Charlotte Mitchell, 16, in the center, stands behind the bull moose she shot in 2021 in western Maine. She’s surrounded by family and friends. Photo courtesy of Wade Browne

On Monday morning, Oct. 10, 1988 — the first day of Maine’s six-day moose hunt — a grandmother, with twin 6-year-old grandsons dressed in identical hunter orange clothing, asked permission to observe my work at Maine’s largest moose hunt check station.

“Yes, of course,” I replied.

Grateful, she said, “Schooling should never interfere with my grandsons’ higher education.”

Her remarks were a prelude to an unforgettable week at Moosehead Lake.

Earlier that year, I had replaced Harold “Doc” Blanchard as Maine’s regional wildlife biologist in Greenville. Supervising biologists inspecting dead moose was my responsibility. Controversies marring the 1980 hunt – the first since 1934 — had largely subsided, but not entirely. In town, “Good luck moose hunters” and “Good luck moose” lawn signs reflected lingering contrasting opinions. Interest in the hunt, though, had not waned. By 8 a.m., several hundred observers had gathered at our headquarters parking lot to watch dead moose being weighed.

Vendors sold coffee, donuts, hotdogs and chili. Taxidermists and butchers offered their services. My favorite vendor was a Willimantic logger named Vernon. For $40, he and his team of oxen twitched dead moose from the woods to a hunter’s vehicle. His battered, forest-green 1973 Ford dump truck’s side boards advertised his services in fresh white paint, “Moose Haulin’ and Bush Hoggin.’” Vernon introduced me to Babe, named after Paul Bunyan’s ox. His other ox answered to Tiny, “when he felt like it,” he said.

“Tiny’s as stubborn as a mule, whereas Babe’s easygoing. If he could, Babe would whistle while he worked. Him and Tiny get along real swell, like two peanuts in a shell.”

It was surreal weighing dead moose in a carnival-like atmosphere. Aside from my reproaching a college student volunteer for asking hunters to donate their moose tongues (sliced pickled moose tongue on crackers, he claimed, was a big hit at keg parties), our biological data collection ran smoothly.

Around 8:15, the hunter-orange dressed crowd parted for a truck transporting the first moose into the office’s Stobie airplane hangar. Inside the building at the south end of Moosehead Lake, I operated an electric hoist weighing scale. The small bull was weighed, affixed with a metal numbered state tag, and sent next door to the Mains Brothers’ refrigerated butcher trailers.

Nick Poulin, 20, is seen with the bull moose he shot during the 2023 season in western Maine.  Photo courtesy of Wade Browne

A few hours later state fish and wildlife commissioner Bill Vail and a woman from Gov. McKernan’s office arrived as a pickup truck rolled into the hangar with an enormous bull moose. Gawkers raced into the building as I started the electric hoist, which groaned and shivered while lifting the field-dressed bull from the truck’s bed. Held aloft by heavy chains wrapped around the base of its antlers, the bull hung and twisted in the air as I climbed a 10-foot stepladder to read the scale. It seemed an eternity before the arrow settled on a number.

In the eerie silence, a man yelled, “Well, for heaven’s sake, how much does he weigh?” I hollered back, “1,158 pounds!” The crowd turned to each other, and like an echo, repeated the weight from one end of the cavernous hangar to the other.

As the bull was lowered into the truck’s bed the liver fell from its steaming chest cavity, grazed the tailgate, and plopped onto the cement floor. McKernan’s representative — standing in the front row — screamed and jumped back. Everyone laughed, but not at her. Watson, a local basset hound, had darted between her legs, grabbed the organ, and dragged it from the building as fast as his short legs allowed.

By mid-week, Watson had become a crowd favorite. Cheers erupted each time the sheriff stopped traffic to allow the hound to haul moose parts across the parking lot to his cache beneath a nearby porch.

Day two produced a bizarre scene. A Subaru Brat — a small half car, half truck oddity — transporting a large bull moose failed to climb Scammon Ridge on the east side of Moosehead Lake. Since the bull’s weight exceeded the manufacturer’s recommended payload capacity, the Subaru overheated, stalled, caught fire, and was quickly engulfed in a ball of flames.

By the time a Greenville fire truck arrived, the vehicle and moose were reduced to a black smoldering mass. Game warden Pat Dorian drove me to the Greenville Texaco Station, where the Subaru had been delivered on a flatbed truck. After attaching a metal tag to a singed moose leg, I extracted an incisor with a screwdriver and buck knife.

“Removing a tooth for aging,” I told a puzzled mechanic, “is standard moose check station practice.”

The mechanic quipped, “I’m sure as hell glad you’re not my dentist.”

Day three’s most memorable moose arrived in a large wooden box mounted on a flat, tandem-axle snowmobile trailer. In bold black letters, the box was labeled “Moose Coffin.” Its inside was lined with Styrofoam blue insulation boards, hundreds of pounds of ice, and a hide-less, headless bull moose wrapped in bedsheets. Its four lower legs, bone sawed at the knees, were neatly wrapped in clear plastic, to be repurposed into a wall-mounted gun rack and table lamps. Two small PVC drainpipes funneled melt water from the box onto the roadway.

By day five, 93% of the 1,000 moose permit holders were home enjoying the fruits of their labor. On day six — the last day of the hunt — a trickle of dead moose arrived at the check station. One disheartened hunter appeared with a cow moose crammed into the back of his Ford Explorer. He had erred the previous day by shooting it in late afternoon and several hundred yards from a logging road. After hiring a skidder operator to stuff the field-dressed cow into the back of his Explorer, the exhausted man slept in his vehicle that night with the dead moose as company.

When the hunter arrived at the check station, the moose was stiff with rigor mortis. Its face was pressed against the rear window and its legs were bent in unnatural angles. My team of biologists, jaded from tagging 251 dead moose that week, dubbed this one “canned moose.” Not a single body part moved when doors were opened. The vehicle’s floor, though, was alive with movement. As the moose cooled during the night, hundreds of ticks had dropped off the carcass. The disheveled hunter, young and inexperienced, was oblivious to ticks crawling on him.

“Will you weigh my moose?” he asked. I told him that it wasn’t possible and urged him to deliver the carcass to the Mains brothers before the meat spoiled.

Watson’s droopy eyes stared at me in disbelief, seemingly annoyed that I hadn’t weighed the animal.

“Watson,” I barked, “there’s no need to glare at me. You’ve had an exciting moose season.”

The hound turned dismissively and trotted to a 55-gallon barrel overflowing with moose lower leg bones. He latched onto one and dragged it across the parking lot littered with popcorn and paper cups.

My first moose hunt was officially over. Watson’s hunt, though, hadn’t quite ended.

Ron Joseph of Sidney is author of “Bald Eagles, Bear Cubs, and Hermit Bill: Memories of a Maine Wildlife Biologist.” His column appears monthly.