The State of Maine has been having a moose hunting season for around 30 years now and for those 30 years permits to hunt moose have been determined by a lottery drawing of applicants. The announcing of the winners of those permits has always been done at an event where people come to gather in hopes to hear their names called. This still goes on today but I think it is time to make some changes to the event.

2009 was the second year that Skinny Moose Media attended the annual Maine Moose Lottery Drawing and the second year we streamed live audio and video as a means of providing a service to those moose hunters unable or unwilling to attend the event. Last year we had over 6,000 viewers log on to the Internet in hopes of discovering if they were one of the lucky ones. I don’t have any hard figures but this year looks like perhaps around 5,000.

The 2009 Maine Moose Lottery Drawing was held in Fort Kent, Maine. I listened as Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife Commissioner, Roland “Danny” Martin announced that he thought the number of attendees could have been a record.

But here’s what I see as a problem and something I think MDIFW can easily address without causing much of a dispute for those wanting to know if they’ve won a moose permit.

It has always been my impression that the idea of having the lottery drawing a big event was to make it the first place anyone can hear names drawn (they are now read off a computer generated list.) It appears this is no longer the case and I believe it is beginning to have its effects on the moose lottery event.

A computer generates the names of permit winners. This is done just prior to the big lottery event. But what is happening is these names are also being made available to media outlets and shortly after the start of the event to read the names, the list is posted on the MDIFW web site.

Once viewers of our streaming video discovered the list was out, they signed off, read the list and went to do other things. Obviously that affects Skinny Moose Media’s viewership but what I saw as a negative affect happened last night here in Fort Kent.

If you’ve never attended a lottery drawing before, let me give you a quick overview of how it is done. Attendees gather and sit in the audience. Dignitaries and sometime local celebrities are solicited to read a list of names aloud to the audience. Each reader announces 50 winners and then on to the next reader.

Once members of the audience received phone calls from friends and family telling them they either won or didn’t, they all started leaving. This yanked the rug out from under those who hosted the event. The host wanted to put on a good show as well as hope to make a dollar or two from selling concessions etc.

Making the names available to the general public before or shortly after the lottery show commences is not fair for the host. It’s not fair for those who travel and sit in the audience for long periods of time and it’s not fair to all those who are lined up to read names. By the end of the show, there’s very few people left in the audience.

If this seems a bit like sour grapes, it really has very little to do with my efforts and those of Skinny Moose Media to video stream the event. Yes, once viewers found out they could access a list of names, my viewing audience was cut more than in half but that’s really secondary in my opinion.

When SMM decided to cover the event for Internet viewers, I told MDIFW that we did not intend to take business away from the lottery event itself. We only wanted an opportunity to enhance the experience and that if it ever seemed we were decreasing the crowds coming out to the drawings, we would stop doing this. I don’t think we are diminishing the experience but I think MDIFW is.

During the show, Milt and I talked with some representatives of MDIFW about the timing of the release of winners. We had assorted opinions on the matter but were at least told it would be discussed.

If MDIFW doesn’t intend or sees no importance in having the lottery show the main event for the moose drawing, then nothing in this discussion matters. They also will run the risk of seeing the demise of the annual event. Perhaps they don’t care or see the value and opportunities the show can bring. However they want it to play out they need to decide before it gets worse.

If the sequence of events remains the same, then Skinny Moose Media will have to decide whether it is worth attending the event next year, to be held at L.L. Bean in Freeport, Maine. If we do attend and the methods remain the same, we’ve already begun talking about how to change our own format to one of maybe just posting the winners on our web sites and spending most of our time doing interviews before the show.

If MDIFW hopes to find success in allowing the lottery event to be hosted by private business or communities and organizations, they need first to make a commitment to the show and letting the show be the first place any names of winners will be made public. Immediately after the show, the names become public information.

Tom Remington

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