PORTLAND — The Maine Warden Service has issued its seasonal warning to motorists: Look out for moose.

That’s right, for those of you from away. Moose. Those four-legged critters that normally live deep in the woods and weigh about half a ton and grow to 6 feet high at the shoulders.

It seems they sometimes wander onto highways and in front of cars.

It can be a deadly encounter — both for man and beast.

Three people were killed in July in Newfoundland after running into moose, said Staff Sgt. Bill Smith of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

“With these small cars we have now, you can literally drive right under one of these big critters,” said Gary Donovan, director of the Wildlife Division of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

“They basically smash in windows and crush roofs,” he said Thursday.

Maine has an estimated 20,000 moose roaming the North Woods. The adult males range in size from 800 pounds to 1,200 or even 1,400 pounds. Their antlers can spread as wide as four feet.

“The thing is the moose are so big that any accident involving a moose tends to be spectacular,” said Karen Morris, a state wildlife biologist involved in studying the animals.

She said the moose, like all herbivores, crave sodium and are attracted to highways by salt deposits left from winter.

The problem of moose-car encounters is the worst in the northern half of Maine and in eastern Canada. In Newfoundland, officials are advising people “to use extreme caution while driving at night,” said Smith of the Mounted Police.

One stretch of U.S. 201 in Maine, from Jackman to Canada, has been nicknamed “moose alley” because the beasts are so numerous there, Morris said.

In 1989, there were 309 moose-vehicle accidents reported to state wildlife officials, up from 259 in 1988, she said. In each of those cases the moose died.

“A lot of times if the moose doesn’t die, the accident doesn’t get onto our reports,” she said, so the actual number of accidents could be much higher.

Donovan said mid-September to early October is a peak period for these accidents because the moose are on the move. Maine’s one-week moose-hunting season runs from Sept. 24-29.

Besides trying to elude hunters, the moose are on the prowl for something else — love.

“The problem is right around the middle of September to the beginning of October the bulls are right in their rut. They’re out roaming around looking for cows,” Donovan said.

To try to keep the beasts away from roads, state wildlife biologists have even tested a moose repellent — a spray made of synthetic rotten eggs.

“The moose,” Morris says, “were not impressed.”