Maine Outdoor Journal

"I'm just not one of those lucky guys," John Lombardi of Winslow tells me, as if I'm supposed to believe it. "I just don't ever seem to get lucky with lotteries or winning things like that."

And after 15 years of trying – unsuccessfully, mind you – Lombardi thought his luck had finally started to turn last June. On a steamy, early-summer night in Kittery, the hunting guide's name was drawn for a moose permit for the first time.

Lombardi, though, wasn't so sure. When he told a friend which district his name had been pulled for, that friend just shook his head.

"Good luck," Lombardi was told.

"It's just a hard district," Lombardi said of Wildlife Management District 18, which sits just northeast of Bangor and is bordered in places by the Penobscot River and Interstate 95. "They say the (moose hunting) success rate is only like 45, 50 percent there. It's just not an easy place."

It didn't help that Lombardi's permit was for the state's second weeklong season, Oct. 12-17, after the mating season (known as "the rut") had ended. Permit holders for the first season, in late September, benefit from hunting during the rut – when moose are more susceptible to the interactive practice of calling.

Lombardi didn't think his luck had improved at all when he spent the first five days of his hunt in Lagrange without a moose.

At last, on the sixth morning, Lombardi – who was hunting during the week with a friend as well as sons John Jr. and Nathaniel – found his target.

"We don't road hunt. We don't believe in doing it that way," Lombardi said, referring to the practice of driving in a truck all day trying to spot moose traveling logging roads that can then be pursued on foot. "We like to park and then get into those logging roads on foot. We'll go find open clear-cuts, and then go into the back of those clear-cuts.

"We walked in two miles on this road that had been blocked off by two big boulders. (The bull) was bedded down on Friday morning, and we just happened to see his ear sticking up."

But it wasn't as easy as all that. Lombardi needed a little luck. From more than 160 yards away, and with time running out as the bull headed for the safety of a thick alder swamp, the hunter took his shot. And what a shot it turned out to be – felling a moose that clocked in at 820 pounds after being field dressed with a 51-inch antler spread and brow palms.

"Just awesome," Lombardi said.

According to Lee Kantar, the head moose biologist with the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, Lombardi wasn't alone.

"We had several bulls over 1,000 pounds in the September hunt," Kantar said. "And we had several more in the high 900s in October, which is huge, because they lose weight from (the September to October seasons) because of the rut.

"From up north, where we have bigger permit totals, we're probably going to exceed the harvest totals from last year."

Part of that, Kantar said, had to do with virtually ideal weather conditions.

"We had exceptionally good weather," Kantar said. "We had cool, crisp weather with only a few days of rain. The cold weather was such that the moose certainly were willing to move around with no heat-stress concerns."

Kantar also pointed out that a bowhunter killed a bull over 1,000 pounds with a 65-inch spread in WMD 1.

Seems more than just Lombardi ran into good fortune this fall.

"It was just a traditional hunt, a traditional quality hunt," Lombardi said. "It was a perfect, perfect moose hunt, the kind guys would pay $20,000 for, I swear. The calls weren't working, and we were upset – but it turned out to be a really good success story."

Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good, no?

Staff Writer Travis Barrett can be reached at 621-5648 or:

tbarrett@centralmaine.com