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It's a Whole New World Out There - Going North to Moosehead and Mount Kineo

November 28, 2007 - "It's a whole different country up here," Candi Russell of the Moosehead Historical Society said to me this week.

Yep, I'll second that.

With temperatures pushing 40 degrees last Sunday, I thought it might be the perfect time to head up to the Moosehead Lake region and see how old friend Mount Kineo was looking. Problem was, my great idea was about three days off.

The lake and the surrounding area were pelted by cold weather and a fierce snowstorm on Friday, leaving the place looking like January in central Maine. Small ponds were skimmed over with ice, and snow was several inches thick in the woods. A hike up Kineo? Uh, not today -- not in a pair of lightweight hiking shoes, even with a bottle of water and a down jacket.

As people back in central Maine raked up the remaining leaves in their yards or let the kids run free sans hats and mittens on Sunday, gloomy, gray skies hovered over mighty Moosehead and poured snow down periodically, too. It just goes to illustrate perfectly the universally understood truth of Maine weather, that beautifully worn-out cliche: If you don't like the weather around here, just give it a minute. It's bound to change.

There's hunting, and then there's hunting up north. Amazingly, the words "up north" are the magic elixir for the state's outdoorsmen. "Up north" is that place you go to find the trophy deer and fish with shoulders, the ones you can't find here at home. But the hunting up north can prove to be tantalizingly, tauntingly difficult.

The woods are vast and thickly wooded, and the deer themselves are not held prisoners to areas bound by residential housing lots or commercial expansion. In fact, they are free to roam wherever and whenever they want -- up and over ridges, across slim brooks, into dense thickets -- with only the occasional (and lightly traveled) logging road to cross.

The draw to the great Up North is obvious. The land is remote and wild, the isolation is invigorating and the vacationing is ideal. But that doesn't necessarily mean the hunting will be any easier. Which leads me to wonder why we call it "hunting" at all. When I'm sitting on the side of a large hill, presumably smack-dab in the middle of some great deer highway, I'm not hunting for anything. I'm simply waiting. The hunt came in that pre-opening day time when we were all out scouring the woods for deer sign. Maybe instead of open firearms "hunting" season, we should call it open firearms "waiting" season.

And, by the way, I'm still waiting for my first deer.

The Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife is considering a move to paperless law books, a cost-cutting measure of extreme proportions. That means no more picking up the books in the places where you buy your hunting or fishing license, no more having them around to kill some time when you're sitting in the middle of a frozen lake waiting for a flag to pop up in the breeze. In fact, there will be no more picking them up at all. The way to find all the laws and regulations pertinent to your sport of choice? Log on, buddy. It's all on the world wide web.

That's a bad move for a number of reasons, chief among them the assumption that everybody has access to the Internet. It also assumes that people don't rely on their books in the field, and it creates a Pandora's box regarding violations coming simply from misunderstandings. While ignorance is not an excuse, it's hard not to be ignorant of the laws when you are not at least given the information from which to learn.

Also, it can't be good for the state's tourism business when out-of-state hunters and fishermen come north to spend their money in our sporting camps, hire guides and stock up at convenience stores during week-long vacations. How many sportsmen are heading north with Blackberrys or laptops stowed in their cargo pants pockets? I'm guessing somewhere in the neighborhood of zero to not many.

It's not good for customer relations when people are ticketed for violations they can't find in the law book they can't have -- in a state with an incredible number of special regulations, extended seasons and constantly morphing laws. They'll be understandably upset, and they may or may not choose to continue supporting Maine's fantastic outdoors scene. It's a worst-case scenario to assume the loss of clients and customers, but it's something DIF&W desperately needs to consider.

SOURCE: Kennebec Journal

DATE: 11-21-2007


Lakes: Moosehead Lake
Regions: Moosehead


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