The annual moose hunt is certainly one of Maine’s most revered sporting traditions. Beyond that, the truth that Maine has sufficient huge wilderness to assist moose, its state animal, is a supply of satisfaction amongst residents. But harvest numbers have been slowly shrinking over the few a long time, and in 2022, the hunter success price reached a report low.
Hunters crammed simply 62 % of moose tags this season, knowledge from the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife exhibits. If you embrace a statistical outlier from the adaptive unit hunt, the place state biologists are conducting experiments on how moose and ticks work together, the success price was even decrease, simply 58 %. (The total success price from the adaptive hunt unit was 26 %.)
Maine Moose Hunts Past
These numbers fall properly wanting the 18-year common 73.5-percent success price. Interestingly, there have been extra permits issued this yr than lately. Including the adaptive administration hunt, 4,050 permits have been accessible for the 2022 season. The final time greater than 4,000 permits have been issued was in 2013, when the state distributed 4,110 of them. But that very same yr, hunters had a 72-percent success price and harvested 2,978 moose. This yr, hunters harvested 644 fewer moose than they did in 2013, and virtually 300 fewer than in 2021.
In the years that adopted the 2013 season, harvest numbers took a critical dip. They bottomed out in 2017 when simply 1,518 tags have been crammed. But accessible permits have been additionally decrease than regular, so success charges have been fairly common round that point. You can see how harvest success has fluctuated within the graph beneath.
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So what does this all imply? In the grand scheme of issues, the shifting numbers aren’t as indicative of the general state moose inhabitants as they may appear. Harvest success is impacted by adjustments in climate, season dates, and looking guidelines, not simply the general variety of moose on the panorama. DIF&W began managing the moose inhabitants in 1999 they usually’ve “changed so many things since the beginning of the moose hunt that it’s not really comparable over time,” moose biologist Lee Kantar advised the Bangor Daily News.
Tick-ing Time Bomb
The DIF&W says that moose populations are secure of their core vary for now. But biologists are more and more involved in regards to the toll winter ticks tackle cow reproductive success and calf survival. As local weather change pushes the primary arduous snow later and later into the yr, ticks and different parasites don’t die off within the chilly months once they used to. Instead, they assault moose within the late summer time and early fall, particularly as moose develop into extra cellular throughout the rut. The ticks experience out the winter on their hosts and detach in early spring, at which level females can lay as much as 4,000 eggs and the cycle begins yet again. (Winter ticks are totally different than canine ticks and deer ticks.)
Winter ticks killed 60 of the 70 collared calves that biologists have been monitoring in Piscataquis and Somerset counties in 2021. The moose can carry anyplace from 40,000 to 90,000 ticks at a time, DIF&W advised Maine Public Radio. The state company’s resolution? Lower the moose inhabitants density to offer ticks fewer hosts to thrive on. That’s the place the adaptive administration hunt unit experiment comes into play.
Started in 2019 and anticipated to run via 2025, biologists are growing the variety of permits in a single a part of the unit and distributing a standard variety of permits within the different, in an try and see if a lowered inhabitants density would make a distinction in how ticks prevail. This science may assist how northern Vermont and New Hampshire deal with their winter tick points as properly.
“It’s complicated, but the nature of our adaptive hunt is we have room to make some changes if we need to and we’ll look at all that stuff,” Kantar advised the Bangor Daily News. “We need to figure out how we’re going to continue to make our way through this.”