GREENVILLE — Danny White smiled Monday as his 4-year-old son stood spellbound next to a 660-pound moose at the tagging station beside Moosehead Lake.

“I married into a hunting family. His grandmother is over there with him. She’s been here before, back when more people came here to see moose tagged,” said White, a Dover-Foxcroft resident.

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In this October 2014 photograph, wildlife biologist Doug Kane shows Unity College wildlife biology majors Natasha Kosowsky, left, and MacKenzie Smith where to check for ticks on a moose shot by Michael Clair of Biddeford. Staff photo by John Ewing

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The family was among dozens of observers who stopped by the tagging station Monday, when the state’s annual moose hunt opened in the Moosehead region. Tagging stations also were busy in the Rangeley region and other parts of western Maine. But the Greenville station has more history than most.

“We still make a holiday of it,” White said. “Come into town, see the moose, go out to lunch. I’m surprised more people aren’t here. It’s a beautiful day.”

On Monday, the annual moose hunt expanded from northern Maine, where it was held Sept. 22 to 27; to hunting districts south and west. Through Saturday, hunters can kill moose in the Moosehead Lake region and in areas south toward Bangor, as well as many areas up north where hunting had taken place in September. On Nov. 3, the moose hunt will shift to districts in the midcoast, and nearly as far south as Sebago Lake and Lewiston.

Ben Folsom, 39, of Guilford, also expected a bigger crowd at the Greenville tagging station on the region’s opening day.

“I was surprised when I pulled in,” he said. “I remember there being a pile of people here. But I hadn’t been here in 20 years. That’s back when (the state’s hunt) was just a one-week season.”

Maine’s moose hunt has expanded since it began with an experimental season in 1980. In the years since, the hunt has spread to most of Maine’s 29 hunting districts and tagging stations have been added around the state. This year 3,095 moose hunters won permits, up from 500 that first year.

But one thing has remained the same through all the changes – the wonder, for some at least, of seeing massive bulls tagged and weighed.

Donna and David Lehtinen come to the Moosehead Lake region on Columbus Day weekend from Gardner, Massachusetts, every year. They’re not hunters. They are simply intrigued by moose. They come to the Greenville tagging station to see moose as big as the ones they’ve seen while camping in the Maine woods.

“I know people need to shoot them. They rely on the food, and the moose (herd) needs it. We’ve seen dead moose in the woods in May when we come up fishing in the spring. They died during the winter,” Donna Lehtinen said.

When the modern-day moose hunt started in 1980, the Greenville tagging station was one of the few moose tagging stations in the region. The station also courted meat cutters back then, so it was a big draw for hunting parties – and moose-tagging spectators.

As recently as a decade or two ago, the IFW headquarters in Greenville drew dozens of hunting trucks, so many that the line snaked out the driveway and onto the main road. It drew hundreds of spectators, even food vendors. Moose season’s opening day in Greenville was an event.

Today, opening day is a shadow of what it once was in Greenville. Lee Kantar, Maine’s moose biologist, said the big moose tagging stations these days are in Aroostook County, mostly in Fort Kent and Ashland. The state also reduced its allocation of hunting permits by nearly 25 percent from last year because winter ticks have taken a toll on the moose herd.

But some still make the pilgrimage. Many families still consider it a worthwhile stop on a beautiful fall day to see the size and antler width of moose taken by hunters.

Dick Watson, 83, came up Monday from Orrington, more than an hour away.

A decade ago he shot a moose that weighed 980 pounds and had a rack so massive that when Watson’s wife, who is 5 feet tall, stood next to the animal on its side, the rack was as tall as she was.

Watson still drives to the Greenville tagging station on Columbus Day for the chance to glimpse a moose as massive as the one he bagged.

Deirdre Fleming can be contacted at 791-6452 or at:

dfleming@pressherald.com

Twitter: FlemingPph

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