Guess there wont be as many Moose sightings after this years hunt. Last year
they were everywhere. Oh well...
Weigh Station Busy For First Weekend Of Moose Season
BY SETH POWERS, Staff Writer
Monday October 18, 2004
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ISLAND POND VERMONT
With twice as many hunters in the woods than last year, moose kills the first weekend were expected to exceed anything seen before - and if Island Pond's weigh station was any indication, expectations were met.
At the state's oldest moose weigh station. the moose just kept coming in Saturday, as a line of successful hunters made for a bottleneck at the station, morning and afternoon.
And every truck with a moose in it had a hunter with a story.
Canaan residents Larry Smith and Jay Fink, both 37, got their first deer in a hunt about 22 years ago, and were together again when Fink knocked down a 692-pound bull moose in Averhill in the same section they got their first deer.
"Feels good to do this together," said Smith, who pulled the lucky lottery this year to get a permit to take a bull moose.
The two were out in the woods at about 7 a.m. when they heard something crashing in the brush. Minutes later the bull came out of the woods, and Fink shot it. Their experience was a common one in that their success came early and they discovered the true difficulty of getting a near-700-pound creature out of the woods.
"The easy part was shooting him," Fink said.
Five guys, a four-wheeler, a couple of winches and about five hours later, they got the bull out of the woods.
Vermont law allows the permit winner and one other person to act as a shooter.
Two other first-time hunters, Bill Demello, 55, of Concord, N.H., and Albert Riff, 56, of Bloomfield, also had success as a hunting duo - and were another case of the lottery winner not taking the moose. Riff won the lottery and got off the first shot at an 854-pound moose near Mill Brook Road in Bloomfield, but his brother-in-law Demello's shot actually knocked it down, at about 8:30 a.m.
Just after they shot that one, though, they spotted a larger one right behind it.
It was the 11th year Riff had put in for a moose permit, and the first time he "pulled one."
Not everyone is so lucky about winning the lottery, though.
Red Kelly and Becky Hedges of Morgan have attempted to win a chance to go on a moose hunt since moose hunting was restarted in Vermont in 1993 in Essex County.
"The best thing we can do is be right here," said Kelly, who comes to the Island Pond weigh station every year to see the moose brought in.
And they were not the lone spectators at the Island Pond weigh station, as people from various parts of Vermont came to take pictures of the moose and observe the hunters come in with their kills.
Many More Moose
Wildlife specialist Christ Bernier said there were a lot more moose coming through the Island Pond weigh station Saturday than in years past.
Biologists estimate there are more than 4,000 moose in Vermont and 2,000 in Essex County alone, which is a dramatic increase from the 1960s, when officials estimated only about 25 moose in the county.
This year, the state issued 850 moose permits for the 2004 hunt, twice as many as last year's 440 permits issued.
Moose have flourished because of a change in habitat, Bernier said. Vermont's forests are taking over much land that was open just 50 years ago.
Foresters, particularly in Essex County, have been complaining that moose foraging has damaged a lot of prime commercial forests, especially at higher elevations.
KR