Close Encounters with Moose are Becoming the New Normal

By Wiley Wood

In mid-January, walking my dogs in Norfolk’s woods, I heard barking ahead and the sound of hooves. A moose appeared 40 yards away, heading straight for me at a gallop, my dogs at his heels. On my right was a hemlock swamp, on my left a steeply rising hillside. But there was also a tree, less stout than I would have liked, and I stepped behind it. The moose, a young bull with a modest rack, passed within a foot and a half of me, intent on escaping my dogs. As my heart pounded, I watched the moose trip over a root and my youngest dog dart in and nip him on the hocks. Then they were gone.

I continued my walk, the dogs eventually returned. The rush of adrenaline stayed with me a long time.

Oddly, this incident is not unique in Norfolk. In March of last year, another Norfolk resident, Jon Riedeman, met almost the same experience while walking his two dogs in Great Mountain Forest. The labradors, exploring off the trail, found a moose and drove it toward their owner. Riedeman took cover behind a tree. The dogs chased the moose off into the forest.

But Riedeman followed the animals’ tracks through the sparse spring snow, recovered one of the dogs and leashed it with his belt, and then found the moose, a young bull with a broken antler, backed up against a rock outcrop holding his other dog at bay.

While Riedeman shouted himself hoarse, the dog barked and made feints toward the moose. The moose reared up on his hind legs and lashed out with his front hooves time and again, landing back on the ground with an earth-shaking jolt. The three kept up their roles until the moose and the dog were tired, and Riedeman was able to slip within range of his dog and haul him off by the collar.

“I’ve never forgotten the sound of the moose’s hooves hitting the ground,” says Riedeman.

Ten years ago this wouldn’t have happened. The moose all lived in Maine, and the few that wandered into Massachusetts didn’t reach Norfolk. Recently, the Connecticut Department of Environmental and Energy Protection (DEEP) has been seeing an increase in moose reports around the state: 67 sightings in the first six months of 2013, or double the number from 2007.

Jody Bronson, forest manager at Great Mountain Forest, estimates that moose started arriving in Norfolk six or seven years ago and that five or six moose are now resident in the woods he oversees. “They tend to stay at the south end of Great Mountain Forest in the swampier sections, where they like the cool temperatures,” says Bronson.

Moose droppings are common in many parts of the forest now. They are similar to deer droppings but larger, forming what looks like a dark clutch of hen’s eggs. Where logging has occurred and striped maple are shooting up, it’s often possible to see a line of browse at the seven-foot level. Deer eat everything below four feet.

“They are big animals,” says Bronson, who has hunted moose in Maine. “They’ll eat 40 or 50 pounds of buds a day, four or five times what a deer eats.” He describes moose pushing down the slender poles of young trees with their chests and browsing the upper branches. When the trees spring back after the moose has moved on, the browse marks 12 feet up have left many naturalists scratching their heads.

Great Mount Forest is hosting a study to measure the effect of moose and deer browse on forest regrowth. Two pens, known as exclosures, have been built in a specially cleared area of the forest. They either exclude all deer and moose or allow deer but not moose to crawl under the lowest bar. The study, conducted by Dr. Stephen DeStefano of the University of Massachusetts, still has several years to run.

In spring, a pregnant female moose will drive off the previous years’ offspring. The yearling and two-year moose wander widely in search of their own territory. The Connecticut DEEP cautions drivers to be particularly careful during spring when moose are dispersing