ATTENTION VISITORS!

Please be careful with fire when camping at any North Maine Woods authorized campsite.  Remember that a campfire can only be built within the steel fire rings provided at each authorized site location, and please never leave your campfire unattended.  Until fire conditions improve, please be advised that the Maine Forest Service will not be issuing permits for any campsite that requires a fire permit.  (posted 5-20-2013)

  Current Road Conditions

• There is a washout at Mile 3 on the 522 road with half the road blocked.  The washout is passable with a truck, but it is recommended for people trying to get to the Cyr Road, John’s Bridge, and points north to use the 48 Mile Connector Road from the Pinkham Road (posted 4/24/13).
• There is a washout at mile 16 on the Oxbow Rd.  The washout is passable with a 4X4 and well-placed tires (posted 4/30/2013).
• All access roads to Churchill Dam are rough but passable.
• There is a wash out on the Little Clayton Lake Road (posted 5/14/13).

• Russell Mountain Road has some severe wash outs (posted 5/14/13).

  Bridge Construction

• Please be advised that the Musquacook Bridge on T12R11 will be reconstructed starting May 27th until approximately June 14 (weateher dependent).  Until this project is completed the Musquacook Bridge will be closed to any heavy equipment traffic, and the Musquacook Bridge Campsite will be closed (Posted 5/20/2013).  

       

Some Good News for Maine's Deer Herd

By John Holyoke, BDN Staff

Posted March 29, 2013, at 9:48 a.m.

BANGOR, Maine — Ever since two consecutive harsh winters devastated the state’s deer herd — especially those animals that lived in northern Maine — hunters have been impatiently waiting for good news.

Here it is: The herd is on the rebound, and the man who has served as the state’s top deer biologist said he expects the situation to continue to improve.

An important thing to consider, according to Lee Kantar of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, is that deer-rich areas of the state aren’t the only places where the herd has seen rapid growth. That trend is also taking place in far northern Maine, where the fall 2012 buck harvest reached 203 animals, a level unseen in that region since 1963.

The DIF&W announced last week that the state’s total deer harvest in 2012 was 21,365 deer, which marked a 13 percent increase over the 18,839 deer taken in 2011. Even more impressive was the increase in the number of bucks that were taken statewide: 15,271 adult male deer were tagged in 2012, which was an increase of 2,473, or 19 percent.

Kantar said some new data have been derived through a study that has determined the age of harvested animals by looking at their teeth.

“We knew we took a big hit in 2008 with our yearling age class, but we’ve confirmed this with the tooth-age data,” Kantar said. “We’ve had, it looks like two age classes that were much reduced, even in our best deer habitat, which wasn’t really surprising.”

But four consecutive mild winters, counting the most recent one, have helped deer survive the winter. And the fact that the deer that would have been most affected back in 2008 and 2009 are now older contributes to a changing scenario for deer.

Typically there aren’t many 4-, 5- or 6-year-old deer on a landscape, as many are shot by hunters or die of natural causes. Now, four years removed from those harsh winters, the total deer population is less dependent on those age classes that were decimated in the winters of 2008 and 2009. Add in the fact that state biologists have been very conservative in allowing the harvest of female deer (which can typically only be shot by hunters holding an any-deer permit), and the recovery-in-progress makes sense.

“Last year demonstrated that we’re getting back to a harvest that we’d seen prior to 2008,” Kantar said. “That’s a really critical element, because there seems like there’s a lag time for people to fully understand the positive gains that we have.

“We’re expecting bigger and better things in 2013, but in 2012 in southern Maine we were back at capacity. In the far southern part of the state, in Wildlife Management District 20, we had a record buck harvest,” he said.

Add that to the marked improvement in WMD 3 north of Caribou in Aroostook County and hunters have good reason to be optimistic, Kantar said.

“We talk about two different Maines, but in the north country we’ve had four below-average winters up there,” Kantar said.

The biologist said he hopes hunters hear this news and start returning to the northern parts of the state to look for bucks that used to draw throngs of hunters in November.

“The bottom line is that there are bucks out there in the north country as well as down south, and people should be going to the big woods to hunt,” Kantar said. “Obviously there’s a lot of room for improvement, but there always will be. But let’s look at the glass half-full side of things, which is, we’ve bounced back to prior to 2008 winter numbers, there’s a lot of opportunity out there, and in fact, there’s going to be some recommendations to open up some any-deer permits in the north country as well, in three districts that we’re looking at right now.”

That’s right: Kantar said the DIF&W is considering offering limited any-deer permits in northern Maine for the first time in several years.

“That’s good news because the biologists and the wildlife division feel, as a whole, that we’re closing in on short-term population objectives, we can handle this, this is a good thing for a variety of reasons, and this is a good thing from a population point of view,” he said.

Camping is One of Many Attractions

As the days get longer our telephones ring more often and our email inbox gets busier. In addition to communicating with people planning fishing and canoeing trips, many people are just interested in camping overnight in the Maine woods. We manage three different regions that attract campers looking for different camping experiences.

In the “big woods” of the North Maine Woods region we maintain approximately 350 authorized campsites and another 80 designated fire permit campsites. This is truly remote camping with many miles separating campsite locations. In many cases one of our campsites is the only man-made development in an entire township which consists of 36 square miles. Many campsites are on remote lake or river shores where campers hear only the sound of loons at night and see the nighttime stars without the interference of artificial light sources.

In the KI Jo-Mary Forest Region there are another 70 campsites that are in remote settings, but closer to the settled regions of central and northern Maine. Gulf Hagas, the Appalachian Trail, Gauntlet Falls and dozens of clear lakes and ponds and numerous hiking trails are the attractions for this region. As in the NMW, the sites are primitive with steel firerings, picnic tables and outhouse as the only facilities. Some sites also have picnic table shelters and in 2012 we erected seven more in this region. In addition to providing extra comfort for our customers, building the shelters is a good moral booster for members of our campsite maintenance staff. Last October we built six shelters in one day in the Jo-Mary Checkpoint region using staff from Ashland, from the Katahdin Iron Works region as well as receiving help from the local forester. This spring our regular visitors to the Jo-Mary Checkpoint region will be surprised to see these new shelters at their favorite campsites. It will allow them to remain comfortable during periods of rainy weather next season.

The third and most comfortable camping experience we offer is at Jo-Mary Campground located on Upper Jo-Mary Lake. With 30 seasonal campsites and 40 transient campsites, this facility has flush toilets, hot showers, ice and firewood available, and a laundromat. It has an outstanding sand beach that faces Mount Katahdin which stands out on the horizon.

If camping is your outdoor recreational activity of choice, we have multiple opportunities to enjoy the outdoors. Please check for more details on our website