BANGOR – Hunters are still rising at dawn to stalk wild turkeys, and doing their best to sound like lovesick hens. But as the traditional spring turkey hunting season winds down, bowhunting enthusiasts can start looking forward to their second chance.

Beginning this fall, the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife may endorse a second turkey season, set aside just for those die-hard archery fans who hunt with a bow and arrow.

Mike Rovella of Winthrop definitely will be among the faithful if the first fall turkey season opens as proposed. Spokesman for the Maine Bowhunters Association, Rovella said he would expect at least 6,000 bowhunters to jump at the chance to take part in a fall turkey hunt.

“I’m an old die-hard,” Rovella said. “I really enjoy being one on one with the animal, and I come back with nothing a lot of the time because of it.”

Rovella worked with state biologists and the Maine chapter of the National Wild Turkey Federation to lobby for a fall turkey hunt bill for bowhunters, which was approved during the last legislative session.

If rules proposed by DIF&W are approved later this month, the hunt will be limited to the home range of the state’s largest wild turkey flocks, lands south and west of Brewer. The hunt will last two weeks, Oct. 21 through Nov. 1, 2002.

Unlike in the spring season, fall hunters will not have to go through the permit lottery that keeps two-thirds of prospective hunters from participating in the spring season. Those with the interest and the ability could take the hen or tom of their choice during the fall bow season.

Opportunity does not equal success for a bowhunter, however.

“Bowhunting is the most difficult form of hunting there is,” Rovella said. “It’s a full-time job.”

In recent years, a tiny fraction of the turkeys tagged each spring were shot using a bow. In 1998, the most recent year for which DIF&W survey data were available, only 41 of 2,250 turkeys statewide were taken by bowhunters.

State biologists hope that the small number of turkeys taken by bowhunters will keep southern populations in check without harming the overall population.

Not everyone is pleased with the proposal.

A group of hunters who favor muzzleloaders, antique-style “primitive firearms” that use gunpowder, sent a petition to DIF&W asking that they be included in the fall hunt.

Ed Stubbs of Waterboro and other members of the Maine Muzzleloaders Association said that muzzleloaders are a tiny niche in the hunting world, and their success rates and methods have as much in common with bowhunters as with modern rifles.

Department administrators have not embraced the idea, however, because of the difficulty in enforcing a muzzleloader-only hunt.

“It’s pretty hard to tell after a turkey is shot whether it was a muzzleloader or a shotgun that did it,” said Ken Elowe, director of resource management, at a recent DIF&W meeting.

A public hearing on the fall turkey hunt is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Monday, May 13, at the Pine Tree State Arboretum, located at 153 Hospital St. in Augusta.

DIF&W will accept public comment until May 23. Written comments should be sent to Andrea Erskine, Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, #41 SHS, Augusta, Maine 04333-0041.

Misty Edgecomb is the outdoor reporter for the Bangor Daily News. She can be reached at medgecomb@bangordailynews.net.