ASHLAND, Maine — As a steady stream of hunters and their friends returned from the deep woods on Monday — the first day of the 2015 Maine moose hunt — another group stayed put at Gateway Variety, the local tagging station, and waited for the action to commence.
Moose hunting — or at least the tagging portion of the hunt — is perhaps Maine’s oddest spectator sport.
“I come up here to bird hunt, and I always got here the very last day [of a six-day] moose season,” Kerry Lavalley said. “And this year, I said to my wife, ‘Why don’t we go up? I’d like to be there the first day to see them bring in the moose.’”
To Lavalley, going “up” meant driving to northern Maine from his home in Concord, New Hampshire, and by 8:30 a.m., he had arrived at the tagging station and was eagerly awaiting the first moose.
“I just wanted to see it,” he said.
And so he did: By noontime, 14 moose had been tagged at Gateway Variety on the opening day of the first of four hunting sessions. Hunters earn the right to participate through a state-run lottery.
This year, 2,740 hunters were issued moose permits. During this first session, 875 of those hunters — and their sometimes sizeable entourages — are expected to head into the woods to try to fill their tags.
The hunt is often a family affair, as Brian Marston of Harrington and his son, 16-year-old Jaxson, illustrate.
Jaxson went on his first hunt 14 years ago, when his dad had a permit.
This time around, Jaxson got to hunt for real … and it didn’t take long for his family to cash in, taking an 830-pound bull just 11 minutes after legal shooting hours began. The Marstons were the second to tag their moose in Ashland.
“We got in there early this morning because we thought we might only get an hour or so [of good hunting before the weather got too warm],” he said. “It’s supposed to be 70.”
By noon, temperatures were, as predicted, in the upper 60s.
But the Marstons were prepared: Brian Marston is a lobsterman, and he borrowed a large plastic tote from the wharf where he works. The tote went into the back of his truck, and before leaving coastal Harrington, he filled it with ice the hunters could use to cool down their moose.
“An insulated tote like that, it holds 14 [or] 15 bushels,” Brian Marston said. “So whatever a bushel of ice weighs. I don’t know, there’s probably 1,000 pounds of ice in there.”
After tagging their moose, the Marstons re-iced the moose and drove back to Harrington — about 3½ hours away — where they’d deliver it to their butcher. But they weren’t going to stay on the coast for long.
“Since I’ve already got the camp and the time off from the boat, I thought we’d come back up and do some sight-seeing,” Brian Marston said. “Sounds like a vacation to me.”
Nicholas Paradis, 13, of Industry, filled his tag with a 788-pound bull that sported a 15-point rack with a 47-inch spread. Finding that bull was a bit lucky, he admits.
“We came out [of one road] and there was a truck going into the road we were going to hunt,” Paradis said.
They opted for another route, and his mom spotted another moose. At 7:20 a.m., their moose hunt was over.
While several youth hunters arrived in Ashland eager to tell their tales, other successful hunters were much older, and excited for other reasons: After decades of entering the state-run lottery, they’d finally won a moose permit.
Among those was Dick Drysdale of Fairfield, who bagged a 732-pounder early on Monday.
“This is the first time in 32 years I’ve been drawn. I just figured I’d get too old and there wouldn’t be any moose when they got around to me,” Drysdale said with a laugh.
Drysdale was quick to credit his hunting companion, Will Ashe, for calling the moose within range after “talking” with the bull for almost an hour.
“I’m just a lawyer from Portland,” Ashe said with a grin. “Swear to god. I just do moose [calls]. My dad was a big guide in the ’80s. I can just call. That’s it.”
Drysdale said he thinks Ashe was selling himself short.
“Will’s a great caller. He learned from Clay Tranten up in Kingfield, who’s probably one of the best callers in the state,” Drysdale said. “They almost sound like they’re not human. And that’s what you’ve got to do.”
Alan O’Neal of Presque Isle had been waiting 25 years for his own permit, and earned top honors on Monday morning, bringing in the biggest moose among early hunters. His bull weighed 930 pounds and had antlers with 15 points and a 50-inch spread.
Before the tagging began, O’Neal found time for some jocularity.
“Do you mind if I take a tooth?” Gateway employee Heather Stokes asked as she prepared to mark down the data required of all successful moose hunters … a tooth — from the moose — being an optional item.
“Take two or three, dear,” O’Neal said, laughing.
He stopped laughing when Stokes delivered the punchline.
“OK. From you?”
O’Neal said his scout, cousin Scott Poitras, had seen the bull in the same spot three days in a row, counting Monday morning.
And how did his hunt go?
“Very fast,” O’Neal said. “We waited for [legal shooting], then walked down, and there it was. [Someone] said, ‘Unload.’ And that’s what we did. It was an awesome hunt.”
Nearby, Lavalley, the spectator from New Hampshire, looked skyward as the moose was winched up and weighed.
Moments like this? That’s why he was in Ashland on Monday.
“What a massive animal,” he said, softly.
