Maine bear hunt is hot topic in Vt.

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With yet another election day behind us, there’s nothing but a few months (and a barrage of advertisements) standing between us and the more contentious November elections.

Come November, the big issue for many sportsmen will be the referendum question that would outlaw trapping bears and hunting them with hounds or over bait.

Veteran outdoorsman Pete Norris, the former owner of Nicatous Lodge in Burlington, checked in earlier this week to say that efforts to fight that referendum have been going well.

Norris is on the “speakers forum” list, meaning he travels far and wide to tell people why he thinks they should oppose the referendum.

He recently returned from Manchester, Vt., where he spoke to members of the Manchester Rod & Gun Club about the issue facing Maine sportsmen.

He was amazed at the response.

“The people who were there averaged [donations] of $100 per person,” Norris said. “They were blue-collar people who were giving me money out of their wallets. It just touched me that people would do this in another state.”

Norris said the club pledged to match each individual donation up to $4,000, and ended up matching nearly $2,000 given by its membership.

Norris said his speech focused on the hunting heritage and on safety and economic concerns.

And he told the Manchester group that sharing strong feelings about outdoors issues was a powerful bind.

“I said, ‘I can tell you, if this thing was happening in your state, I can guarantee a lot of people from the state of Maine would come down here to help you out,'” Norris said.

If you’ve been waiting for years to get the chance to hunt a Maine moose, odds are you already know all about the imminent lottery drawing.

If you’re a novice to the process, read on.

The annual lottery will be held Wednesday at the Northeastland Hotel in Presque Isle.

The public is welcome, and regular lottery attendees can tell you that the event is a lot of fun. Come early. Stay late. Have a snack. Browse the numerous booths.

And (if you’re really lucky) it’s quite a kick to be in the room when your name is drawn.

Or, so I’ve heard.

This year 2,895 permits will be drawn by the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

As always, you can find the complete list of moose permit winners in Thursday’s editions of the NEWS.

Though it clearly doesn’t qualify as an “outdoors” pursuit, I can’t resist sharing a few thoughts on Tuesday’s Eastern Maine championship baseball game.

Many in the crowd of 3,000 or so went to the game for the same reason I did: they wanted to see Mark Rogers pitch.

Rogers, the recent first-round draft pick of the Milwaukee Brewers, obliged, showing us what a major-league caliber arm looks like.

His fastball peaked at 96 mph, his curveball was devastating, and (not surprisingly) his Mount Ararat team won.

Dominant? You bet. Impressive? Wow.

Want proof? Try this: In all my years of watching baseball, I have never before seen a crowd of fans cheer a batter for merely fouling off a pitch.

Brewer High fans did that all night long. Not politely, mind you. Enthusiastically. If you closed your eyes, you’d have sworn a Witches hitter had cracked a single or double.

Every foul ball (there were relatively few) drew the same response.

Rogers may be a great pro player. He may never make the majors. But there is one thing you can count on: Years from now – no matter how his career pans out – Eastern Maine fans will still be talking about what they saw on Tuesday.

You should have been there.

Coming up: On Saturday, I’ll tell you about a must-read book that’s hot off the presses.

I’ve been feverishly reading the book, “A Fisherman’s Guide to Maine,” since I received it on Tuesday, and will share some thoughts about it.

One initial observation: The book, which was written by University of Maine biology professor Kevin Tracewski, has surpassed all of my expectations, and I haven’t even gotten to the sections that cover the areas I typically fish.

Tracewski’s painstaking work is evident, and each page provides a combination history lesson, fishing lesson, and geography lesson.

Also this weekend, Jason McCubbin and I will head up to Greenville to spend the day with guide Dan Legere.

Legere, the proprietor of the Maine Guide Fly Shop, donated a drift boat trip that we gave away in conjunction with the Eastern Maine Sportsman’s Show.

McCubbin was the winner, and he and I will spend the day fishing on Sunday. We may float the East Outlet of the Kennebec (if there’s enough water). We may drift the West Branch of the Penobscot.

That’s up to Legere.

Next week I’ll tell you how McCubbin made out, and will likely be able to pass along some more valuable advice from Legere, one of the state’s top guides.

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