Side Story: Moosies and Blackies and Brownies, Oh My!

With apologies to the 1961 American
musical romantic drama directed by
Robert Wise & Jerome Robbins

If you are willing, please tell us more about your camping at Eagle River. I camped there on my way to Denali, and not far from Eagle River had the wonderful encounter with a sow grizzly and cubs that I relate in Part 3 of my moose chronicle. —Paul Clark

Reply by Roger Owens

At the kind request of our colleague motomynd, I have a side story of bears and moose. First the facts: Wildlife advocates promote the use of little bells attached to the clothing to alert moose and bears to your presence so they can “run away,” and carrying pepper spray to drive them away in extremis, so to speak. There’s a joke about bears: “Wear bells and carry pepper spray. Know your bears. Black bear scat has grass and mouse hairs in it. Grizzly bear scat has little bells in it and smells like pepper.” Just so you know, there are no jokes about moose. Moose kill far more people than bears every year, and just so you know, pepper spray is useless when you are being charged by a monster horse at thirty-five miles per hour, bent on mashing you to a bloody pulp the second he gets to you. Even heavy handguns might not serve; if I knew I was going against a moose I would want at least a twelve-gauge shotgun.
    So, armed with my handy-dandy little Olympus video camera and little else, I found myself face to face with several moose at a place called Desolation Bay, which spans across the border between British Columbia and Alaska. It may be the most aptly named place on earth; to call it barren is to praise with faint damnation.

    I can’t remember why we went there, but we came to this stand of alders – not the trees but the bushy alder stands of saplings that are thick as quills on a porcupine. You can see some in the background of the second pic. They are also a favorite food source and hiding place of the elusive moose; sure enough, two are standing just inside the brush line. I cross the road, creeping up on them, with a crazy urge to turn to the camera and say, “Shhh! We’re hunting mooses!” – like Elmer Fudd.

    So far so good, right? Some great shots, I’m congratulating myself. Then I hear a sound in the brush very close on my right. No more than ten feet away.

    You see the giant horse from Hell right beside me, with not a whisper of noise to warn of a huge, murderous creature creeping up on…me? Well, I didn’t either until then, and I got a couple of shots before I saw this gargantua looking at me with what was unmistakably malicious intent. His look was plain as a redneck talking trash: Boy, I am going to kick your ass.

    If you can pick out that face, just down and right of center, you’ll see that this guy was ready to rumble, and all I was prepared to do was video my own impending, horrific death. No doubt today that video would have gone viral! In any case, after maybe 3 microseconds to get these two pics, I turned around inside my skin and beat feet for the road and the camper. By the time I was around to the driver’s door, the moose was clattering massive hooves on the roadway, but could not seem to identify an enemy, so he retreated. My skin remained, for the moment at least, intact.

I believe we were on the way to Little Chulitna River, a favorite camping spot of ours not too far from Cantwell, which is past the sticks, then past the boonies, and well into the tall grass – in short, the geographic middle of nowhere – when we met a black bear up close and personal. Like you, motomynd, I never felt threatened by the bears I encountered; when it was a moose, I always felt threatened.
    I learned that black bears eat grass and soft plants as well as small animals, bird’s eggs, insects, and the like. Their scat indeed has sticks and mouse hairs in it. They are rarely aggressive, except protecting cubs, and they would still prefer to walk away than attack. Their faces all look mangy around the eyes and mouth, although they’re not; like all bears, their thumbs as such are on the outside of their paws rather than the inside, so their tracks look distinctly odd. This was a young mature male in early spring, so he was starving from his winter slumber. By next fall he would be half again as fat as he is here.
    This is him eating leaves from an alder just leafing out for the season:

    It truly seemed as if this guy was an old hand with touristas, as he paid not the slightest bit of attention to the thirty-foot motor home that pulled up beside him, nor me with my camera which was not on zoom in these pics. He was five feet from me and not the least interested, let alone perturbed. The natural scientist in me thrilled to see him dutifully exhibit classic behaviors, eating alders, scratching fleas, and digging for grubs in the rocky soil. I am enthralled by the behavior of our birds and butterflies right here at home; this was, my friends, pure gold.

On our way back to Anchorage on our second trip, we camped again at Eagle River, which is only about 45 minutes out of Anchorage. We always stay there coming and going. You have to turn in the camper at noon with a full tank of gas, so we can sleep in and be there in plenty of time to make our flight, or so we hoped. It turned out to be grad night for the local high schools, so we spent a sleepless night as the kids raised hell in the river gorge. All. Night. Long. It was there we encountered the injured but victorious moose I mentioned in my comment that prompted motomynd’s suggestion for a Side Story. She had had patches of skin ripped off by the jaws of wolves or a bear, but they had healed and clearly had not harmed her much. She was a master of camouflage. This is Cindy’s pic of her, clear as a bell. Cindy has a talent for the good shots.
    Now here are some of mine.

All in all, I have to agree with my colleague that moose are far more dangerous than bears, at least in general. Bears seem to need a reason to go after a human, while moose are not at all so constrained. They’ll turn on you in a heartbeat, for any or no reason at all. On the other hand, they are very good to eat!

Copyright © 2020 by Paul Clark, Roger Owens