Angela Monroe of South Thomaston has been waiting for a Maine moose permit since she was in her late 20s.
Monroe, 59, said Thursday it has been at least 30 years since she began applying for moose permits through the state’s lottery system. Everyone else in her immediate family who hunts has been drawn at least once, some more than that. It had become a family joke, she said.
But when the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife released the list of 2024 moose lottery permit winners in June, Monroe was on it. Monroe said her husband Robert almost fell down the stairs when he came down them to her, screaming that she had gotten a permit.
Her permit was for Zone 11, which is southern Aroostook and northern Penobscot counties, where her family camp is located. And on Tuesday, just minutes before legal shooting time ended, Monroe and her son Zachary as her subpermittee, brought down an 834-pound bull moose with a 54-inch antler spread and about 20 scorable points on his antlers.
Monroe said that family friend John Field scouted the area multiple times over the last few weeks, which was critical to their success.
The hunting party hunted hard off the road. They would get up at 3 a.m. to get into the woods and be ready when it was legal to shoot. On Monday, they had a response from a bull moose, but never saw him. The only interesting animal that day was a fisher that ran past them, Monroe said.
On Tuesday, Monroe said she awoke not feeling well, but went out hunting anyway. They had one bull come within 25 feet of them, but she didn’t take a shot because she could only see the antlers and shoulder of the animal. It left after a few minutes.
They continued to walk and about a mile and a half into the woods toward the end of Tuesday, the hunting party could hear a bull way off and a cow answering. With aggressive calling and using an antler to simulate another bull crashing through the trees, the moose was getting closer, grunting and thrashing through the woods, raking his antlers on the trees.
Just about 10 minutes before legal hunting would end, the bull stepped out of the woods about 50 yards from the hunters. Monroe and Zachary shot the moose, which ran 40-50 yards away and was dead when the hunting party found it.
Monroe said it was a difficult shot because the moose wasn’t in a broadside position.
Down an abandoned woods road, parts of it covered with water, and darkness descending, the hunters had to get the moose out of the woods.
Field came to the rescue. Some of the men cleared a few logs blocking the road, and Field drove the truck to the moose. They hooked it up to the truck, with its head up, and dragged it out. The biggest obstacle was a 100-yard abandoned beaver flow that was almost up to the truck’s floorboards, Robert Monroe said.
It took the hunting party until a little after 10 p.m. to get the moose out of the woods.
Angela Monroe said it was great to share the experience with her son and husband.
Monroe comes from a long line of women hunters in her family. Her mother Nancy Arey was a taxidermist in South Thomaston at a time when it was unusual for women to take on such an occupation. Arey died in 2008.
“I probably wouldn’t have asked her to mount it. It’s a lot of work,” Monroe said.
The meat is at the butcher and Monroe is having a full shoulder mount of the head done.
“He will go into the eave of the camp, just as I prophesied all of those years. He has had a designated place for a long time,” Monroe said.
