Off On A Wild Moose Chase
The Adirondack Daily Enterprise has the story of a wild moose chase they sent a reporter on - or which he sent himself on, it isn't exactly clear. At any rate, a long, long day hiking in the woods and never seeing a moose at all.
BATCHELLERVILLE — We, like the moose before us, split up, each taking different sides of the brook. Rotten logs, some covered in moss, crisscrossed the running water. The moose tracks we had been following had momentarily disappeared, washed away at the bottom of the brook moments after they were created.
Thirty yards upstream, we converged again, this time on the left side. Here, Bill Kitchen, who was leading this two-man day trip, headed up a short embankment. At the top, he stopped, pointing to the snow-covered earth a few feet ahead. It had been indented by the body of one of the animals we were tracking. Moose hairs were sprinkled on the white snow.
“Finally, they bedded down,” Bill said.
Bill has been tracking moose for close to 10 years and is very familiar with these woods. A Johnstown resident who works in the construction field, he enjoys being out in the wild. He’s volunteered for the Adirondack Cooperative Loon Program and has assisted the state Department of Environmental Conservation on various projects. Most recently, he gathered some moose droppings, or scat, and hairs for the Wildlife Conservation Society in Saranac Lake. The scat is going to be used by the Working Dogs for Conservation Foundation, a Montana-based group that trains dogs on scent. The dogs are going to be used in the Adirondacks to find moose scat. The program, which is slated to start next spring, will be part of a larger study to estimate the Adirondack moose population.
The Adirondack Cooperative Loon Program? That has some real possibilities. The loons I remember from my days up there in that neck of the woods didn't cooperate all that well. Anyway, the article describes a long hike in the woods; the Adirondack woods in early spring. My old stomping grounds. I need to give Uncle Otto a call, though, and see if he still has those moose-hoof boots of his. And if he's been out hiking again. Otto is a bit of a prankster.
By Adirondack Almanack, Saturday, 7 April , 2007 @ 2:44 pm
FYI, moose were all but wiped out in the Adirondack Mountains in the 1860s. The Adirondack guide Alvah Dunning is one of several who claimed to have killed the last moose in the region, but the significance escaped him.“What caused the moose to all leave in one season right after the Civil War, is a mystery I never could solve†Dunning ruminated, “They were thick thirty years ago. I killed eight big ones in five days. My father, myself, and two others killed 100 moose one winter.â€
The moose began returning in the 1980s from Vermont and New Hampshire. It’s believed there are at least 200 to 400 moose now living in the Adirondack region and that the population is close to the point of self-sustainability. The DEC quit monitoring moose actively in 1997.
In recent years about 3 or 4 a year have been killed in road accidents, however during last fall’s rut, there were six accidents in just three weeks that killed two people.
Even if actully seeing moose in the wild is still as ways off for all but the luckiest, no doubt we’ll see more of them in the paper, and on the highways.
By Gaius, Saturday, 7 April , 2007 @ 3:23 pm
Yeah, there have been reports of a population explosion of moose in New Hampshire and Vermont - it makes sense they are also going to increase in the Adirondacks as well. It does mean there will be more accidents, unfortunately. And moose are deadly to hit…. They come right through the windshield.