Odds favor Mainers for permits

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When you drive for three hours, then stand in a crowded room for three more, fingers crossed, hoping for the best, your mind can play tricks on you.

After about 10 minutes, you begin thinking you hear things you don’t. Like, for instance, your name being drawn as a lucky winner of a coveted Maine moose permit.

After 20 minutes, you give up … until someone else who shares your first name and middle initial has their name drawn, that is … at which point your heart stops, your chin pops up off your chest, and you begin to pay very close attention.

For a minute or so.

Then, you become numbed by the monotony and begin to play mathematics games with yourself, just so you won’t feel badly when you don’t get a permit … again.

And you end up with things like this: Facts, culled from this year’s lottery at the Northeastland Hotel in Presque Isle.

Fact Number 1: Seven different “John R’s” got permits this year. I was not among them.

More interesting to most others is this: Most of us have heard someone say that they think those “from away” are taking permits away from us real-live Mainers.

Not so fast.

This year, 53,205 Mainers received 2,610 permits. That’s a success rate of just 4.9 percent. That’s not great … and it’s why so many people have entered the lottery for 20 years or more and have never had their names drawn.

If you do the seemingly simple math, it would seem that if you enter for 20 years, with a nearly 5 percent-per-year success rate, you’re bound to win eventually.

Unfortunately, my old college statistics professor would point out, it doesn’t work that way.

Next year (given the same rough numbers, and assuming – albeit falsely – that you have exactly as many chances as the next guy), you’ll still have a 4.9 percent chance.

Twenty years from now? You’ll still have only a 4.9 percent chance. Past failure, stats gurus will tell you, do not serve as an indicator of future success.

Darn.

Out-of-staters? Well, 20,550 wanted permits, and only 285 got them. That’s a success rate of just 1.4 percent.

With all that said, there are a couple of ways folks can improve their luck.

Bonus chances – called “preference points” by the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife – are given to a prospective hunter each time he fails.

That program has been in place since 1998, so this year’s unluckiest losers could have cashed in with six extra chances; one for each year of futility.

In addition, Mainers are allowed to purchase up to six chances in the lottery, meaning some had 12 shots – six “preference points” and six “chances” to get a lucky draw.

You may be surprised, however, at what happens with those preference points and chances. Contrary to popular belief, your name is never actually drawn from the hopper. Not really.

According to DIF&W programmer/analyst Mark Ostermann, each prospective hunter is actually given a simulated chance to draw numbers from a cyber barrel.

The goal: Get a low number.

“When we go to your application, you [theoretically] go to the barrel and pull chances and preference points, and you get to keep the lowest number [that you draw],” Ostermann said.

Someone with the maximum number of preference points and chances would take 12 pulls from the barrel.

“Then you step aside and the next application comes up [on the computer] and pulls from the barrel however many chances and preference points it has,” he said.

And once each prospective hunter has a number, the permits are allotted, starting with the lowest number pulled.

“At that point, it’s very straight-forward,” Ostermann said. “The guy with the smallest number wins. And the guy next to him, also, until we use up all [2,895] applications for the permits.”

Complicating matters are the preferences (not to be confused with “preference points”) of each hunter.

While some are flexible and just want to hunt a moose … any moose … anywhere … any time … others aren’t.

On their application, hunters can indicate their unwillingness to hunt cows, for instance, or to participate in either session of the hunt, or to hunt anywhere other than a certain Wildlife Management District.

If those hunters are drawn, but their choices can’t be met, there is no negotiation; they’re simply eliminated from contention and the next hunter’s application is considered.

According to Mark Latti of the DIFW, plenty of hunters “deselect” themselves each year because they have a particular hunt in mind.

One final fact: Though the computer has plenty of work to do on lottery day, and though reading off all the names takes time, the actual draw takes very little time at all.

“It takes about eight minutes to process through all 73,000 applications, [and compile the list to be read]” Ostermann said.

The seemingly endless saga of Lucky Carl Urquhart and his good-natured nemesis (me) took an unfortunate turn (for the nemesis) on Wednesday.

You may remember that Carl and I have been related, ever since he married my younger sister several years back.

And ever since I began writing about the outdoors, Carl has had a lot of fun reminding me how lucky he is … and how lucky his father is … and how lucky his son is.

Any-deer permits? They get ’em. Turkey permits? They get ’em.

But moose permits? Nope. Not Carl. Not one.

Since I’d never been drawn for anything (save an any-deer permit for a region I didn’t plan to hunt), I always chose to focus on Maine’s top permit lottery. I played the moose card.

“You’re gonna be some unhappy when I get a moose permit,” I’ve told him countless times. “If you’re nice, I may even let you tag along to drag the critter to the truck.”

On Wednesday, as I stood in a crowded function room in Presque Isle, I heard the speaker utter a familiar name … a familiar hometown … and my stomach began to ache.

I slowly trudged outside, unholstered my cell phone, and called to pass on the news.

“You feel like going moose hunting?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Do I?” he answered.

“Yes. You do,” I told him.

After a few minutes of chatting (and, thankfully, no razzing on his part), Carl and I said goodbye.

After 24 years of waiting, he’d finally had his name drawn.

Me? I’ve only been in the lottery twice … and I’m still waiting.

Maybe Lucky Carl will let me tag along … just to drag the moose to the truck.

Worth the trip: When Dan Legere took Jason McCubbin and I on a drift boat trip down the East Outlet of the Kennebec last Sunday, he stopped to chat with an angler who had an interesting story to tell.

It seems the evening before, the fly fisherman had been wading the East Outlet near his campsite, and had caught quite a fish.

If you’ve fished East Outlet before, you’ve probably caught your share of nice fish.

A “nice” fish, I find, is what we anglers tend to call every fish we catch that ends up in the slot between “tiny” and “wow.”

This man? He caught a “wow.”

The landlocked salmon measured 26 inches, the fisherman told Legere. Legere, who spends hundreds of hours on the East Outlet each year, said he hasn’t seen one bigger in a long time.

Since we’ve been talking about moose … and Dan Legere … it seems appropriate to mention the fact that Legere will be heading on a moose hunt this fall. His wife, Penny, got a bull permit for Wildlife Management District 8, which is on the west side of Moosehead Lake.

Chances are good that Penny will let Dan tag along for the hunt. Rumor is, Dan Legere is a better-than-fair moose-caller, and may be asked to lure a big bull into range for his wife.

Coming up: I’m taking a week’s vacation (though, I’m sure, it probably seems as though hunting, fishing and writing for a living is nearly a vacation unto itself).

Chances are good that I’ll wet a line in a few places I’ve been wanting to visit. And chances are, I’ll have a few stories to share when I return.

Come to think of it, the fact that I’m going to do the same thing on vacation that I do when I’m working is probably a pretty good sign that my job’s not going to be listed among the world’s least desirable any time soon.

The only difference between next week and last week for me? I don’t have three column deadlines looming.

Either way, I’m hanging up the “Gone Fishing” sign for a week.

Hope to see you out there.

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