Through the 1980s and ’90s, the town of Greenville enjoyed a reputation as the hot spot for moose hunters, prospective moose hunters, and ogling spectators who just wanted to get a closer look as the hefty critters were tagged.

Those days, it became apparent Monday morning, are over.

And the wildlife biologists who perform myriad tasks at the weigh station aren’t wasting time waxing nostalgic about the good ol’ days.

While the atmosphere might be a bit more sedate – no hot dog or souvenir vendors set up booths on the Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife lot Monday morning – the system is certainly more efficient for hunters and biologists alike.

“There’s still a fair number of [spectators] here for a wet, dreary day,” regional fisheries biologist Doug Kane said, gesturing at a crowd of about 100 in the Stobie Airport hangar.

“Greenville has been a landmark in the north country for viewing moose during the hunting season,” he said. “You know, we have reduced the moose coming in, but I still think they’re gonna see plenty today.”

Back in its heyday as a tagging station, the Stobie hangar served as the tagging station for the entire region. In the early ’90s, Kane said the station typically tagged about 275 moose a year.

One year – Kane thinks it was 1993 – a whopping 135 moose were tagged on opening day.

“If you do the math, I think we tagged one every six minutes. That’s a lot of work,” Kane said.

Last year, just 180 moose were tagged in Greenville during the six-day October season. And this year, thanks to a change in permit allotments and the addition of more tagging stations, the moose flow through Greenville will shrink even more.

“I expect that we’ll handle 100 to 125 moose here this week,” Kane said.

On Monday, the pace was slow as moose hunters trickled into the station. The crowd may have been slightly smaller than in past years, but the wet weather likely contributed to that as well.

Kane explained that 75 percent of the permits allotted in Wildlife Management District 4 – north of Moosehead Lake – were awarded for the September season this year. During September, the Greenville tagging station isn’t open, and in order to cut down on traveling time for hunters during a season when the weather is generally a bit warmer, two other northern stations were opened.

One is at Pittston Farm, the other in Northeast Carry. The result, Kane said, is that most of the WMD 4 moose permits have already been filled, and those that aren’t won’t be brought to Greenville to be registered by the state.

During the October season, 1,775 hunters are afield and all of the state’s moose-hunting zones are open. Greenville’s reputation as a haven for moose-hunt spectators was established during a different era, with a different system in place.

“From 1990 to ’95, even though we only had 1,000 permits [statewide], we had far fewer [tagging] stations,” Kane said. “Greenville was the destination up here to tag the moose.”

“As we increased the permits, we realized it didn’t logistically make sense to have them all funneled to one spot,” he said. “So we started adding stations. That has really helped us.”

On Monday, those logistical questions didn’t matter all that much to the still-enthusiastic spectators, nor to the hunters who brought their moose to Greenville.

“I waited 17 years [for my name to be drawn]. Finally.” said Bill Doherty of Corinna, who tagged a 690-pound bull. “You figure, 20 bucks a year for 17 years, for all those [lottery] chances, and your bonus chances, it finally paid off.”

Doherty came to the Greenville area a week ago and drove about 900 miles, scouting for likely locations to hunt. He saw only two moose, and both of those were on the side of the road driving toward town.

But he and his hunting partners weren’t overly worried.

“It was discouraging. But it’s Maine,” he said. “We put in a little bit of time in the woods [over the weekend], scouting around, looking for tracks throughout the woods, seeing where they led. Roughnecking it, basically.”

On the first morning of the hunt, that effort paid off as his party spotted a cow and a bull not three miles from where they’d parked their motor home the night before.

Other hunters were just as successful on opening day, but have shown a bit more luck in the state-run lottery.

Darryl Day of Damariscotta grinned broadly as staffers weighed his moose in at 895 pounds.

“Actually, I’ve put in twice and got two permits, so a lot of people hate me for it,” Day said. “But what can you do?”

After describing his hunt and admitting he and his hunting buddies had vastly underestimated the size of his moose, Day shared another tidbit sure to raise the ire of unsuccessful moose hunters.

His brother is pretty lucky, too … and he bagged a moose a year ago.

“I’ve got to start playing Megabucks more, I guess,” he said with a laugh.

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