A year ago, Douglas Michael Kane II rode into Stobie Hangar in Greenville triumphantly, wasting little time before climbing atop his father’s moose and posing for photos as it was tagged.

On Monday morning, Kane and his dad, also named Doug Kane, were back in Greenville for the first day of moose tagging.

This time, it was a work day for the duo.

The elder Kane is a biologist with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife. His 6-year-old son may well be the department’s youngest junior biologist in training … and he already knows the business pretty well.

On Monday, as his father methodically checked predetermined areas of a moose hide for ticks, the younger Kane stood by, waiting for his cue.

Eventually, it came.

“Hold that ear back, will you?” Doug Kane Sr. asked.

The eager youngster was quick to pitch in, grabbing a monstrous moose-ear with both hands and yanking it to the side, so that the tick survey could be completed.

The assembled moose-watchers giggled at the unfolding scene.

Despite the laughter, the tick survey is serious business for the DIF&W staffers.

“We do have concern about winter ticks,” Kane explained. “We know last year we lost a number of calves. I necropsied 10 different calves that had died from high tick loads and lung worm infestation [last year].”

A year ago, Wally Jakubas was among the DIF&W biologists who were launching the tick study. At the time he explained that when scores of ticks are on a moose, the moose’s health can suffer.

“The moose, they don’t try to get rid of the ticks until it is too late,” he said last year. “They start rubbing on trees and rubbing a lot of their hair off. Of course, the hair of a moose is a great insulator, and with that gone, they’re going to expend a lot more energy than they would trying to keep warm.”

Biologists said that by studying the moose hides, they had learned that some moose harbored thousands and thousands of ticks on board.

Kane said the tick study will continue for the foreseeable future so that the DIF&W can get a better handle on the factors that lead to moose mortality. And the necropsies that he performed over the last year indicates that the tick situation warrants more study.

“We’re sensitive to the fact that [ticks] might be having an influence on population,” Kane said. “Maybe a significant influence. We don’t know at this point. That’s why we’re re-evaluating tick numbers.”

Good moose-hunting weather

Monday was a cool, gray day, as was Wednesday. The weather report for Thursday and Friday called for more clouds, and chances of rain.

Kane said that this week’s moose hunters were much luckier, weather-wise, than those who participated in the first session of the hunt two weeks ago.

“It’s a nice day,” Kane said on Monday morning. “Right now, when it’s like this, [moose will] stay out, even in a cut, all day long. They won’t get heat stress.”

Moose aren’t big fans of beach weather, Kane explained.

“They don’t have that long winter coat yet, but they’ve still got a significant coat and they can get heat stress very easily,” he said. “Once it gets much above 45 degrees, they’ve got to be in the shade, if not water. When we get up to 85, 90 degrees, they aren’t moving, and they are associated with water, no question about it.”

Temperatures during the September hunt hovered in the 80s in most zones for the first three days before cooling off a bit. Many tagging stations reported seeing fewer moose this year than a year ago, and many observers blamed that on the weather.

Kane said other factors can also play into a hunt’s success or failure.

Not too many years ago, the preferred method of moose hunting was simple: Drive on a woods road, and look out over the abundant clear cuts for a moose.

That doesn’t work so well any more in the Wildlife Management Districts around Greenville, Kane said.

“The reality of it is, the forest is growing up,” he said. “Since about the mid-90s, a lot of the forest that created this habitat is growing up. Visibility’s not as good, and it takes [hunters] longer to find ’em.”

In addition, seasonal fluctuations in the foliage mean hunters are never sure exactly how much visibility they’re going to have.

“Some times this time of year there’s fewer leaves,” he said. “If we’d had a storm by now, the visibility would be would be a little better. But we still probably have at least 50 percent of the leaves on.”

That’s the not-so-good news.

But there’s no sense in dwelling on that.

“The temperatures [are low, it’s] overcast, wet. That’s a good thing,” Kane said.

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