If you’ve spent the better part of your breakfast frantically turning the pages of this newspaper in hopes of finding out if you’d received a doe permit this year, let me be the first to tell you I’m sorry.

You won’t find that information in today’s paper. Before you read any further, let me assure you that the info is available to you on our Web site: www.bangornews.com. We’ve provided a handy link to the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife’s site, and all the permit-holders are listed there. Also, the department will mail notification to successful applicants over the next two weeks.

Of course, you’re curious. Why did we say we’d print the names? Why deviate from the course the Bangor Daily News has always taken?

There is a good reason. It’s better than the “My dog ate my homework” excuse. Even better than the “The check is in the mail” excuse. Much better.

When you hear it, I doubt you’ll disagree. But one fact remains. We told you we’d print the doe permit (or, as the state calls it, “any-deer permit”) results. We aren’t doing that. And we don’t like to lead our readers astray like that.

Now, here’s the excuse: If we had followed through and printed the doe permits like we always do, you would have injured your back trying to lift the resulting newspaper off your front porch this morning.

That’s because this year, the information we received from DIF&W was a bit different than it has been in recent years. This year, instead of the convenient (but somewhat confusing) list of numbers that corresponded to the last two digits on a lucky hunter’s license, we received an actual list of hunters … hometowns … and the Wildlife Management District they’d won a doe permit for.

What does that mean to you? Well, it means this: In past years, we were able to print the any-deer permits in a compact space on one page. Most years, it took up less than two columns of space (or, to the typographers in the audience, less than 40 column inches of type).

Not this year.

When we received the e-mail that included the any-deer winners, we quickly figured out we had a major problem on our hands.

To run just the list of in-state any-deer permit winners, it would have taken more than 6,000 column inches of space. That’s 6,000 column inches of the little-bitty agate type. And that’s more than 50 newspaper pages worth of space. Make that 50 “clear,” or ad-free newspaper pages.

Of course, that wasn’t feasible.

And it was a complete surprise.

Mark Latti, DIF&W’s spokesman in matters of this kind, said his department had made a major change … which, of course, newspapers noticed.

As DIF&W implemented its computerized licensing system, it allowed people to do things differently. First, they could apply for any-deer permits on the Internet. They could actually print out their licenses on their home computer printer.

Also, the state allowed any-deer permit applicants to apply for up to three zones this year, with the computer filling slots in the random draw. If a hunter’s first choice of Wildlife Management District was filled, for instance, the computer would see if the hunter’s second choice was still available.

Those changes made the old system of listing winners unacceptable.

“When we switched [style of licenses], we got away from that ‘last two digit’ thing,” Latti said. “And when we went to the three zones, we had to do things differently. Now it’s run like the turkey and moose permit drawings are.”

Except for one thing: In the moose drawing, newspapers may choose to run a hefty list of 2,500 or 3,000 hunters, depending on the year. In the turkey drawing, the number is bigger, but manageable.

The any-deer permits? It’s not too hard to get one of those. Thus, the problem.

According to the DIF&W, 72,600 permits were issued in Wednesday’s drawing, including 947 bonus permits and 10,164 landowner permits. That means 71,653 of the permit-holders would have been listed in today’s paper, had we decided to print twice as many pages as usual … scrap all those pesky advertisements … and turn all of our youthful carriers into weightlifters.

All joking aside, that wasn’t an option.

NEWS Executive Editor A. Mark Woodward said that this paper looks forward to working with DIF&W to see if this year’s problem can be addressed.

“This is about effective communication with our readers,” Woodward said. “We were looking [to publish permit-winners], and this may end up in clogging up their Web site, and ours, because that’s the only way that people will be able to find out [the information].”

Woodward said the sheer volume of any-deer permits means they couldn’t be printed in this year’s format. He drew a comparison between the more manageable moose-lottery results, and the any-deer drawing.

“The order of magnitude is considerably greater, and this is a system that doesn’t work for doe permits if the objective is getting this information out to the public so that people can find out quickly if they were successful in getting a doe permit,” Woodward said.

“We try to cooperate the best we can with the department. It’s unfortunate that this year that the person who ultimately suffers here is the person who is frustrated trying to find a Web site to see if they got a doe permit,” he said.

John Holyoke can be reached at jholyoke@bangordailynews.net or by calling 990-8214 or 1-800-310-8600.