You’d have to conclude that hunters are losing interest in Maine’s moose hunt, judging by the huge decline in applicants in the state’s once-popular moose lottery.

Since lottery applications peaked in 1994 at 94,532, applications from residents have declined by 50 percent and from nonresidents by 37 percent.

In the last two years alone, applications have decreased by a stunning 23 percent.

The number of applications this year was the lowest in the twenty-eight years of the state’s modern moose hunt. A total of 49,729 hunters applied this year for moose hunting permits, including 37,012 residents and 12,717 nonresidents.

More than 60,000 resident and nonresident hunters applied for permits in the first regular moose hunting season in 1982. An initial “experimental” season held in 1980 attracted 36,636 applicants. That lottery was closed to nonresidents.

Department leaders said that the recession, high cost of the hunt, and lost interest on the part of hunters who have never won a permit are the reasons for the decline in sales.

They continue to deny that their decision in 2009 to stop printing and mailing applications to previous lottery participants, and instead to go to an online application process only, has made any difference. Clearly, it has.

There’s a lot of money at stake. In 2008, before the process change, lottery revenue totaled $1,628,470. In 2009, even though the price of lottery chances increased, total revenue decreased to $1,471,404. This year’s revenue has not yet been reported.

Maine residents paid $7 for a single chance in the lottery, and $22 for six chances. Nonresidents paid $15 for a single chance, $35 for six chances, and $55 for 10 chances. Nonresidents can purchase all the chances they want, while residents are limited to six chances.

While that may seem unfair to residents, it’s just the opposite. More than half of the lottery’s revenue comes from those free-spending nonresidents, despite the fact they receive only 10 percent of the permits!

The odds of winning are not significantly increased by the purchase of a lot of chances.

The 37,012 resident applicants had 2709,511 chances (7.3 per applicant), while the 12,717 nonresident applicants had 148,233 (11.3 per applicant).

A resident had a 1 in 95 chance of winning, while nonresidents were the lottery long-shots with odds of 1 in 481.

Every year there are gripes about people in the same household and family who win permits.

Mark Osterman, IF&W’s computer guru, reported that 30 percent of all resident applications shared an address with another application, resulting in the likely possibility that 65 households would contain at least two permit winners.

IF&W gave up the old-style lottery, where Scouts pulled winners out of a big revolving drum, when a Cub Scout pulled out six applications for the same family. Today a computer picks the winners.

It’s unlikely the department will be able to sharply increase the number of moose applicants any time soon, so the odds of going moose hunting – especially for residents – will continue to be fairly high.

LL Bean hosted this year’s lottery, and 500 sportsmen and women turned out for the festivities. It was my privilege to join those who read the names of winners.

I was not among them. I gave up on the lottery last year and stopped applying. I prefer to spend my fall time fishing and hunting grouse and woodcock in Maine and pheasants in North Dakota.

If you want some great reading about Maine’s twenty-eight years of moose hunting, the Bangor Daily News has posted a bunch of stories by its famed (and deceased) outdoor writer Bud Leavitt about the first hunt in 1980, and columns from the 1990s by the BDN’s now retired outdoor writer Tom Hennessey. You’ll find them attached to current BDN outdoor writer John Holyoke’s column on this year’s moose lottery. Holyoke’s column is in the Outdoor section of the Web site.

In Other News:

I met recently with the three major candidates for governor: Republican Paul LaPage, Democrat Libby Mitchell, and Independent Eliot Cutler.

My purpose was to review the candidate survey of the Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine with candidates, to brief them on the issues, and answer questions.

This is a key part of SAM’s endorsement process. In addition to the survey, SAM’s Board of Directors and staff will interview each candidate.

The survey is no picnic for these candidates. It contains twenty-five questions on a range of issues from fish to firearms. I’ll report on the candidate’s responses in this blog, sometime this fall, prior to the November election.

The views expressed on this Web site are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily represent the views of Down East Enterprise or its employees.