In this part of the world there are alot of moose wandering round....just wondering if you guys up in New England, or elsewhere, have many there too. I had a cow and calf camping out in my yard for a few days lately...really puts a damper on my cross country skiing and walking with the dogs at times. Last week one of my dogs, who is getting on in years, nearly got stomped by her. His eyesight must be failing, because her trotted nearly right up to her before he saw that she was there! By that time she was up on her hind legs pawing the air with her front hooves! He was about 20 ft from her at that point. She had been bedded down with her young 'un about 100 ft from the house, and laying exactly in the spot where the dogs all go pee first thing in the morning. When I let the dogs out ithat morning to go potty the two younger ones saw that she was there and did their thing right close by the house, but the older guy just took off at a trott to go water his usual tree! I was calling him to stay , but he just turned and looked at me as if to say "I have to go...NOW"..and off he went. The moose apparently did not see him as a threat, because as soon as he saw her, he took a quick right around a big snow bank and continued off to his tree.Guess she was jut showing him that they were there; she did not advance on him. She and her calf just calmly walked off about 30 ft and began to enjoy their breakfast of ceanothus leaves. One thing un-nerving about moose is that they seem to have no fear. Anyone else have stories to tell about moose and such? Idaho Gal.

-- Anonymous, February 05, 2003

Answers

Idaho Gal...Moose are becoming waaayyy too plentiful around these parts! Most people see them up close and personal when they hit them with their cars. Hunting season has just been expanded for them. We haven't had any personal encounters with them...other than seeing them grazing in salt marshes and swamps, but during the fall rut the young bulls don't know the difference between a cow moose and a cow "cow"!!! Also, in the winter, moose spend lots of time in the roads licking the salt off the pavement.

I'm not sure if it's that they have no fear...or if they're just DUMB :-)!!! Fascinating creatures, that's fer sure!!

-- Anonymous, February 05, 2003

We don't get a lot of moose around here, only on rare occasions does one wander down from the UP where they were repopulating them. They used to say that the Whitetail carried some kind of a parasite that they were immune to themselves, but that would kill the Moose, so that is why their ranges don't overlap much.

So since we've got whitetails everywhere, maybe that is why we don't have moose much. Not that I mind, it's enough keeping the doggone deer out of things, can't imagine how much moreso I'd have to do to keep a moose out!

I haven't seen a moose personally since hiking on Isle Royale, where a cow walked through our camp one morning, stepping over the guy lines on the tents with a look of mild distaste on her face as if she was VERY tired of all these stupid tourists everywhere. We later saw a different cow (I think) with her calf down on the shore feeding on lake weeds and such.

Locally, we had a few come down and they were marauding bird feeders. One woman called up the DNR to report that there was a moose in her back yard eating out of her feeder and drinking out of the bird bath -- what should she do? The DNR guy was rather rude in telling her that she didn't know what she was seeing, it must just be a large whitetail. She got in a huff and said she'd lived her entire life here and she KNEW what a deer looked like, and what a moose looked like.

Just to put the egg on the guy's face, the story about it ran in our local little newspaper, along with the photo that she took of a youngish bull moose eating out of her backyard bird feeder.

-- Anonymous, February 13, 2003

I was living in the UP at the time they were doing the moose repopulation. They did a lot of community education to discourage hunters from shooting the moose during deer season. The DNR even came out with a little song that they taught to all of the elementary school kids called "Don't shoot the moose" (I still remember the words!) I'm not sure how many moose are still in the UP, I think I heard that most of them contracted brainworm and died.

One of the professors where I went to college is the #1 expert on the moose and wolf population dynamics at Isle Royale. I always though it would be cool to go camping there but just never got around to it.

-- Anonymous, February 14, 2003

Oh, I love Isle Royale. I haven't been there in years, and if I were to go back now, I'd rent a room and just do day-hikes out from it. I really like having a warm bed at night and a hot shower after a day of being rained on.

Because that's something that it seems to do every day there -- I'm told that it is a northern rainforest ecosystem, and I believe it. But it's very beautiful there, if you like granite shield rock formations covered in spruce trees and lots of lichens and such. Gorgeous scenery, no motor vehicles on the island other than at the trailhead (well, the Rangers do have motorboats and such for removing hikers in emergencies).

I've never seen a wolf there, or even heard one. We were hiking around, apparently following one of the packs, because people at campsites would tell us that they'd heard them the night before. One day we decided to really push ourselves, and do a double march to catch up with them, and since it was raining out and we were already soaked and couldn't get much wetter, we decided we might as well walk.

Doggone if the wolves didn't pull a double march on us too, and stayed another day ahead of us. So we never did get to hear them.

We did see moose a couple times there, chased a squirrel that stole one of our wool socks off the bush where it was drying (bet that he slept cozy that winter!), discovered a flock of Whiskey Jacks (Canadian Jays) that would land on your hands and shoulders and eat out of your hands -- I saved quite a bit of my breakfast every day to feed them. Oh, and pan-handling ducks outside the dining hall.

I'd love to go back there, but being a major undertaking to find critter sitters and all, it's not likely to happen. We have a little woods lake around here that is another non-motor lake, that is all state land around it (no cabins!!) that has been made into nature hiking trails. It looks quite a lot like Isle Royale does -- the only thing missing are the moose!

I didn't know how the moose population was doing -- are there many left up in the UP? I know over near Clam Lake they are trying to do a reintroduction of woodland Elk instead, since they don't seem to be affected by the brainworm thingie, and were present in this area until around the time of WWII (I think it was) -- they were all poached off then.

-- Anonymous, February 15, 2003

I haven't been back to the UP since my divorce (ex-hubby was a Yooper) so I don't know if there's any moose left up there or not.

-- Anonymous, February 17, 2003