Maine Warden Brock Clukey of Andover didn’t anticipate being busy Saturday morning while patrolling the woods and back roads of Western Maine during a predicted daylong deluge.

His eight-hour shift began at 5 a.m. on opening day of the firearms deer hunting season for Maine residents, and it was wicked wet, gloomy and dismal.

“I knew it would be fairly quiet,” said the warden of 10 years, whose district stretches from Andover to Magalloway Plantation.

But Saturday found him far away in his truck at about 9:30 a.m., assisting fellow Warden Steve Allarie with a hunting-related, all-terrain-vehicle accident in Buckfield.

Returning toward the Rumford-Mexico area later that morning, Clukey was either slowly bumping and bouncing over rocks, ruts and water-filled holes on eroded gravel roads heading for popular hunting locations, or cruising along highways from Buckfield to Mexico to check other off-road spots.

“You’ll still have people who want to get out on opening day and hunt the morning, even if the weather’s going to be bad. They predicted 2 to 4 inches of rain and flood conditions. That’s unreal,” he said.

On a typical deer hunting day, five to seven wardens might be found patrolling all of Western Maine. On opening day, wardens are mostly out and about looking for hunters on posted property without landowner permission.

“We’re out there to look out for landowners and make sure they don’t have any complaints. If it was good weather, I’d probably get more complaints in the Rumford-Mexico area, because there are more hunters and more fields,” Clukey said while checking areas along Common Road in Dixfield.

Later, while traveling west over the rough, gravel Coburn Brook Road between Dixfield and Mexico, Clukey passed a pullout area that was littered with spent shotgun shells, blown-apart targets and trash. He suddenly braked, then backed up and got out.

Attached to a tree, a yellow metal sign marked No Dumping had one side partially shot off.

“These are typical things that make landowners upset,” he said, scowling, surveying the mess.

“People need to really understand they need to respect landowners. If I find anybody littering on people’s property, I’m going to address it. That’s one of my biggest goals,” Clukey said, climbing back into his truck.

Wardens also stop and check hunters for hunting licenses, ask how they’re doing, whether or not they’ve seen any deer, and safety stuff, like ensuring they haven’t forgotten to unload their weapons before getting into a car or truck.

In return, hunters seek tips from wardens who stop them, and ask if they’ve seen any deer and where.

On Saturday, both hunters and deer were sparse, but feed wasn’t. Clukey said it’s a great year in which to hunt deer, bear or other game in Western Maine, unlike the past three to four years.

“We have a real good mast crop of beechnuts and acorns. There’s a lot of deer feed, and the deer went through a real mild winter, so they’re doing really good. Hunters will be in the woods hunting over these hardwood areas. Typically, that’s where the deer are going to be,” he said.

Wardens also check tagging stations, like Ellis Variety on Weld Street in Dixfield, to learn if hunters are bagging deer.

By 11:30 a.m., the store had only registered one 8-point, 190-pound buck that a Rumford man shot at 8 a.m., a store clerk said.

“One deer in Ellis Variety. Wow! Usually, they have seven or eight on opening day,” Clukey said, before heading for Route 17 and Poplar Hill Road in Mexico, hoping to find some hunters.

“If I was a deer today, I would be hunkered right up under the biggest pine tree I could find for cover,” he said.

Although wardens spent this past week searching for missing people in Phippsburg and Auburn, Clukey said they don’t usually get calls to look for lost hunters until the second or third week of deer season.

“That’s when the rut is going on, when bucks are chasing does. Then, typically, a hunter will spend more time to go after a big deer, and they’re out in the back woods before they know it, and it gets dark,” he said.

That’s why he tells hunters to always tell people where they’re going to be hunting, take a flashlight and extra batteries, and waterproof matches to start a fire to stay warm.

During Saturday’s shift, he met only a handful of soggy hunters heading home and didn’t get any calls to investigate incidents.

Last year, the only two calls he got came at the same time in the last 30 minutes of the last day of deer season.

One was a hunter who exited a truck and fired from it, killing a deer. The other, he said, came from a landowner who complained that two hunters had shot and killed two deer within 100 yards of her occupied house in Andover.

“They took the deer, drove past the tagging station and tried to sneak the deer back to their home in Southern Maine. Is a deer really worth losing your hunting license in the last 20 minutes of deer season? I worked through the night and caught them, and it made the landowner very happy. She was tickled pink,” Clukey said.

At the end of Saturday’s quiet shift, he yawned and said, “Well, anybody who got a deer today, I say, ‘Congratulations!’ They’ve really earned it.”