Drawing for moose permits set today

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After months (or in many cases, years) of waiting for the opportunity to go on a hunt of a lifetime, today is your lucky day. Maybe.

Hundreds of spectators will flock to Phippsburg this evening for the latest installment of what has become a Maine tradition: It’s moose-permit lottery time.

For the uninitiated, here’s what that means: We’ll all pull up seats in the Phippsburg Elementary School (last year’s soiree was held in the impressive digs of Scarborough Downs), grab a soda and a snack, and wait.

And wait.

And wait.

Sounds like more fun than watching paint dry to you?

Well, that might mean you’re not the avid prospective moose hunter you thought you were.

If you were, you’d realize those of us who regularly attend the lottery are actually listening to the paint dry, as a parade of speakers make their way to the podium, grab a list of names, and read it aloud (verbally butchering many of the surnames, and more than a few hometowns).

And we LOVE it.

Honest.

The fact lawmakers openly lobby for the opportunity to host the yearly lottery in their home district tells you something about Mainers.

Either we Mainers don’t have much to do in mid-June … or we’re really, really eager to go moose hunting.

The latter, I suspect, is more accurate.

Among those in attendance tonight will be plenty of hunters who have had successful moose hunts in the past, and plenty who have never had their names drawn, even after entering the lottery each year since its inception in 1980.

And just being there when your name finally pops out of the electronic hopper is a lot of fun. I had that pleasure a year ago, when mine was the sixth name read aloud.

In past years, the lottery has been held in Rumford, Presque Isle, Orono, Bucksport, Boothbay Harbor and Scarborough (twice).

This year’s festivities kick off at 6 p.m. In addition to the reading of the lucky lottery winners, attendees can chat with a number of Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife staffers, from game wardens to biologists and administrators.

As always, admission is free. The DIF&W expects the event to last three to four hours, as all the names of all the Maine permit winners are read aloud. A total of 2,880 permits will be allotted.

If you can’t get down to Phippsburg, you can check out the DIF&W Web site to find out if this is your luck year. Go to www.mefishwildlife.com.

Or, Friday morning we’ll print all the results right here in the BDN.

Good luck!

Ruffed Grouse Society sounds off

Over its 46-year history, the Ruffed Grouse Society has established itself as an international force when it comes to conservation of the species.

And the RGS is urging caution among Mainers who are seeking to eliminate one month of the ruffed grouse season.

A petition drive has prompted three public hearings on the matter in Maine, as concerned residents seek to stop December hunting for grouse, more commonly called “partridge.”

A RGS press release circulated this week points out “most scientific research has shown that hunting ruffed grouse adds little or no additional mortality to natural losses.”

Although the statement sounds odd – it would seem since the goal of hunting is to shoot birds, actually shooting those birds would serve to reduce the population – it has scientific backing.

According to Paul Karczmarczyk, the Northeast Regional Biologist of the RGS, plenty of data has been compiled on the issue.

“Peer-reviewed, scientific literature overwhelmingly suggests that on a landscape scale, ruffed grouse population mortality values aren’t affected by hunting,” Karczmarczyk said in the release. “[In one study], several areas of similar habitat, either closed or open to hunting over a three-year period, exhibited essentially no difference in annual mortality among ruffed grouse.”

The executive director of the RGS, Michael D. Zagata, was once a wildlife professor at the University of Maine. He asked for reasonable debate on the issue in the press release.

Some have said grouse living near roads are especially susceptible to hunters, and some think those localized impacts may reduce the grouse population overall.

“Regardless if grouse living directly adjacent to roads seem to exhibit late hunting season declines, if annual mortality for ruffed grouse is 80 percent across a landscape and hunter harvest isn’t additive to natural losses, then closing seasons early will have little impact on the number of grouse that make it through ’til spring,” Zagata said.

Zagata pointed out surviving grouse then repopulate overhunted areas, and encouraging proper habitat would make a bigger impact on increasing the abundance of grouse.

“Rather than shortening the season, greater increases in grouse, neo-tropical songbird and other young forest wildlife populations might be achieved by assuring that Maine’s ‘Forest Practices Act’ provides for a forest management strategy that results in a mosaic of age classes for habitat within Maine’s forests,” Zagata said in the release.

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