MAINE MOOSE

FAIR CHASE

SUMMER 2020

MAINE

MOOSE

Maine is a long way from

Montana, and the odds of

drawing a tag are even longer.

DIY

JUSTIN SPRING

B&C PROFESSIONAL MEMBER

DIRECTOR OF BIG GAME RECORDS

Photos Courtesy of Rebecca Spring

Every hunter I know has a

species or a hunt that they dream

of. Be it a mature whitetail, a

Dall’s sheep hunt out of a back-

pack, or a spot-and-stalk bear

hunt in Alaska, it’s the hunt that

when someone asks, “If money

and time weren’t an issue, what

hunt would you do?”

The reason I started this series was threefold:

ﬁrst, to show people those dream hunts aren't as

unaainable as they may appear on the surface;

second, to encourage hunters to daydream about

far-oﬀ destinations; third, stay commied to con-

servation to ensure the opportunity continues for

not only us but for future generations.

From a young age, my dream hunt was for a

moose. In 2008, my temporary job situation within

the ﬁsheries and wildlife management world stabi-

lized when I was hired by the Boone and Crocke

Club. It was then that I began seing aside money

for applications to all states with moose hunts that

were aﬀordable to me.

As I reviewed entries of magniﬁcent bull

moose from Canada, Alaska, Maine, and the Rocky

Mountain states, the daydreams of a moose hunt

began to take shape. The idea of a wilderness ﬂoat

hunt in Alaska was the ultimate dream, though the

logistics and safety nets I wanted in place just nev-

er seemed to materialize. In late spring of 2015, I

checked draw results for Montana, and the bonus

points for moose said zero—I had drawn a tag for

Shiras' moose close to our house. I scouted hard,

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mainly by myself. My wife and

I called in a ﬁne bull on the

seventh day of the moose sea-

son. It was only the second

time she had been away from

our 5-month-old son. It was

truly an amazing experience

to be able to share with her on

a dream hunt, one that I never

thought would be topped.

Then came the next year.

I got a message asking

if I was interested in an Alas

kan moose ﬂoat hunt. First,

my reply was “Yes,” then “Who

is this by the way?” We spent

over a year planning the

scheduled 20-day ﬂoat. On day

14, the ﬁrst bull of the trip

materialized; within a few

minutes, I was standing over

a 60-inch Alaska moose.

Again, a trip I thought could

never be topped and the cul-

mination of my hunting

dreams had been realized…

Until 2018.

That is when my wife

texted me that I had been

“picked” (the term Maine res-

idents used for those success-

ful in the draw) for a northern

Maine moose permit.

Maine’s loery system

for their permits is done every

year during the Moose Festi-

val held at varying locations

around the state. It is a week-

end event with vendors and a

moose-calling contest culmi-

nating in the public draw for

permits. If there was any-

thing I could change about

this hunt, it would have been

being at Moose Fest to expe-

rience that part of it, but the

problem with a loery is you

don’t know who will be

drawn. Maine is a long way

from Montana, and the odds

of drawing a tag are even lon-

ger. Most residents draw one

permit in a lifetime, hopeful-

ly. The names are made pub-

lic, and within a few days of

being drawn I began geing

brochures from registered

Maine guides and their out-

ﬁing services.

In addition, I got a

phone call from a B&C Oﬃcial

Measurer who is also a guide

in northern Maine. He had

already booked a client that

bought one of the silent auc-

tion tags available every year,

but he was invaluable in his

local knowledge, and he put

me in contact with a friend of

his who lived in the unit. At

ﬁrst, I was fairly baﬄed that

people would be so

accommodating to a nonresi-

dent who drew in their state,

but I would soon learn this was

more commonplace than rar-

ity among the folks of Maine.

Maine is by far the

cheapest state to apply for a

moose tag. A $15 application

fee gets your name in the hat.

More chances can be pur-

chased by a nonresident,

though the year I drew was the

fewest chances I had ever pur-

chased. It all comes down to a

draw where you need to beat

out roughly 100 other appli-

cants for one of the 10 percent

of moose tags allocated to

non-residents. If you do get

picked, the tag cost is $584.

While this seems like a decent

chunk of change, Montana is

the next cheapest at $750, then

Alaska at $800 all the way up

to Wyoming and Idaho who

each will ding a nonresident

over $2,000 for a moose tag.

The moose hunting in

Maine is truly unlike anything

else I have ever experienced.

A look on Maine’s moose lot-

tery page reveals they issue

2,832 moose permits. Wildlife

Management District (WMD)

1 issues 475 alone—a ﬁgure

that exceeds the total number

of moose permits Montana

issues statewide. When you

ﬁgure that Maine’s WMD 1

total area is 1,442 square miles

and hunter success for that

unit over the last ﬁve years has

topped 80 percent, you get an

idea of the moose densities.

The further south you

go in the state, moose densi-

ties decrease, and therefore,

success rates are generally

lower. I wouldn’t recommend

taking any available tag,

which is an option in the draw,

as some units will be very dif-

ﬁcult to ﬁnd success in. Nine

of the northern units oﬀer 100

or more tags with success

varying between 66 and 95

percent. These are some great

statistics, but this also means

they are the most popular

units for which people apply.

The season structure

has three time periods. The

September hunt is during the

rut when calling can be very

eﬀective, but temperatures

can be very warm. October is

the most popular time; the

weather is cooler, and foliage

can be falling, allowing great-

er visibility. The November

hunts, for the most part, are

units with lower moose den-

sity and success rates vary

greatly but are generally

LEFT: Justin with his ﬁrst moose, a Shiras' moose from Montana, in 2015.

RIGHT: Justin's Alaska bull from 2016, taken on a DIY ﬂoat hunt.

FAIR CHASE

SUMMER 2020

signiﬁcantly lower. All the

season dates and success rates

are available from Maine on

their website.

Much of the land in the

northern part of the state is

owned by timber companies,

which generally allow access.

The Maine North Woods is a

block of privately held timber-

lands. Access, including camp-

ing, is allowed through gated

roads for a nominal day fee.

This active timber manage-

ment creates nearly ideal

moose habitat; thus, contrib-

uting to the abundance. The

company’s willingness to allow

access to pursue these moose

is one of the best examples of

landowner stewardship ben-

eﬁing hunters today.

For folks used to the

West where research shows

elk want to be at least 4 miles

from the nearest road to feel

safe, the access in Maine will

seem overabundant as loging

roads seem to be nearly every-

where. Interestingly this ac-

cess allows many folks the

ability to get their moose out

whole. With my approach, I

was limited in the gear I could

get to Maine, but a standard

pack frame along with my ﬁeld

processing gear—including a

couple solid skinning knives,

a caper, a small steel and a

small folding saw—did the

trick. Be advised that folks

will think it odd when you

show up to the check station

and the bull is in pieces—deﬁ-

nitely legal in Maine. But when

I was questioned as to why he

was in pieces and I replied,

“The moose I like was a ways

from the road.” The reply I got

was, “Well, I woulda’ found a

diﬀerent moose!”

The second thing that

I had never experienced was

the fact that all the meat pro

cessors had been booked up

since the draw results posted.

Standard practice in Maine is

to call a processor and reserve

a time once you have a tag. I

had originally planned to pro-

cess the meat with the help of

my buddy who came along on

the hunt and split it up for the

trips home, but the weather

was too warm to hang the

meat for an extended period.

Since I was looking only for

the use of a cooler, I wasn’t too

worried, but aer the ﬁrst two

or three places I called said

without a reservation they

had no room, I was starting to

get concerned and began con-

sidering an all-night moose

cuing marathon trying to get

it all knocked out.

Finally, I got in contact

with a processor who was will

ing to let me use his storage,

and when I got there, again the

questions regarding the moose

being in pieces and already

skinned out continued. Seeing

that I showed up with clean

quarters in game bags, he of-

fered to process the moose for

me. Aer a quick discussion

with my hunting partner and

considering we would have

roughly a 30-40 minute drive

each way to get pieces of meat

to cut on, this turned out to be

the better choice and well

worth the couple hundred

bucks charged.

Lodging in Maine also

should be secured early. A

very large number of Maine

residents have camps in vary-

ing regions and a VRBO search

reveals many of these are

available to rent very aﬀord-

ably with varying degrees of

amenities. Also, a large

The accommodations were rustic, but the wood burning stove and

propane lights of the historic camp's cabins added to the experience.

FAIR CHASE

SUMMER 2020

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SUMMER 2020

number of sporting camps or

lodges exist in Maine and

many oﬀer not only lodging

but guiding, meat processing

and meals. Depending on what

type of hunt you want to do,

the options are almost end-

less. Be sure, though, that if

you do hire an outﬁer, you

carefully discuss how the

hunt will take place. Maine

law states that you cannot

have a loaded ﬁrearm in the

vehicle, but it is legal to shoot

from the road if it isn’t “hot

top” as they call it. (It took me

a bit to correlate the term with

asphalt or blacktop.)

Some of the outﬁer

brochures I received touted

the number of guides and ve-

hicles that would be looking

for your moose if they were

hired and even oﬀered up the

private channel radios they

used as an aribute to aract

your business. This is not uni-

versal to all outﬁers by any

means, but it is worth inves

tigating. I personally would

have been disappointed to

arrive on a guided hunt to ride

roads endlessly and listen to

radio chaer of other guides

looking for a moose on the

road for me to shoot.

For my hunt, I chose to

ﬂy commercially from Mon-

tana to northern Maine since

the drive time, according to

Google, is 46 hours from my

house. This le me with the

issue of ﬁnding a vehicle to use

for the hunt. While I didn’t

need anything fancy, I wanted

something that was big enough

to haul up to a 900-pound an-

imal and had reliable enough

tires to drive the loging

roads. The gravel on the roads

isn’t especially sharp or large

compared to some places I

have been, but low-ply rental

vehicle tires may have issues,

if the rental agreement even

allows you onto gravel roads.

The idea I came up with was

to put the word out that if

someone was willing to let me

borrow a truck that was in the

northeast portion of the U.S.,

I would buy a brand new set of

tires for them. The cost to rent

a vehicle large enough for what

I intended to use it for would

have been nearly $1,000. I ﬁg

ured even then I may have to

buy tires, so I was beer oﬀ to

just budget $1,500 to buy the

best set of tires I could for the

vehicle I would be using and

hopefully someone would oﬀer

the use of a vehicle.

In this process I

reached out to a friend who

has a fairly major following on

Facebook as he was on season

3 of “Naked and Afraid.” He

lives in Florida, which is still

not all that close to Maine, but

it’s less than half the drive

distance from Montana. As I

was asking him to put out

feelers for me, the wheels

started turning and he men-

tioned that to go on a moose

hunt, he may be willing to

make the drive. At this point,

another unique thing about

Maine tags came into play:

when you draw a tag, you can

designate a sub-permittee

who is allowed to hunt with

you and legally can shoot the

moose as well. The tag is only

good for one moose but I told

him that he was welcome to

back me up and not to hesitate

if I missed. And, if we couldn’t

ﬁnd a mature bull I was inter-

ested in during the ﬁrst four

days of the six-day season, I

would let him be the shooter

on the last two. Being one for

adventure, he jumped on

board right away.

Another option I

looked into was buying an

older used vehicle there then

either sell it there online or

drive it back and sell it at

home. With the rental or pur

chase options though, there

was a far higher risk than

having a friend go along with

you and bring his truck.

In terms of geing the

meat home, I had a shipper

account set up with Delta Air-

lines ahead of time. The meat

was frozen solid when we

picked it up from the

RIGHT: Justin

admires his Maine

bull where it fell.

BELOW: Justin

taking a break on

the ﬁrst trip out

of the brush with

hindquarters and

the group's riﬂes.

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SUMMER 2020

Be advised that folks

will think it odd when

you show up to the check

station and the bull is in

pieces—deﬁnitely legal

in Maine.

FAIR CHASE

SUMMER 2020

processor split up between

four coolers we purchased

there, which strangely was far

harder than I would have ex-

pected. The two Walmarts

there were sold out for the

season. My total cost to ship

back my half of the processed

moose was around $300.

This trip still probably

ranks as my all-time favorite

DIY. The hunting partner I

selected had a great aitude,

and he was absolutely amazed

by some of the experiences,

which were commonplace to

me. The idea of frost in your

bootlaces aer hiking an old

loging road in September or

being able to walk through a

patch of thigh-deep brush and

not be worried about snakes

was something new to him.

He was stunned by cleaning a

moose and puing 100-plus

pound quarters on a pack.

Even though I cautioned him

numerous times to slow down

as we had a long day ahead of

us, he was grinning ear to ear

through all of it and never

really did take a breather.

The fact that pretty

much everywhere you stop in

Maine has lobster rolls on the

menu isn’t a bad thing. Also,

I discovered all their hotdogs

are very red. Something many

folks probably wouldn’t have

noted, but to this gas-station-

hot-dog connoisseur who

plans road trips around hot-

dog quality on the route, I was

intrigued. If you are intrigued

as well, they taste just ﬁne,

especially when combined

with a cheddar broccoli bite.

And speaking of broccoli, it

may seem a bit strange in a

moose hunting story, but

broccoli is grown in Maine

and it turns out that moose

love broccoli. So don’t over-

look the broccoli ﬁelds as a

potential destination, and

don’t overlook the broccoli

bites available in the gas sta-

tions. Most of the fun of a DIY

is learning a new area and in

this case a new culture.

Look for special guest

authors in future

installments of

our DIY series.

costs

MSE ALICATION AND TAG: $599+

RENTAL OF A CABIN FOR A WK: $150

No water, propane lights and cook stove, wood burning stove

PLANE TICKET FROM MONTANA: $500

GROCERIES FOR THE WK FOR TWO: $250

MSE PROCEING: $200-300

FLYING MEAT HOME: $300+

Depending on airline and freight or baggage

GAS FOR THE HUNT: $200

VEHICLE RENTAL $1,250

Or new tires for your buddy

TOTAL: $3,549

NOTE:

Driving yourself could save around $2,000.

Justin and Ofﬁcial Measurer and sub-permittee Justin Bullard

with Justin's 2018 Maine bull.