Moose: A Family Curse (Part 1 of a Story for My Son)

By Paul Clark (aka motomynd)

This is an excerpt from my autobiography Stories for My Son, so I will ask other readers to bear with me as I address my son directly. Son: Hopefully I am with you when you see your first moose, for they are truly magnificent animals and I would love to see another one. I would especially love to see one that was not trying to kill me. In case I am not with you, however, here is what you need to know: When you see your first moose, do not stand there in awe thinking “Wow! That is a really big deer!” Instead, devote those few calm seconds – before chaos descends – to looking for a tree small enough to climb, yet big enough that a moose can’t reach you or knock it down. Why? Because, when you see a moose nearby, you need the biggest head start you can manage: Moose are a family curse that traces back at least as far as your great-grandfather.

I saw my first moose in the Adirondack region of Upstate New York in the late 1970s, before locals even knew moose had expanded their range into the area. Back then our family had a “camp” in the Tug Hill region of New York State. “Camp” being a quaint Upstate word for a cabin without heat, insulation, running water, or more than a rudimentary outdoor privy. This region is famous for epic snow accumulations of 20 feet or more almost every winter, and back then it was also known for fantastic spring and fall fly fishing for native brook trout. Not the little 6-inch “brookies” that most native trout streams produce, but hefty 12-18 inch wild trout that are almost impossible to find anywhere south of Canada.
    We planned to be at camp for a week, but friends who had a nearby camp invited us to their Adirondack Mountains “retreat,” and we jumped at the offer. It was barely an hour’s drive away, it had a beautiful pond full of native trout, and – perhaps most importantly – it had plumbing and screened sleeping porches. A wonderful change of pace from wet towel wipe downs and spending time on our unscreened deck – where we were donating so much blood to black flies and mosquitoes we were beginning to wonder if we might have to resort to do-it-yourself transfusions.
    We arrived early afternoon, so I opted for a run on our friends’ trail system, which was set up for snowmobiles in winter and ATVs and dirt bikes in warmer weather. My running at our Tug Hill camp had been shut down by a surly black bear sow who was overly protective of her two cubs: On my first run she had followed me 200 yards or so, huffing and occasionally clicking her jaws; on my second attempt she simply stood in the trail and made it clear I wasn’t going by.

A cinnamon phase black bear sow making it abundantly
clear she doesn't want me near her or the two cubs
she has just sent up the tree behind her

    A run at the Adirondack retreat was scenic, safe, and easy to follow: take a left out of the cabin, take a left on the first logging road, take a left on the first trail, take a left around the lake, and keep taking left turns until I returned to the cabin.
    Back then “trail running” meant a moderately paced jog in Nike Approach hiking boots on something other than pavement; this was before we had hundreds of different specialty trail-running shoes, running packs, hydration systems, etc. I headed out, took my first few left turns – and encountered a swamp caused by a fresh beaver dam. No worries, I would just bushwhack around it until I could intersect the trail, and continue my run. What could go wrong?
   About 75 yards later I saw movement to my right: A moose! What the hell? There weren’t any moose in the Adirondacks. One of my uncle’s heavy-drinking trapper friends claimed he had seen one, but we all knew better.

Here is what I knew about moose at that 20-something stage of my life: Bullwinkle cartoons I watched as a child, the mounted bull moose rack my uncle had on the wall of his trophy room, a tale my uncle had told about a walleye fishing trip where he escaped a rampaging moose by hiding under an overturned aluminum boat, and a somewhat more sketchy tale about the time he and his dad – my grandfather – had to climb trees to escape a moose that swam ashore on an island where they were camped while on a different walleye fishing trip in Canada. I don’t want to say I doubted the veracity of those stories – my uncle could tell a story, if you know what I mean – but Rocky the flying squirrel’s depiction was so spot on in those cartoons, surely that of the affable Bullwinkle couldn’t be that far off. My uncle was probably exaggerating a bit, I assumed, no worries.
    The animal before me was just a half-grown moose, maybe a 300-pound calf and very cute in its knobby-kneed way. “Wow! That is a big deer!” I thought, as I looked on in awe. My reverie was shattered as I heard a loud crashing of limbs to my left. I spun and, well…terror is the word. Coming at me like some huge, gangly machine, smashing through tree limbs in its way, was what must have been the calf’s mother: a cow moose of maybe 600 pounds charging like a quarter horse at full gallop.
    I immediately learned two things: 1) you can actually sprint in Nike Approach hiking boots; 2) you can’t sprint fast enough to outrun an angry moose more than 50 yards or so. As the beast bore down on me from behind, I made a sharp right turn and she thundered past without breaking stride. Hah! I thought. Then she spun like a quarter horse turning a tight corner in a barrel race and came right back at me. Oh hell! So this was the game I played the next several minutes: hide behind a tree, run for my life; hide behind a log, run for my life; try to find a tree to climb, run for my life. It was great fun, especially when the calf moose tried to join in and I had to figure out how to outmaneuver both of them.

This photo is apparently a snapshot taken during
a lull in a game of chase with a modest-size bull moose
with smallish antlers, which I completely forgot about until
I started digging through old photo files – an exception to
the can’t-take-photos-while-trying-to-stay-alive rule.
The growth hanging down from this moose’s chin is called
a bell, or more technically, a dewlap; it’s a mixture of skin
and hair, and both male and female moose have them.

    Eventually they tired of the sport, gave each other a head butt in lieu of a high five, and trotted out of sight. Now all I had to do was continue my bushwhack around the beaver pond, hit the trail, and head for an evening of great fly fishing. But where was I? For some strange reason I had not kept close track of my north/south bearings during the exciting game of chase. Would taking a left lead me to the trail, or impossibly deep into the Adirondack wilderness? After a couple of hours of false starts I finally found the beaver swamp, doubled back on my original detour, and staggered into camp just before dark.
    “Did you get lost?” my uncle asked. “It’s all left turns.” He politely left unsaid the heavily implied “you idiot” part of that statement.
    “Would you believe I got chased by a moose?” I asked.
    “Did you stop at some other camp and have a few drinks?” he asked. “There aren’t any moose around here.”

My second moose encounter came in Algonquin Provincial Park, between Ottawa and Sudbury, in Ontario, Canada. It was fall, and breeding season – the rut – was on. I wanted to get some good photos of bull moose so my uncle made me a birch-bark moose call to bring them within range. A birch-bark call is more of a megaphone that you sort of grunt into rather than a call you blow into, and I had my doubts, but I promised to give it a try if I saw a moose.
    On my second morning in Algonquin, driving my small but sturdy 1977 Toyota Corolla, a bull moose that looked larger than my car crossed the road maybe 200 yards ahead and disappeared into a swath of six-feet tall evergreen trees. I hit the brakes, grabbed my camera and moose call, and ran through the woods on a route I hoped would intersect the path the moose was following. Maybe 200 yards from the car, I stopped, took a couple of deep breaths, and grunted into the moose call. The idea was to imitate the call of another bull moose and attract the moose I had seen back in my direction. I had never heard a moose grunt so I had no clue if this would work.
    Within seconds I knew exactly what an angry, very fired up, very territorial bull moose sounded like. The moose I had seen let out a raucous bellow that I could almost feel, even from 100 yards away, and followed it with a snort. In retrospect, this apparently meant, “Oh yeah, you really want a piece of me?” I was so caught up in the excitement, I unthinkingly bellowed back with my birch call.
    What transpired within the next few seconds is a bit hazy, even with four decades to replay and dissect it, but I vividly recall the moose plowing down evergreen saplings as it came at me. Imagine a rabbit hiding in tall grass with a riding mower screaming toward it at 35 miles per hour: I felt like that rabbit. The size and speed and obvious power of the charging moose reminded me of the magnificent Secretariat leaving the other horses 30 lengths behind at the Belmont Stakes. I recall thinking, “It’s just a big deer; when it sees you it will hit the brakes and you can get some great photos!” and I remember diving out of the way at the last split second as maybe 1,200 pounds of fury roared past me, spun, and charged again. “You want a piece of me? Well here I am.” Indeed. Thus began yet another game of hide, run for my life, hide, run for my life. Yes, there is a pattern here.
    As I worked the angles attempting to get closer to my car, it occurred to me: This moose may weigh as much as my car! How does the car help? At some point I heard a vehicle approaching and I sprinted to the road, waving my arms frantically. It was a pickup truck. It hadn’t fully stopped when I – without explaining myself – jumped in the back, just as the moose burst from cover and headed our way. The driver, instantly assessing the situation, hit the gas, and away we went.

    With the moose a safe distance behind in the dust, the guy driving the truck stopped and got out. “What on earth?” he asked. I explained: camera, birch bark call, angry moose, need a ride back to my Toyota.
    He just stared: “You were in the woods, on foot, without a gun, pretending to be a bull moose trying to start a fight with another moose? Is that it?”
    “Yeah, that pretty much covers it.”
    He shook his head. “Did you ever stop to think that you just might get yourself killed?”
    “Well, I didn’t. But now that you mention it, yes, seems it could happen.”

Having since studied the statistics, I can say the odds of being killed by a moose are actually quite low. They don’t usually kill people, they just stomp them into the dirt and leave them for dead. Of course, if you are on a solo hike or trail run or bike ride, and you are incapacitated by a stomping moose, you very well may die before searchers find you. On the bright side, people usually survive, although there may be some hospital time involved.

Copyright © 2020 by Paul Clark