Wayne Martell’s moose hunt was a first for him. Not just because he had never hunted moose before. And not just because he got to hunt with his daughter as the subpermittee.
No, this first was different, mainly because of the particular moose Martell harvested.
Martell’s moose, which weighed in at 770 pounds, had one antler that was spikelike while the other was a 3- to 4-inch nub with bumps around it. Its spike antler was still dressed in velvet. But so were a couple of its teeth. And both male and female sex organs were visible.
Martell, 79, of Limington shot the moose in zone 5 on Wednesday during the state’s second week of bull moose hunting. He didn’t have a guide, but stayed at a camp in Masardis owned by his daughter Roxanne Johnson and her husband Dana Johnson Jr. of Wells.
Roxanne Johnson was the subpermittee.
The hunters were riding the dirt roads, looking for bull moose when they spotted this one down a skidder trail. It looked like a healthy spike horn, Martell said.
He and his daughter shot the moose at the same time at about 200 yards, he said Monday.
“It was kind of a shock to see exactly what it was when we walked up to it and realized it had equipment for both [male and female],” he said.
The velvet on the single antler was white.
Martell said they used rope and a truck to pull the moose out of the skidder road and loaded it onto a trailer.
The experienced hunter said he has never seen anything like that moose. He has hunted for deer and upland birds for several years. He also is a lifetime member of the Maine Trappers Association from his days of trapping fox and other small game.
A biologist at the Gateway Trading Post in Ashland was amazed at what he saw when the moose came in to be registered, Martell said. He took measurements and various samples from the moose and examined the animal thoroughly, he said.
Jamey Reitmeyer, regional biologist in the Ashland office of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, said he did not see the velvet on the teeth. Lee Kantar, the state’s chief moose biologist, said animals sometimes will eat the velvet that has been rubbed off antlers.
Kantar, who was not in Ashland to see the moose, said it sounds like the moose was a hermaphrodite, which is a scientific label that means it had both male and female reproductive parts.
The moose likely was not young, Reitmeyer said. A tooth was pulled so scientists could determine its age.
Sometimes antlers grow oddly after an injury, but this spike antler had living velvet that still had functioning blood vessels in it, he said. Hormonal imbalances can also cause the antlers to grow in strange ways, he said.
The hunter registered the moose with the state as a bull.
Martell plans to do a European mount of the head and skull himself. He said he has been researching how to preserve the velvet on the spike horn too, but doesn’t have much hope that it will be possible.
He doesn’t have room to hang the mount in the house he shares with his wife Rita, but thought the moose would fit better at the camp in Masardis anyway.
“He’s kind of coming home,” Martell said.
