By Will Tuell 

Scottish poet Robert Burns had it just about right when he wrote “the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry,” but he could just as easily have said “of moose and men” were he tramping through the hinterlands of the Allagash WIlderness some 227 years after his passing in search of a bull moose. That, of course, is a gentle way of saying, “We didn’t get the moose.” 

But first, let us go back to that fateful Saturday afternoon in June when yours truly, slouched over his computer screen, furiously scribbling a story about the high school baseball playoffs, started hearing the pinging, dinging, of his cell phone. Friends who were either present at the moose permit lottery drawing event in Augusta or who were listening in hopes of their own names being called for one of 4,105 chances at the hulking beast, gleefully offered their congratulations on my selection as one of of the lucky permit holders, because, well, the logic goes, if you get picked, you stand a pretty good chance of getting a moose. 

That announcement, which I proceeded to triumphantly share with my subpermittee, Bucket Davis, my pastor, Tony Maker, my father who was in the throes of sawing logs at his Hadley Lake sawmill a few hundred yards up the road; my aunt, uncle, and our three year-old British-cream retriever, Misty, basically threw the entire afternoon into a tailspin. Yes, the baseball story got finished, Mother started immediately looking for a freezer -- because again, if you get picked for a moose hunt, you stand a really good chance of getting one, and a whole bunch of things unfolded in something of a daze.

Right here I will say that a moose hunt is a huge endeavor. You do not simply pick up a gun, test fire it a few times, and set out for parts unknown. There are months of planning and preparation. There is lodging to procure -- and procure quickly unless you want to be camping out in a pile of underbrush for a week with no running water -- a half-ton of every food imaginable to pack, winches, chains, knives, hand-saws, axes, dismembered boat hulls that double as drags, gigantic ice chests filled to the brim, moose calls, maps, binoculars, radios, spare tires, clothes for all occasions, and yes, an arsenal of guns and ammo that would put the US Army to shame. When you go moose hunting the way our crew goes moose hunting, you go prepared to be lost in the woods without contact for the entire winter. That’s just the way it is. 

So with our caravan of provisions in tow, Bucket and I set out for the Northern Maine Woods on the morning of Sept. 23 to get settled into makeshift camp and do a little scouting before the actual hunt began two days later. Six and a half hours later -- having stopped for 100 pounds of Aroostook County potatoes, homemade butter from a little Amish store, and who knows what else at various points along the way -- we arrived travel weary but game for whatever came our way. 

We knew generally where we were going to be hunting, having done the same thing last year with Bucket’s grandson Parker, and so Sunday morning he and I took the field in search of signs. Six moose -- a cow and a calf pair, another cow, two bulls, and one unidentifiable moose -- were all spotted before 10:30 a.m. That’s the other thing -- you are up at 3:30 a.m. to prepare for the 45 minute trek down dirt roads that will put you where you are going to hunt at least an hour before the crack of dawn. We also came across a handful of partridges, and a couple deer that day, and were feeling fantastic. 

The mood got even brighter that evening when Tony, his son Jacob, and our retired game warden friend Dave Craven arrived for the first few days of the hunt. Dave is an expert moose caller, and had quite a few stories to tell. That alone was worth having him along as time out there can drag. 

Monday morning rolls around and five minutes into the hunt we see a moose -- and if I had a cow permit, the story would have ended here. No such luck. The dame stood in the middle of the road, swished her tail a couple times, and sauntered off. A few minutes of calling commenced, before we gradually sallied forth. Jacob, whose role in the hunt was to help get me, the legally blind guy, set up for a shot, also had to collect me from a swale-hole later that day as we hiked across fields of blowdown trees, muck holes, and all around rough terrain. For all of that riding and tramping, we came up empty, but saw no shortage of signs, before we dragged into camp some sixteen hours later.

Tuesday morning was it for Dave, Tony and Jacob. But before they left, the lot of us went on a two-mile hike into the deepest, darkest underbrush you could imagine, and saw hoofprints bigger than the craters on the moon. Dave spotted a moose at 400 yards, and proceeded to call it in. As we got ready for the climactic moment of this tale, the wind shifted ever so slightly, the moose bounded off into the thicket, and the hunt commenced. 

As Dave, Tony and Jacob left, my father, who I must confess grumbled a bit about shutting down the sawmill for a few days, and another friend, Gary Ackley, showed up to help “for as long as it takes.” 

Wednesday morning rolls around, Bucket and I are out cruising with little success, while Father and Gary spot the biggest monster you ever could dream of, standing in the road, idly chewing grass as the pair of them try to make contact with us. Of course we had just passed by that spot five minutes previously, and, of course, the radios didn’t work, so again, we missed out. And another sixteen hour day of searching interrupted by a two mile hike down Tuesday’s trail commenced. 

By Thursday you are tired, caked in dust because the place you are staying in doesn’t have any way of restoring hot water to the shower, and starting to feel like the novelty of a woods adventure is wearing thin. Plenty of sightings of various moose up until that point kept hope alive, but the logistics just hadn’t worked out, and well, we still had a few days. 

Thursday is a new day however and Gary boldly proclaimed, “This is the day!” and, well, it was. We are riding along, cruising a side road with Johnny Horton’s “Battle of New Orleans” banging out on the CD player when Bucket spots a bull, gets out of the truck, gets into position -- I do not have time to get my gun prepared and have already given him the go ahead to shoot it if he has a chance -- and fires. Click. Nothing. He loads another cartridge. Lines up, and again, click, nothing. Moose scoots off into the woods and is the last bull we see the entire trip. 

We will never know why the gun didn’t fire. The best any of us can come up with is that the firing pin jammed, or that the $2,000 gun which a friend had gifted him before he passed, had a weak spring. Regardless the gun did not fire, we spent that day, the following day, and Saturday racking our brains as we hunted high and low in vain. 

Oh yes, we did see a rabbit and a partridge playing with one another -- an incredible and highly unbelievable scene that even the most seasoned hunters dismiss -- but the closest thing we came to a moose the whole trip was the mounted head on the wall. 

For all of that though, it did us all good to be away from the daily grind. As I told the small group of Christians who gather at Larrabee Baptist in Machiasport for prayer on the Wednesday night after I got back, God has a way of reaching you with His Word when you consciously put the everyday trappings and cares to the side and let him. That reminder alone was worth the trip for me, but being able to spend time with good friends, relax, enjoy the outdoors, and catch up, even without a moose to show for any of our time or expense, was worth it too. 

And so, maybe Mr. Burns was right -- the best laid plans of mice [or moose] and men [do] often go awry, but as is always the case, the Master’s Plan isn’t such a bad one either. Not lying to say I wish I had a moose, and that pictures of our fabled hunt would have been splashed all over these pages had we been successful, but it just wasn’t meant to be, and there were a lot of silver linings that came out of that trip even if my partner in crime, Paul Sylvain, did wind up writing 75% of the paper that week!