Cover photo: Virginians Bret Efird, Neal Kauder, Robb Moore and Fred Efird enjoy a hunt together for Maine ruffed grouse in 2021. Photo by Michael Tuminaro
A Virginian’s Path to Becoming a Registered Maine Guide
I’d like to say that my aspiration to become a Registered Maine Guide was born out of an altruistic desire to pay it forward and introduce others to that special alchemy I’d discovered in Maine: the joy of a great outdoors that is incomprehensibly vast and yet supremely well-managed for wildlife, the pursuit of my favorite game bird, the ruffed grouse, and my love of witnessing bird dogs hone their genetic inheritance with some of the wiliest denizens of the Northwoods.
That’s all true, but if I’m being honest, the real spark that set me on my way was the quest for the holy grail that sat on a rough-hewn cabin dining table among five friends sharing the remains of a small bottle of Blanton’s Gold at the end of a successful grouse-hunting day. It was the most eye-catching mug I’d ever seen, a simple café cup emblazoned with the brilliantly stark red, green and white shield of a Registered Maine Guide.
In what might have seemed like a non-sequitur to anyone not sharing that bottle with us, I heard myself ask, speaking not only for myself, but also on behalf of my grouse-hunting buddies, Eric Kallen and Neal Kauder: “So how might one acquire one of those sweet mugs?” The owners of the Maine Upland Guide Service, Dave Tyrol and Mike Tuminaro, both former Maine law enforcement officers, our guides for the week and good friends, laid it all out for us.
Those mugs, and anything else with that Registered Maine Guide shield, are only sold to those who can provide their license number, having passed Maine’s demanding testing process, demonstrating comprehensive proficiency in woodmanship, client safety, land navigation, and, for the specialized hunting classification, an encyclopedia’s worth of flora and fauna ID and state hunting, trapping and recreation regulations. Prospective guides must first pass an FBI fingerprint and background check to qualify to test and then run the gauntlet with Maine Department of Inland Fishery and Wildlife (IF&W) examiners over a three-hour exam, including—but not limited to—timed and pressure-filled land navigation tests using both GPS devices and map and compass, a “catastrophic scenario” testing interview, the demonstration of canoe techniques, plant and fur bearer IDs and a 100-question written test. Those components and others are all parts of the certification process that Maine most recently fully standardized in 1975 and then tweaked periodically until today.
Tyrol explained that the state takes its guide licensing process so seriously that “jail time is mandatory for anyone convicted of accepting compensation for guiding in Maine without a Registered Maine Guide license.” It’s also a criminal offense in Maine to hire a guide who is not a Registered Maine Guide. So deep is its history, that none other than President Theodore Roosevelt spent time as a young man in and around Island Falls, Maine, and counted as his mentors and trusted advisors two early Maine hunting guides, Bill Sewall and Wilmot Dow, who later partnered with him to manage Roosevelt’s Elkhorn Ranch in the Dakota territories. Shortly after the Maine legislature mandated guide registration with the state in 1897, Cornelia “Fly Rod” Crosby became the very first Registered Maine Guide. And she best embodied Mainers’ profound love for their state’s sporting traditions in famously describing herself: “I scribble a bit for various sporting journals, and I would rather fish any day than to go to heaven.” Honoring this historic legacy, Maine stands with Alaska in having the most rigorous state testing processes for licensing state-approved hunting, fishing, and outdoor recreation guides.
Tuminaro explained his first impressions of the guide program when he was a law enforcement officer: “I was impressed with the thoroughness of the process. I was glad to see that the state was challenging the guide candidates to make sure that they could handle themselves in tough situations and emergencies. Guides and their clients are dealing with ATVs, wild animals, remote wilderness and firearms, just to name a few. Fully prepared guides are important.” He went on to explain why he and Tyrol decided to first offer their MUGS prep course: “As past first responders and instructors who also love the outdoors, we wanted to be a part of helping the state prepare the best guides possible.”
It may have been the pride and sense of accomplishment of having successfully taken another beautiful, mature ruffed grouse on the wing from over my dog Lincoln’s point that day, the warmth and laughter of friendship around that table, the liquid courage dancing in smooth golden whiskey, or—most likely—a perfect storm of all three but having learned all about what that holy grail represented from Tuminaro and Tyrol, I was hooked. Egged on by Kauder and Kallen, I resolved at that moment that I, a former Tenderfoot Boy Scout, would somehow take on this immense challenge, and no matter how long it took, I would achieve a license as a Registered Maine Guide.
I talked my brother-in-law into traveling with me back to Maine this past February to take the Maine Upland Guide Service’s excellent and highly effective three-day test preparation course and secured my place on the waitlist for a testing date. I studied nights and weekends for months and practiced my land navigation, flora and fauna ID and knot-tying skills before traveling back up to Maine with my wife Heather to enjoy a few days in what has become one of our favorite vacation spots together before I sat for my test in August of this year. And on Monday afternoon of August 7, 2023, I walked out of the IF&W headquarters in Augusta holding two earned Registered Maine Guide patches, experiencing the sort of heady relief I haven’t felt since miraculously passing Sanskrit exams in grad school at the University of Chicago decades ago. I immediately went online and joined the Maine Professional Guides Association (MPGA) and ordered what had become by far the most expensive (and most valuable to me) $10 mug I’ve ever acquired. Holy Grail achieved!
Scott Overbey, a 20-year Maine resident who has worked for the past 15 years for Patagonia and currently serves as their retail district manager for the East Coast, took the MUGS preparation course with me. Overbey first became a Registered Maine Guide in 2006 with a specialized fishing classification and took the MUGS course to prepare to test for the addition of the specialized hunting classification, which he obtained shortly after our course. From his perspective, the substantial change for him this time around was the benefit of a preparation course like MUGS offers, which simply did not exist decades ago.
“I got my butt handed to me the first time,” he said. “I came into it pretty cocky.” A pro fishing guide in Colorado before he moved to Maine, he said, “I was like, ‘Really, what are you going to ask me that I don’t know?’ But I got hung up on the lost-person scenario, I passed everything but that.” Chastened, he took the feedback, internalized it, and put extra emphasis on studying that material and passed that section of the test on the second attempt, earning his first license.
“I think there’s something to be said for not passing it the first time. It speaks to character, like, ‘How bad do you really want this?’”
Both Overbey and I agree that prep courses like the MUGS class dramatically increase the odds of a pass on the first attempt. Even with my vast preparation and study, the test itself was incredibly challenging and I wasn’t confident that I’d passed it until the examiners congratulated me after scoring my written test and conferring with one another at the conclusion of the testing session. As a non-resident applicant, I am certain I would not have passed on my first attempt without the benefit of the MUGS prep course to set me on the right path.
While this supreme adult outdoors merit badge always marks the hard-won end of a rigorous process, it often also marks a beginning for those who achieve it, as it has for me. I have contracted with the Maine Upland Guide Service to serve as a guide for and with them for days and/or weeks of this and coming years as Heather and our dogs Lincoln, Rooster and I seek to make annual autumn pilgrimages to our second favorite state and what is now for our family a Northwoods home away from home.
To learn more about the Registered Maine Guide Program see Maine Upland Guide Service’s Course offering @ maineupland.com/maine-guide-school or find a comprehensive set of state resources for the Registered Maine Guide program under “Programs and Resources” @ maine.gov/ifw.
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Robb Moore is a ninth-generation Virginian, and angler andbird hunter and now a Registered Maine Guide who lives in
Richmond. He has written articles for Project Upland (projectupland.com) and its biannual sister publication, Hunting Dog Confidential (huntingdogconfidential.com). In addition to his day-job as a higher-education administrator at his alma mater, the University of Richmond, Moore also helps as an amateur bird-dog trainer at Orapax Hunting Preserve (orapax.com). You can find him on Instagram @AManAndHisBirdDog.
