The 2023 moose lottery results will be available by 6 p.m. Saturday at bangordailynews.com
Come late September, the haunting call of a female moose searching for a mate and the guttural grunt of a majestic bull asserting its dominance will echo across the Maine woods.
When they do, a throng of more than 4,000 hunters will spread out across the landscape, rifle in hand, hoping to put some delicious, high-quality meat on the family table.
That is the essence of the annual Maine moose hunt, which has been a time of anticipation, excitement and frustration for hunters of all ages from across the state and around the country.
The modern moose hunt is relatively new to Maine, having gotten its start in 1980. Ever since, few hunting pursuits have generated the kind of buzz created by the moose hunt.
Here is a look back through the history of the moose hunt and the lottery system used to select hunters.
The Maine moose hunt timeline
Moose are relatively scarce, with only a few thousand in the state, because of unregulated hunting. That included market hunting, by which animals would be shot and then sold for meat, and the continued clearing of forests for farmland.
After years of increasingly stringent hunting regulations, Maine ends moose hunting entirely.
Changes in forestry practices, including clear-cutting, have provided moose with more habitat and food sources. The consistent growth of the herd leads Maine to hand out 700 permits and stage its first modern moose hunt. A whopping 91 percent of hunters fill their tags. Those hunters are allowed to hunt anywhere north of the Canadian Pacific Railroad tracks during the last week of September. A total of 37,636 people — all Maine residents — apply for those permits. The hunt is considered a one-year, “experimental” hunt.
No moose hunt is held, but the state considers what it learned through the experimental hunt and concludes that moose hunting should resume the following year.
The moose hunt returns and 60,150 hunters apply for one of 1,000 permits. The New York Times reports that people from as far away as California and Saudi Arabia sign up for a chance at a permit.
A group calling itself SMOOSA — Save Maine’s Only Official State Animal — leads a referendum drive aimed at ending the moose hunt. The effort fails, with 60.5 percent of residents voting against the measure and 39.5 percent supporting it.
The state distributes 1,000 moose permits each year, 900 to Maine residents and 100 to nonresidents. The total number of applicants during this period ranges from a low of 54,825 (in 1983) to a high of 92,706 (in 1993).
An all-time record success rate is established as 96 percent of the 1,000 permit holders fill their tags.
The state increases the number of moose permits offered with the moose population rising. In 1994, 1,200 permits are allotted among a record 94,532 applicants. That record still stands. In 1999, the number of permits issued rises to 3,000, where it stays for three years.
A record 3,015 permits are allotted amid a steady decline of applicants since 1994. In 2009, only 56,654 people enter the lottery. Some who gave up on the process to say they believed, after seeing some hunters win permits more than once, that they might never be drawn.
In order to make the lottery more fair to those who haven’t been drawn, the state makes hunters who receive a permit sit out for three years before they can win another one. Until this point, hunters were not eligible for two years after hunting moose. Other rules are established to reward longtime entrants who have never been drawn by giving them more bonus chances in the lottery and setting a threshold for an applicant to automatically receive a permit.
A still-standing record of 4,110 permits are allotted. Applicant totals increase slightly, from just over 49,000 in 2010 to more than 53,000.
Citing new access to data that shows the state’s moose calves have struggled to survive through the winter, the state decreases the number of available permits by 25 percent, to 3,095.
Only 2,106 permits — the lowest total in 19 years — are allotted.
The state introduces a web-based registration for big game animals, including moose, that gives biologists and game wardens instant access to tagging records statewide.
Maine unveils its big game harvest dashboard, which provides daily big game tagging information to anyone with access to the internet.
This marks one of the worst years for success as 68 percent of hunters — 2,353 of 3,520 — harvest a moose as part of the traditional statewide hunt. The state also begins its adaptive hunt, an effort to determine whether decreasing the density of the herd by harvesting cows and calves, in an area of high moose concentration such as the study area (the western half of Wildlife Management District 4), can break or lessen the impact of winter ticks on the herd.
Maine hunters experience the least successful moose season in the 41-year history of the organized hunt. Only 62 percent of hunters (2,199 of 3,530) kill a moose during the statewide hunt (not including the adaptive unit). The previous low of 65.3 percent came in 2014.
The results of the 2023 moose lottery will be available by 6 p.m. Saturday at bangordailynews.com
Sources: Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife and the Bangor Daily News archive.
