March 28, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Recounting old but true moose charging tales

Our Mr. John Day, while in Stratton on retreat, recently left the political trail to warn readers of the dangers attendant to becoming overly familiar with members of the moose family. Day’s red-flagging came about when an acquaintance and fellow Sugarloaf logger found himself at odds with a bull moose, the kind that roams around and is not something you want to confront head-on – even in a Volvo.

Colleague Day, who trains on managing the wildlife roaming the streets of Washington, D.C., asks if man vs. moose falls under the heading of a frequent encounter. The answer, of course, is it’s not an everyday happening, though there have been more than a few scary incidents. Bullwinkle-vehicle encounters are a regular occurrence on roads and highways where charging traffic abounds.

I informed our Mr. Day that moose can run with the speed of deer, up to 45 miles per hour. I know this to be accurate because once upon a time I rode shotgun while the late Alex Dunning clocked a moose down a dirt road coming out of Northeast Carry, Moosehead, and the speedometer needle held at 45 before the animal left the road and disappeared in the adjacent woods.

If Bullwinkle arises from bed with a hangover, he can be a nasty, aggressive adversary. I think of the time a Mattawamkeag man escaped serious injury when his car was savagely attacked by a moose, a bull, too. The animal didn’t like the looks of the two glaring headlights and charged the car with terrific force. He caved in one side, fenders and all, smashed the lights and slammed the motor a crippling blow with his heavy, antlered head.

Years ago, a cow moose went berserk in North Sullivan and actually terrorized the town for several hours. The moose came out of the woods, galloped through one street, crashed and moved parked automobiles, several fences, and a couple of stone walls. The animal, a cow moose weighing about 500 pounds, sent townspeople scampering frantically from the streets to their homes. The resident game warden, Clinton Barrett, was forced to shoot the animal. I remember this particular happening because Clint Barrett delivered me a classic piece of meat, a three-rib roast.

Then there was the matter of a bull hog-tying himself to a game pole north of Elm Pond. Kim Lynch came across the unhappy moose and radioed Warden Mike Favreau of Jackman. He responded and found that the moose had gotten his antlers tangled in half-inch rope and in trying to free itself, succeeding in tightening the noose around a large and sturdy rack. This moose made like the proverbial 1,000-pound gorilla, he took to moving anything in his path.

When Mike Favreau arrived on the scene, the bull had literally moved the entire game pole that, somehow, fetched up to an adjacent A-frame hunting camp. Each time the bull lifted its huge and powerful head, the animal hoisted the building from its foundation. Mike freed the animal by attaching a sharp knife to the end of a long pole and sawing away at the half-inch rope. Once the moose got himself clear, did he dash off into the hinterlands? No. He held his ground while Mike, some four feet from the bull’s rack, barricaded himself behind a tree. After a period of staring at each, the bull looking down at Mike, and Mike looking up into the animal’s eyes, the two parted company.

The woods are crammed with moose vs. sports yarns.

Moose are the largest deer in the world. One can stand eight feet at the shoulder with a rack 12 feet off the ground. The giant animal has become Maine’s No. 1 box-office attraction. The state’s moose population numbers in the area of 24,000 animals, a healthy figure considering that six-day annual hunts since 1980 – there was no season in 1981 – have seen harvests ranging from 636 animals, bulls and cows, in 1980 to a high of 952 a year ago. This year’s take bettered the 900 mark by another half-dozen kills.

Day is quite correct in declaring that the animals pose a challenge to persons tooling vehicles on road-beds where moose are known to linger or cross. Moose come kingsize, evidenced by 17 bulls topping the 1,000-pound mark in a week of hunting by 1,000 license holders. Willard “Bill” Waterman and his 17-year-old son Sterling shot a bull near Masardis weighing 1,360 pounds, according to a weight certificate from the W.H. Shurtleff Co. of Auburn. Andre Brochu of Stratton, one of Day’s bush brothers, nailed a bull with a 69 1/2-inch spread of antlers. More than a match for an off-course golf cart or a Volkswagen.

So far as I’m concerned, the moose season in its present format, 900 residents and 100 non-residents, makes for the ideal management tool. Cropping the population of 900 animals a year, plus those bagged by vehicles, locomotives, and those sterling individuals who shoot them day and night, almost guarantees a thriving, healthy herd. The task facing authorities comes down to managing people and their high-flying vehicles.

I should tell you my friend John, the political peach, has always kept us at the shop happy. Where else could you locate a parishioner who had his vehicle stolen while attending a Catholic mass after spending a day on ski boards? Could only happen to Jolly John.

But there are redeeming features to Maine’s wandering moose population. A full-grown moose weighing 1,000 pounds amounts to some 600-800 pounds of meat. Throughout Maine’s cities and towns, 900-plus harvested moose provides first-class table fare. This is better than food stamps.

So the message this morning is a simple one – give the moose, deer, and even bear, room, and drive their territory under the caution flag.


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