Mainers were mourning the loss of their caribou a century ago even before the last of the mysterious animals were spotted high on the slopes of Mt. Katahdin several years later. Some people realized the state had done too little to preserve the dwindling herds from hunters as civilization gradually encroached on the state’s great northern wilderness.

A Bangor Daily News editorial summed up the situation on Oct. 5, 1904, during the first week of the deer hunting season. The moose hunt was still 10 days away. Hunters hadn’t been able to shoot a caribou legally since 1899.

“Until 50 years ago, caribou were nearly as plentiful as deer in Maine. Since then our legislatures have made small effort to conserve the herds, but the numbers of animals have decreased constantly in spite of legal restrictions,” the writer lamented. “… Such small protection as the law has afforded came too little too late to call back the vanishing herds.”

The writer scoffed at the guides who said the caribou would be coming back, that the beasts had merely roamed away for awhile like tourists or migratory birds: “The guides of today are saying what the woodsmen said 30 years ago when the last wolf was shot in Maine. The tale is similar to the one told concerning the American panther, which was formerly a resident of Maine – though never plentiful.”

The writer pointed out that state protection had helped boost the number of deer and moose. Why hadn’t more been done to protect the caribou?

The fabled North American reindeer fascinated many Maine people for much of the 20th century. No one was sure what had happened to them. No one was sure when the last caribou traversed the backcountry or scaled the heights of Mt. Katahdin.

One young man who set out to answer these questions was Ralph S. Palmer, a student of zoology at the University of Maine. He studied a survey of the state’s game wardens conducted in 1936 by the university’s Wildlife Conservation Department. Then he did some research of his own, contacting older folks and checking various stories of caribou sightings. He published his findings in 1938 in the Journal of Mammalogy.

The first time caribou were mentioned by the state’s Commissioners of Inland Fisheries and Game, according to Palmer, was in 1886: “The reports to us are of plenty and in all sections. We have heard of many being killed, but of all our game animals, the caribou is the most capable of taking care of itself,” the commissioners concluded without irony.

As the years went by, if caribou were scarce one year in a

certain area, it was assumed they had drifted somewhere else, and nobody became too concerned. The reports were always based on unscientific anecdotes from “reliable sources,” Palmer found. State officials were clearly being fed whatever the hunting guides, the hunters and the others with a special interest felt like telling them.

In 1895, the commissioners reported the caribou actually seemed to be increasing. They republished in their official report parts of a speech delivered by S. L. Crosby, the leading taxidermist in Bangor, to the Maine Sportsman’s Fish and Game Association. He had mounted 51 caribou heads for sportsmen that year, but only 28 the year before.

“In 10 days, three of my friends who hunted around Mt. Katahdin counted over 75 caribou, and in various other localities old hunters assure me that they have never before seen them more abundant,” said Crosby. “Of course, owing to their roving nature, the supply will vary but rest assured that there will be good caribou hunting in Maine for many years to come.”

A year later, the truth finally emerged. The commissioners had been deluding themselves and the public: “From the best information obtainable, from the most reliable sources, the caribou is fast disappearing, and will very soon be practically extinct.”

The commissioners called for more stringent protection. The same report put the number of caribou killed that year at 239.

By 1900, the commissioners were resigned: “It appears certain that there are practically no caribou in the state … that they migrated before the muzzle of a Winchester rifle, or died in consequence of the great increase in deer is the prevailing opinion.”

To this list of reasons for the caribou’s disappearance, Palmer added a couple of his own – increased occupation of the land for lumbering and forest fires.

Maine’s effort to protect the caribou had indeed been too little too late. The first caribou hunting season, from October through January, was established in 1870. January was excluded three years later, and the season remained that way until 1899 when caribou hunting was prohibited. Between 1883 and 1894, there had been a bag limit of two animals, which was reduced to one for the last four years of open season.

The last caribou shot legally in Maine was at Square Lake, Aroostook County, on Dec. 10, 1898, by Cornelia T. Crosby of Phillips. She was better known as Fly Rod Crosby, formidable huntress, friend of Annie Oakley, and all-around booster of Maine’s great outdoors.

By 1906, the state’s game commissioners were reporting that there were no caribou left in Maine, but there were still a few sightings during the next couple of years.

The last sighting to which Palmer and his sources gave credence was reported by W.M. Ellicott in Forest and Stream magazine. During a hunting trip in October, 1908, he was told that 14 caribou had been seen near the top of Mt. Katahdin, and that “guides and sportsmen were glad to have them back after years of absence.”

Talk in the newspapers of bringing caribou back to the Katahdin region began at least as early as 1923. Unsuccessful efforts were undertaken in 1967 and in the late 1980s. Black bears and brain worm disease played a major role in destroying the small herd the second time.

Palmer, who died last year at the age of 89, received a doctorate from Cornell in 1940. He taught zoology and became the New York State zoologist. He wrote respected guides on birds and mammals, and a decade ago he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Maine at Machias.

Back in 1938, he expressed pessimism that it would be possible to restore the caribou to Maine. But such predictions had been wrong before.

In his musings on extinct Maine animals, the NEWS editorial writer in 1904 also mentioned the sad fate of the wild turkey. Who would have guessed a century ago that the big birds would be roaming the state’s fields and woods today in large numbers.

Wayne E. Reilly has edited two books of Civil War era diaries and letters including “The Diaries of Sarah Jane and Emma Ann Foster: A Year in Maine During the Civil War.” He can be reached at wreilly@bangordailynews.net.