A large crowd gathered under the tent during Saturday's Maine Moose Permit Lottery held at Mill Park in Augusta for the 2023 lottery announcement. Credit: Pete Warner / BDN

Maine’s annual moose permit drawing has become a time of celebration, and the state will be announcing this year’s lottery winners Saturday afternoon in Fort Kent.

This year, 4,105 people’s names will be drawn out of the approximately 72,294 applications at the event 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday in Fort Kent’s Riverside Park.

The reading of the names will not be live-streamed, so to find out as soon as possible if you have a permit, you will need to be in Fort Kent in person.

The Bangor Daily News will be publishing the list of moose permit lottery winners here after the drawing is complete.

The easy-to-search format that includes hunters names and hometowns, hunting dates and Wildlife Management Districts where the permit is assigned and the gender of the moose allowed. The list will be posted by 5:30 p.m. once the names have been read in Fort Kent.

There are other ways too. The state will notify you via U.S. mail or email because you will need to pay for the permit. It’s $52 for residents and $585 for non-residents.

The Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife will also publish the list Saturday.

The drawing coincides with Fort Kent’s annual World’s Largest Ploye festival. The ploye will be made on Friday at Lonesome Pine Trails. Businesses will offer music and other activities to celebrate the 2024 Moose Lottery Drawing on Saturday.

Other activities include Axe Women Loggers of Maine at 10 a.m., Hal Blood’s presentation on tracking at noon, a moose field judging contest/taxidermy exhibit, crosscut sawing, corn hole, kids’ games and face painting, a beer garden, Operation Game Thief, moose lottery wear, food and other vendors, and music.

Julie Harris is senior outdoors editor at Bangor Daily News. She has served in many roles since joining BDN in 1979, including several editing positions. She lives in Litchfield with her husband and three...

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