RUMFORD – Twenty-five moose lotteries, a two-and-a-half-hour drive and a hundred or so names after his most agonizing outdoor adventure started, the man with the moose emblazoned across the front of his T-shirt and the cell phone clipped to his hip pocket heard the sweetest sound imaginable: Rocky Fuller, Albion.
There was a collective “hey,” a rushed series of hugs and high-fives and a beeline to the Mountain Valley High School parking lot for a frantic phone call that didn’t reach its destination. And somewhere on his walk, no, make that his float back to the main entrance, the 48-year-old Fuller realized that his wait had just begun.
“The problem is,” said Fuller, “I’m ready to go right now.”
Thus began the longest summer of Rocky’s life. Fuller is one of 2,895 applicants permitted to hunt moose during the two-week split season this autumn after a computer coughed up his name and lucky number Thursday evening.
An outdoorsy delegation filled Muskie Auditorium to roughly one-fourth of its capacity. They congregated on the off-chance that they might hear a volunteer say their name, typically in halting monotone, from a sheet of computer paper.
Said Fuller, a first-time winner who has submitted an application every year since Maine’s moose hunt was revived in the early 1980s: “It’s exciting.”
It’s also like listening to Ben Stein read the phone book.
Hey, hunting is great. Hunting is ingrained in Maine’s soul. Hunting is necessary to the natural order of things.
And while I don’t hunt for anything but my keys and my lost youth, I’m sure that hunting Bullwinkle is more compelling than sitting on your duff and listening to game wardens and state senators stumble over names by the dozen and mispronounce Pownal and Mattawamkeag six different ways.
The town is everything, too. Some poor sap named Paul Pelletier was about ready to pull his champagne bottle from the ice bucket when the celebrity reader followed the name with “Scarborough.”
Damn, different guy.
Without question, the moose lottery is the hardest leg of the moose hunt. Surely all the anticipation, exultation and palpitations can’t have anything to do with the thrill of the anticipated chase.
OK, let’s review the itinerary here. Grab rifle. Stand in remote, wooded area. Wait for the inevitable sighting of a 1,000-pound, antlered creature with half the agility of David Wells. Tiptoe close enough to blast a bullet into his heart. Poke him with a stick and deposit another shot into the back of his neck, if necessary.
The real sport ensues after you’ve pulled the trigger.
For the .00001 percent of lottery winners who don’t successfully fulfill their role in controlling the moose population, the real sport is ducking the left-right-left combination of insults from your buddies. They’re going to laugh you silly for failing to drag home a creature that outnumbers humans 80-to-1 in some wildlife management districts and moves more ploddingly than Congress.
And to the second-time winners, most of whom achieve hunting nirvana about 25 minutes after sunrise that first Monday morning, the real sport is getting that sucker back to your vehicle and then back to Mechanic Falls or Mexico without contaminating the meat, wounding yourself or losing your mind.
All you need, in no particular order, are: at least a dozen friends, rope, chains, a knife, an axe, a sharpening stone, two or three large plastic bags, a boning saw, game bags, bed sheets, cheesecloth, a winch with a minimum one-ton capacity, a half-pound can of black pepper, rags, a large sheet of polyethylene and a refrigerated truck.
Still, more than 68,000 hopefuls paid for the privilege of putting their name in the database, meaning that Fuller’s updated batting average of one victory in the lottery’s 25-year history is virtually on the mathematical nose.
Of course, fate and the law of averages are funny things. Judilee Whittemore of Rumford howled and raised her arms heavenward in a touchdown signal after hearing her daughter, Heather Theriault, called out almost 90 minutes into the Name Game.
Heather is 11. This was her first lottery, enjoyed from a safe distance. She was home on the computer, tying up the phone line.
“She’s going to be so excited. I’m the one who dragged her into the outdoors, and she just loves hunting,” said Whittemore.
Kirsten Cossar, 14, gave up instant messaging for a night and endured the long ride from Casco. She was a first-time winner in her fifth try.
“My Grammie won before, and she took me out (as her sub-permittee). I had a lot of fun,” Cossar said. “I’ve been trying to get one on my own ever since.”
Sen. Bruce Bryant, D-Dixfield, shook Cossar and Whittemore’s hands and couldn’t stop shaking his head.
He’s chairman of the committee that oversees the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.
“I’ve tried 25 years, I’m on the committee and I still can’t win,” Bryant lamented.
The streak lives. But Bryant got even with Cossar. He recruited her to read two pages of names. She might be able to dress a half-ton bull, but let’s see her tackle Madawaska, St. Agatha and T-16, R-04 without yelling for Grammie.
Then again, she might have provided the highlight of somebody’s life. Somebody like Rocky Fuller.
“I’ve heard the name Rocky’ announced before, and then, nope, not me,” Fuller said. “I came here thinking, nah, there’s no way. I can’t wait to talk to my dad. He’s won twice. He’s not going to believe this.”
Kalle Oakes is a staff writer. His e-mail is koakes@sunjournal.com.
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