bangor Civic Center.
Each resident applying for a permit was allowed to write the name of one companion to have with them during his or her hunt, and either the permit holder or friend allowed to shoot the moose.
With the arrival of the American colonists, with their axes and saws, the unbroken forests that moose need began to fall, and the animals were pushed north.
Moose are still plentiful in Canada, and Alaska has a herd estimated at 35,000, of which about 8,000 are shot each year.
Vermont and New Hampshire each have a few hundred moose in their northern regions, and there are a few in northern portions of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.
Minnesota has an alternate-year moose season. Last year, about 700 were bagged.
Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Idaho and Colorado have moose, and the first four have hunting seasons. About 2,000 moose are taken in those four states annually, with Wyoming accounting for three-quarters of the kill. Washington has a small moose population and a limited season. In recent years Washington has issued three moose-hunting permits annually, and the three holders have always been successful.
Moose also live in the boreal forests of Europe and Asia, and it is believed that the species came rather late — toward the end of the Pleistocene epoch — to North America, over the Bering land bridge from Siberia.
Maine moose-watchers know that the animal is a browser, not a grazer. It is this characteristic that so delights photographers, and some Maine legislators have expressed fear that the first legal hunt in 45 years might so diminish the numbers of the animals that they no longer would be generally available to pose for the camera-toting viewers.
The thought of a moose hunt remains controversial, but restricting it to the distant northern two-thirds of the state apparently mollified enough legislators to get the bill passed and Governor Brennan’s final signature.
Rep. Stanley Laffin of Westbrook during the legislative debate was quoted as asking, “Why is it so important to kill these friendly, helpless, lovable creatures?”
Rep. Laffin is Maine’s leading advocate of the death penalty, posting once again that basic question: “Are you a man or a moose?”
The moose is a strange and interesting animal. It is the largest member of the deer family, and male or bull often weigh well over a thousand pounds. Unlike the male whitetail deer which mates in November and has many wives, the bull mates in September and usually has but one. The female moose, which is called a cow, has from one to two calves in the spring.
The bull has a heavy set of sprawling webbed antlers and a long tuft of hair called a bell, which hangs down from his lower jaw well back from his chin. Although far from graceful, a large and well-developed moose cow with her antlerless head, big ears and skinny neck is just about the homeliest thing in the Maine woods.
Their hearing and sense of smell, however, are very keen. The slightest trace of a human, the snap of a twig, or splash of a paddle will send them racing away into the safety of the deep woods. Another strange thing hunters will likely observe next week is that the animals do not bound away like deer, but pace like a horse and at amazing speed. Moose prefer the great wilderness bogs to high ground. There they can feed on the succulent mosses, and roots of water plants, and in the streams and ponds on the largest roots of lillies.
Moose are extremely curious animals and quite belligerent.
In the last 45 years, while the law has been on the animal, there have been hundreds of instances where vehicles have been charged by enraged moose. And they have been known to charge into a speeding locomotive.
The only legal hunting since the law was clamped on protecting the animals in 1935, occurred in the last 10 years when Maine’s native Indian tribes have been allowed to shoot moose for subsistence on tribal land.
Maine wildlife professionals vary somewhat on their estimates of what the hunters’ success will be next week, but they agree it probably will not be more than 50 percent. Wildlife technicians assert that the current herd size could be maintained if up to 20 percent of the animals were shot each year.
Next week, beginning at first light Monday, bulls, cows or calves may be shot — providing, of course, one holds one of the 700 permit licenses drawn from 32,269 applications.