Northwoods Outfitters Moosehead Lake - Greenville, Maine

Andrew S.

We had a great experience with Northwoods Outfitters on our trip to Greenville last weekend. On the way up, our flights were cancelled, and Jason was very accommodating to our late arrival. Once we finally got there, we had a guided snowmobile tour with Steve on Friday, and he showed us all over Big Moose and Little Moose Mountain.

Saturday we had an all day rental to explore the trails on our own. The staff were very helpful in helping me plan our route for the day and the machine was top notch.

I highly recommend a snowmobile tour/rental through Northwoods Outfitters. Hope to have the opportunity to do it again soon!

Larry V.

We travel full-time and aim to sample the best of an area during our stay, and our Private Moose Safari exceeded our expectations. Steve Sullivan, our guide, lives in the area year-round and is an excellent source of all-season information on activities in the area, history, and information about the elusive Maine Moose. He was already at the outfitter's shop when we arrived at 4:55 am, ready to go, and we saw our first moose within 20 minutes. Steve is a great driver, and the van was comfortable on the gravel roads. He explained public land use in Maine, the timber industry, and snow machining, and he was a great source of everything about moose. Before our safari ended, we saw a calf, cow, and another bull moose that darted out in front of us as we traveled slowly through the woods and almost was a hood ornament. The time flew by with great conversation, views, and fun. Thank you, Steve, for a memorable morning finding the elusive moose. We will be back!

Charlie R.

We booked three trips. Whitewater rafting was great. Moose tour wasn’t worth the price (not their fault, they tried hard and the guide was great, wild animals just don’t cooperate). Fishing didn’t work out well, just caught one small bass, but the guide put in lots of extra work and time. I appreciate the effort the staff put in, their boat broke down two days before the tour and the staff worked VERY hard to come up with a solution that worked out well.

Corie E.

100% recommend Northwoods Outfitters!! Jason was so easy to work with and very informative in the booking process. Steve was an absolutely fantastic guide and helped us fulfill our dream of seeing moose! Additionally, Moose Mountain Inn was a good place to stay. Can’t wait to come back!

Adam J.

I recently had a top-notch experience worth sharing. I had booked an unguided 2-person snowmobile for my birthday, but unfortunately there was little snow in early January. Northwoods called me days before the reservation and comped me a free guide in order to ensure I would have a positive experience. Our guide, Steve, was able to show us all the good snow trails that we wouldn't have discovered on our own. It was a phenomenal day that would not have happened without the generosity of Northwood's staff. Everyone at the outfitters building made sure we were well equipped and prepared for a frigid day that reached negative degrees with windchill. Thank you to everyone who helped make this a memorable birthday!

Mallory L.

We really enjoyed our moose safari. 🫎 We saw a mom and her newborn, a cow (female) and a yearling (1 year old). We also saw a bald eagle, a grouse and a beaver dam that the same beaver family has added on for 6 years. 🦫

We definitely plan to do future safaris with them.

TL F.

Easy to reserve a 4 person UTV online. Waivers can all be signed online in advance. Convenient location right at the traffic light in town. Check in was quick, friendly, UTV worked fine. My only suggestion is the paper map that routes were suggested to us using a marker. Very hard to discern. We are experienced UTV riders, but not familiar with the area. As we only reserved it for a half day, a map showing roads a little more close up that covered 4 hours worth of ride time would have been helpful. Would definitely go here again.

Albert Y.

My family of 5 adults was in Greenville to try to see moose at Moosehead Lake, and we did two different moose safaris with Northwoods Outfitters. To cover our bases we did an evening trip (with Tim as our guide) and a morning trip (with Steve as our guide). In the end we were very happy, as we saw moose on both our trips. It was touch and go on our first trip, in the afternoon / evening, as we didn't see anything until the very end of our trip, but we then got a young bull moose on the road side who walked right at our van (which was cool). On the morning trip we saw 5 moose: a cow and her calf, then 3 separate cows by themselves. The guides were great, knowledgeable and friendly, and they worked hard to find us those moose. On the evening trip we did some canoeing on a pond as well to see if we'd find any moose on the water, but at this time of year that's a bit of a long shot. We didn't, but the setting was beautiful and we enjoyed it. The safaris were about 4 hours each, and it takes a bit more than a half hour to get to the area where you're really looking for moose. The reason why we didn't give 5 stars is that the vehicle our family was in was a van that was perfectly serviceable and had plenty of space, but it's an older vehicle that's had lots of miles on it and we've been in vehicles with better visibility (and cleaner windows) for wildlife viewing and photography.

A few comments on doing moose trips in August, based on our experience and what we learned from Tim and Steve. Moose are nocturnal creatures, and very solitary. They like to eat the kind of vegetation that grows in bogs, swamps and ponds. They lose a good portion of their body weight in the winter (over 20%), so they spend a lot of time near the ponds and swamps to get their body weight back up. Once they've made up that lost weight, they go into the woods where they are less likely to encounter people, so it's becomes harder to see them as the summer progresses. On the other hand, the bulls shed their antlers in the winter and regrow them through the spring and summer so if you get lucky to see a bull later in the season, you'll see better antlers. Our bull was young so his antlers weren't spectacular (pic attached)

What that means is that you're much likelier to see them early morning (and I mean early! We left at 5AM for the morning trip and 4PM for the afternoon trip), because they're all awake and active in the early morning so more are on the move and you're likelier to find one. One of the top guide services in the area will only do the early morning trips in mid-to-late August as a result, and this was consistent with what we experienced and what the guides were telling us. Our first bull moose was sighted just before 8PM, when it was pretty dark out and as we were making our way back to the hotel. Another side note is that the best moose viewing areas near Moosehead Lake are where the logging companies do their work so you get a chance to learn a bit about the logging industry and see their trucks and how they work, which is pretty cool.