[Music] so I want to welcome everybody tonight uh um to the talk about the life and history of the northern moose in Maine with photographer Bob Michaelson very
happy to have him here with us tonight again for this presentation um but let me tell you I'm going to mute you all as you enter the call um and you may save your questions until the end of the hour but you can also uh or type them into the chat box and I'll pose them to Bob at the end but you also have the ability
to unmute yourself so you can ask something as we go along and um our speaker thinks that's just fine if there's something that he talks about that you really want to ask him uh while he's in the uh process so I'm filming the program for Milton access cable and I want to thank the friends of the
Milton public library for their support of my events now let me tell you about our speaker his has appeared in numerous magazines and he's been diving for 46 years hold on one sec here okay um he's a Patty Dive Master a specialty
instructor in underwater photography and videography a naturalist and a Patty project aware fish ID based in Walpole Massachusetts his company is called photography by Michaelson and I'll put his website URL in the chat box view so
now please enjoy the program thanks Jean um I actually prefer that if you have a question stop me in my tracks ask me the question while we're at the slide that's in question so I don't we don't forget about it later on and we can stay on
point and stay on target so please feel free to unmute yourselves or place it in the chat and Jean can relay it to me at any point you're in the program you don't have to wait until the [Music] end so this is a uh Bull Moose Bull
Moose are the largest land mammals in North America they are up to 8T tall at the shoulders and weigh upwards of 15 to 18800 lbs they are bigger overall than a grizzly bear in the Pacific Northwest these are big animals uh they
grow an antler called a rack starting in the springtime and by September they have their um velvet removed from the antler and they're ready to do battle to entice females to mate with them and the rack can be over 6 feet across and when they wolves wild in the country this is
how a moose was able to take down a wolf with their antlers uh they know how to use them they're not afraid to use them and they could put all 1,800 pounds behind those antlers to do harm to anybody if it gets in their way so this is Byron Byron is a male
moose on display at the gray uh the main Wildlife Park up in grey grey Maine it is run by the state uh fisheries and wildlife of Maine snowing we can get this hold on sorry about that that's okay not a problem I
thought it was a question but they just didn't mute themselves so Byron is a um a captive raised wild animal the main Wildlife Park excuse me takes in animals that were injured or orphaned and cannot be released back into the Wilds so Byron
was orphaned as a young TF his mother got killed so the superintendent of the park brought Byron in and became subate mother so when I went up there air they got me behind the scenes and in with Byron to photograph him now when the superintendent snuggled up against the
chaining fence Byron snuggled up to him very affectionately and was eating leaves out of his hand through the fence I then approach the fence and he's trying to Barrel through the fence to get to me because he perceived me as a threat so imagine an 8- foot chaning fence being pushed three feet towards
you when you're getting close to it very daunting very powerful animals they're not afraid of anything or anybody here's a female called a cow um this is an older female she was on her last year of life in this photo her name
was Annie also on display at the main Wild Life Park up in grey M uh Annie was 14 years old and she succumbed to her age um just as tall as the male 8T tall at the shoulders a little bit smaller in
weight maybe 14 to, 1500 pound cows are not as big as Bulls they're not as muscular they're not quite as powerful but when they're caring for their Cales until the calfs are about 6 to8 months old you don't want to get between a mother and her baby calf so here is the range worldwide of
moose they found in North America uh the northernmost fringes of the United States all of Canada uh throughout all of most of Europe and the TP part of Asia so they found throughout the entire world World on the northern part of the hemisphere they are the largest land
mammal in the North American continent uh there are larger animals on the Asian and uh Northern um European continent so they're not the biggest animals out there but they're pretty pretty close here's the range in the United States and Canada in New
England we have some remnant moose that come down to the middle of our state by fitzburg and lemonster they'll come down to route two from northern reaches of Upstate New York Vermont New Hampshire and Maine and they'll come down as far as about lemonster and fitzburg and
that's about as far south as they come but if you go up to New Hampshire uh the lake the mountain region of gorm New Hampshire um northern Vermont all of Maine Maine actually has the second highest population of moose in the
country um second only to Alaska Maine has a herd numbering 60 to 75,000 in animals in in man alone Massachusetts we have several hundred New Hampshire has about 4,500 but they're very illusive you have to know where to look and be very lucky
that you find them so here as Byron is in his enclosure looking back at the photographer saying what are you looking at very daunting uh character when you're at ground level with these animals8 feet tall at the shoulder now I'm 5 foot n I'm looking up at this
guy's face but through the safety of an enclosure I'm not in the field with him because he's a wild animal they don't allow anybody to be in the actual physical presence of a moose in captivity because it's still wild he is only bonded with
the his caretaker everyone else is a um a stranger and should be fearful of this animal here is Annie I'm talk on top of a six foot fence looking down inside of her enclosure and she was very very docile uh I never told you this but they
actually gave me an overripe banana and I was able to feed her through the fence and she ate it out of my hand and when I got to the very last part of the banana all I felt was her gentle tongue and and lips on my fingers such a gentle giant it was so cool and I I never told you
I'll deny it to the hilt because I was sworn never to tell anybody that I did I was allowed to do that here is a wild cow with her calf up in Greenville Maine north and west of moose head Lake in Maine near near
Quebec it's about a six-hour drive north of here um I went up with the mainstate Moose biologist Lee caner and he took me out we met him at six o'clock in the morning and this is during the pandemic so during the pandemic the early stages of the pandemic there were no vaccines
and where I came from Massachusetts traveling up to Maine I was not allowed to stay in a motel or hotel so I we left our house and brancher at 12:00 midnight arriving at Greenville at 6:00 in the morning drove around with the biologist for 6 hours and drove straight home it
was the longest day of my life I was exhausted I was spent but amazing photos this mother calf combination was about a half a mile away from me and I used a very powerful 750 millimeter toe photo lens on a tripod to capture these photos
I was hoping to get much closer it just didn't happen they could hear us from a mile away they wouldn't get anywhere close to us this mother led her calf in the opposite direction from where we were based on top of a bluff looking down into a
canyon the main predator of moose in the central part of the country are grey wolves Timberwolves Timberwolves will hunt them in family units or packs and they'll take down and feed on an adult moose no other predator in the country other than a Grizzly beer can be a
formidable enemy of a moose no other animal is capable of taking down a moose other than a grizzly beer or a pack of wolves but if they take down a male they have to be very very careful of his antlers when he has his his rack fully grown by June to July it's pretty much
fully mature and he can do a lot of damage with that rack of antlers here is a grey wolf eating a white tail deer uh not showing the Gory sides of it the Bell is facing away from us but the wolves eat every part of it and the
alpha or the the um the leite female wolf the alpha wolf eats first and then they go down the pecking order of the hierarchy of the wolf pack the the subordinate animals eat last the alpha always eats
first and there's also coyotes are capable of taking down a moose if they hunt in a pack of six or eight animals they can take down a moose or a youngster they can take down a calf or a cow and and take down a moose up in North Country uh this is typical moose habitat
in Northern New Hampshire this is around the White Mountains region of uh New Hampshire and they're found from the White Mountains Points North so if you start in kangamangus Highway and travel North past um following Route 16 North
or route three North on the Vermont border you can take it up to Moose alley which is the final 1520 miles in New Hampshire before you get to the Canadian border and the very top of the triangle of New Hampshire that's where you find Moose along with near rley Maine on the
main side near gorm New Hampshire but you have to know exactly where you're looking you find it very early in the morning late in the afternoon to evening and it's much safer to just go on a sanctioned moose tour to see these animals in the wild with a guide to take you
there here another shot of the mother on a different female in her calf in a open Valley about a half a mile from us near Greenville Main moose will make a wallow there's a
this is a wallow that they um they urinate and trample down all the growth they they Squat and they pee in it they roll around in this to get their scents in the wallow to attract males and females for mating purposes now how the how it happens is
here's Byron scraping a depression in his enclosure and then he squats and releases some urine and then he sniffs it and inste he scrapes it and makes it into a bigger area and he keeps enlarging it if this was a swampy area like this
photo you'd end up with an actual moose wallow a large area all that moisture is from moose urine it mixes in with rain water but it's mainly mousse urine and this is a behavior that they employ during mating season or referred
to as the rut and the Moose are in their rut from mid to late September until the middle to the end of October and then they're done they're done for the year here is Byron sniffing his beginning of a wall Aus wallo and then
he's calling up he has a verbal he's calling up for female now he can smell Annie in the next enclosure Annie was older than him in this photo Byron was about 10 years old he wanted to mate but Annie was so old that if he
tried to mate with her he would have killed so they kept them separated in separate chain link chain length separated enclosures but he could still smell Annie from a quarter of a mile away so he's calling out to entice her in to mate with him but she was too old if he
tried it he would have killed her uh part of the mating ritual is the male will take their antlers or rack and scrape it against trees and bushes to attract other females from up to a mile away or other males to can do battle with to gain Supremacy to mate with the
females that are in the area and here I am inside the enclosure in the gray Wildlife Park where they have a wooden shed in the back of the enclosure with a big open door that they feed the animal so there's no human interaction well Byron tried to get his
head in through that window to get to me he's turning his head trying to fit his antlers into the window and I kept backing up to the furthest back in the shed I could to get these photos because he wanted to get me he didn't like me being there uh moose have all MERS for the teeth
they don't have any canine teeth like we do like other top predators that will tear meat uh they're vegetarians these are herbivores the eat fruits vegetables Greenery bark from trees uh they will eat insects but they don't eat um any
meat animals they're not carnivores they're herbivores so they eat primarily vegetation so they have MERS as your teeth no can9 teeth whatsoever so they're all large and flat teeth here's Byron eating some vegetation in his
enclosure here's a moose that Lee caner was out on moose head Lake doing some research I was not with him so uh lee caner took this photo and provided it to us moose are incredibly strong swimmers and in fact in Moose Head Lake and other reaches in North Country moose can dive
down 15 20t and grab vegetation from the bottom of a lak or Pond come up to the surface and eat it they are excellent swimmers and divers and they go after the fresh um leafy mil foil and other Aquatic vegetation found in the bottom of lakes and
ponds they have a hump uh similar to a camel that has mostly water inside of it it serves no other Ser no other purpose other than to maintain um some energy for the animal to to use up when there's a shortage of food so it's a kind of a
food Reserve is is their hump right on top of the shoulder area and the male has a larger hump than the female does the eye is humongous here's a closeup of a bull Moose's eye it's roughly the size of a small baseball from eyelid to the bottom of
the eye it's a huge eye these things see and walk around in Pitch Blackness and with these eyes they can see in that kind of Darkness because of the size of the eye and how wide it can open and Pitch blackness to be able to see and have them walk around through trees and bushes it's amazing such a large animals
capable of doing such things so here is a bull moose walking uh portrait style off to the right hand side displaying his rack his antlers and he has a beard coming down from under his chin the cows do not have a beard so two ways to recommend recognize a bull moose when
he's lost his antlers after about January February time period is he has a large hump on top of his shoulder larger than a female and he has a beard underneath his chin that will stay with him for the rest of his life this does not get sheded at all females do not
have that so that's how you identify a bull moose from a k once the Bo bulm has lost his [Music] antlers the hoof of a um moose is large
they have three toes two in the front one in the back the front they Distributing h 1800 lb on Four Paws that are roughly the size of my hand so it's if they have very very long legs to go into marshy wetlands and
they'll sink down up to their chest area to to feed on vegetation because of the sheer weight on top of their legs this is a footprint left by a bull Mose we were about 20 feet off of a side Road near Greenville M and Lee Canter
pulled off to the side and says follow me into the swamp I'm going to show you some fresh bu um Prince I guess he estimated The Bu moose was there 2 hours before we arrived and then it disappeared into the forest before we showed up so the bull moose is walking
towards the camera these are his front toes here's his back toe so one two three points of contact in a bottom of a flat hoof here's Annie Annie thought she was being very Koy and hiding behind a tree
and I couldn't see her so she's hiding behind this tree thinking I can't see her not realizing there's a lot of body that's still quite visible from behind that pine tree so she thinks I can't see her hiding behind that pine tree and I'm snapping away
getting all kinds of cool photos of a large cow in natural habitat and she doesn't even think I can see her they're not the smartest animals on the planet here's Annie walking away while looking back at the camera um kind of being a snob throwing her shoulder
back at me kind of going huh you can't see me I'm hiding from you here's a to Moose that we saw June 2nd of 192 of 2022 after heading home after a black beer release in North Country we were
driving down from releasing four black beers that were raised at the kilum beer Center in Lime New Hampshire on the western side of New Hampshire bordering Vermont in the Connecticut River they tranquil beers that were in a 12 acre enclosure and brought them up to the northern triangle of New Hampshire and
released them into the wild on our way back on the right hand side of a Another Side Road in New Hampshire I saw this cow out in the middle of a a swampy area I hit the brakes jumped out with my camera de started taking pictures and got these photos of her so here's our
cus in the wild um a nice much closer shot than I was able to get up in uh moose head Lake Area Greenville Maine this animal's probably oh 200 yards away from me using a very powerful lens I was able to get this close and then she moved further and
further away from me until she disappeared into the forest beautiful [Music] animal another cow and calf up in Greenville main we saw three mother calf combinations and the same six-h hour tour with uh lee
Canter and each time they got wind of us they took off into the opposite direction right into the woods so I got probably four 500 pictures taken and maybe six of them were really good cuz he was so far away even bringing them in cropping them very tightly this is the best I could do this is not the best
photograph I've ever taken of a moose I consider this one to be much better nice and sharp nice and clear good detail good color this is not my finest work but it's Unique so I'm keeping it in the slid
here here is a calf courtesy of Lee Canter uh the P the aspect of This research I did not get to see is in the winter time they will go out into uh the wooded areas by helicopter tranquilize young calfs and adult cows and Cat and
um bull moose and tranquilize them and come down land the helicopter go and by um snowmobiles and half tracks and tranquilize them put a radio collar on their necks uh give the animals a complete physical and check do draw blood samples fur samples for DNA
analysis they know who the lineage is for every moose in New Hampshire they have a data sheet and Maine they have they know who mom and dad is for every moose in the state of Maine and that's over 60,000 strong it's amazing the work and research that goes
into this so here is Lee Canter spotting near Greenville Main in an opening area near the edge of a forest looking for moose we didn't have any luck there here's a small wall right in here which is probably 50 ft in from a side
road where he took me in and sure enough there's another bul print that was about an hour old we just missed seeing this one and one of the biological texts mimicked Bull Moose calls to try to entice other moose to come in because
they can hear themselves calling from over a mile away now we're in the middle of nowhere we're hours from any city or town and they're calling for moose and we could hear a moose calling and answering him from over a mile away one Young Moose ran over um an area that I
wasn't stationed at and this guy saw the moose running through the field and looking at him but he never stopped so I didn't get a shot of him but they were successful at calling in a male moose to think to uh either do battle with him being acting as a male moose or to mate with a potential
female and they also take old antlers that have been shed by Moose and scra them against bushes and trees to mimic the sounds that Byron was making in his enclosure by scraping his antlers against the tree or bush to bring in females to mate with
him another um cow and calf up in Greenville Maine and as far away as they were I was still a struck by the experience and you can look look at how small the beard is on the female as to how big the beard was
on the male very very tiny tough of here underneath the chin but not a really big beard that's very pronounced in the bull that we saw earlier so here's the part I didn't get to see the helicopter pilot they're
flying over um North and Central Main aial surveys of moose and in one day in January of this year they saw over 105 moose in one day 10 black beers and uh probably a couple dozen coyotes in one
day in a three hour flight I was so jealous I'm hoping to go up in them some year in a helicopter but La since the pandemic they've been restricted to research flights and researches only they won't let a photographer go up with them even though I'm offering to donate whatever I
shoot the flights are precious to them the ear time is precious to them they'd rather be up there with researchers doing um research with this moose population so here's in the winter time they've tranquilized a cow they landed a helic opter trucks come in and um ATVs
come in from all directions uh here's a logger going down the road with the helicopter landing nearby they come with snowmobiles they come in with all this equipment to process the crow so here is a a calf a uh this this moose was born
in May it's now January so it's about six to seven months old they tranquilize it they put it in a large sack and hang it from a uh crude um tripod and and take a weight measurement they want to see how well
Mom's been doing it teaching this guy how to survive in its first winter and they draw blood samples they're giving it a physical they're putting ear tags in the young calf so in Maine you can hunt Moose and when you
when you do kill a moose you're required to take those tags out and turn them into the state Authority and the US fish and wildlife service the federal Authority responsible for all wildlife the continent in our country now here's the problem with moose those little white specks are
winter ticks they're the size of a small grape and the infestation of winter ticks on all the moose population is such that calfs are being malnourished by becoming anemic because these ticks are drawing so much blood out of them
the babies are anemic and they die so they're studying they're they're taking measurements and Counting how many ticks are in how big of an area under the armpits under the chest under the neck area near the genitalia they're everywhere and there's so many of these
winter Texs drawing blood from these baby moose that they're dying from lack of blood from anemia excuse me Bob but do they um remove the ticks they don't remove the ticks it'll do more harm to the Moose than if they leave them alone
um the Moose are capable of brushing up against trees to remove some of them but not all of them W it's an infestation taking place primarily just in Maine right now the other Northern regions of the country that have moose don't have this problem it's just in Maine New
Hampshire don't does not have this problem I do not believe Vermont has this problem only main has this problem and hopefully it's isolated to man and it stays there they have the largest herd so the ticks are drawn to them they're drawn to larger numbers because there's more blood for
them so here we're back in the um headquarters building the larger collars on the right hand side are placed on large female or cow moose and the smaller collars on the back are put on calves that are six to seven months old
and they put them around their necks they strap them in they bolt them in place they rivet them in place and the batteries on these units are good for one year they'll go then they'll fall off they do no harm to the animal so they put a blindfold on the on the Moose as they were as they're
processing them here biologist is taking a blood sample doesn't hurt the animal at all here's the calf with two new ear tags in a radio transmitting collar in the springtime they were able to track the animal to several miles from where
they captured it in the wintertime and it's doing really rather well the following spring and here's Byron back in his enclosure at the grain Wildlife uh main gra the main Wildlife Park show showing his full antlers he breaks off his
antlers by March of the following spring um he still is misled to think that the rut is longer than October for him because there's no other animals for him to mate with since yannie passed away two years ago he's the only moose in captivity they're waiting to get
another orphan moose to raise in with him but so far that hasn't happened I'm hoping this coming spring this spring he's able to get a friend in with him so he's not by himself anymore they are social animals they they like to be they like to have company here has Annie another look at
her beautiful animal 8 feet tall at the shoulders is roughly 12400 pounds that's a lot of moose now we'll answer open up the floor to any questions okay so I don't see any here in the chat
everyone's kind of quiet so everyone's ready for the test there's no test I'm kidding so Bob just stop your share maybe and um we will go to the gallery here yeah okay
good so um I have a question sure which is do you know about the moose in Vermont I think her name was Jessica or the cow was Jessica who fell in love with a cow they made a children's book out of
it now I'm dating myself this was a long time ago but the Moose came down with the cow and never left her side and they became I've read that I've read that online yes they became a couple yeah I mean I don't know if they they don't
mate right with somebody they don't they don't mate with domestic animals yeah but they became lifeon friends yeah the moose was so in love with that cow it was really very you know it was wonderful It's a Wonderful she didn't know anything different so she thought the cow was was a friend yeah and so
they were together for quite some time and then um all of a sudden after a long period I don't even know how long it was um the Moose left and well the Moose might have passed away because they only lived to be 12 to 14 years old in the
wild is that right yeah they have a relatively short they have a relatively short lifespan so by Annie was 14 when she passed away and the only reason she lived that long is because she was raised in captivity she didn't have to search for food or EX use a lot of
energy to survive she was well taken care of by the superintendent of the Park yeah he was her father how's the longest they might live in captivity about 14 years in the wild it's 10 in the wild it's about 10 to 12 years 10
they don't live they're a big animal it takes a lot to keep them going for 12 years now so people hunt them and they eat moose moose meat is a delicacy like venison is from deer meat and you have to pay decent money and and
have a special set of hunting skills to be able to lend one of these animals well yeah you don't want to anger them and then they charge you so yeah Harriet had a question and it was about average lifespan in the Wilds all right so all you moose lovers do we have any other questions for Bob
about this subject it's very interesting i' my I told you my brother-in-law saw one on the back roow in Vermont and had to slam the brakes on it was like these big hairy legs and then he just ran off down in the the woods the mo brother-in-law was very lucky he didn't come through the windshield I know but
right before that a wild turkey hit the windshields so well you can you can you can survive a wild turkey striking your windshield but if a moose comes through your windshield you're getting 1,800 pounds of Flesh in your face oh my gosh it's so tall you don't you don't take a
deer if you hit a deer you're hitting it in the chest area if you hit a moose you're taking its legs out and the whole body is going to come through your windshield you're not gonna survive oh my gosh there's a high mortality rate with humans when they have car strikes with moose oh I bet yeah people don't
survive well growing up in Vermont I heard a lot of different stories about people hitting deer or deer you know running front of the car and and actually my sister um two deer ran in front of the car and she smashed her car but but she didn't hit them so but there's lots of stories growing up I've
heard a friend of ours they live up in B reca on the on the North store near l in gumford and she hit a deer and it total her SUV oh I believe it deer didn't survive thankfully she was okay but a total her SUV she they had to get a new car and
that's deer it only weighs 250 pounds not an 1800 pound beast wow okay so haret asks how fast can they move um a bull moose and a cow moose can run up upwards of over 20 miles an hour
you're not going to outrun a moose you're not going to outrun a moose not going to outrun a moose a a strong athlete can run maybe eight miles an hour so what causes them to charge you if you see a mother in her calf and
you get between the mother and her calf the mother will go at you because she perceives you as a threat here her baby okay similar to when I had a little girl she's now 34 and married but when I had a little girl no one came near my kid not without permission I know that's
like with my son no we're we're we're very protective parents and no one's going to touch my kid yeah when she started dating it's like we had to protected father society when she was in school I drove her crazy okay so now Nancy says fascinating I never realized how large the moose
population is in Maine and I didn't either you said it was 75,000 of them see see the 75,000 estimates right now but they're hard to see you can't like really they they like the Deep heavy Forest of Maine they don't like people
which is good for the Moose and you have to go out in very rough terrain to find them and it's a chance encounter if you don't know exactly where to look so when I go out with moose I go out with either the state biologist or we go on a sanction moose tour and we're talking
about possibly this fall going out on with an ATV tour you rent an ATV and they go they take you out on a tour near the side of the different lakes that have the moose and you see moose so I'm thinking of doing that this later this fall so your job is to
document what the researchers are doing to say I a doc I'm a documentarian my job is to tell the story of the research the management of the species and the Animals life history and it's fascinating for me because I get to hang around with smart people all the time
that's right and I learned so much from very highly qualified phds well well publish phds and I get to learn from them it's a private education it's it's I'm very blessed yeah it's very I get to hang around with super smart people and none of these people none of these
people have an attitude so that's great they're glad I'm I'm I'm gonna take a side step with what's going on right now with our federal government I'm furious a lot of very hard dedicated people are being fired for no reason whatsoever very trange people yeah very
C they're cutting up biologists from the US fish and wildlife service from the Environmental Protection Agency from Noah all these branches that we rely on for our safety and they're just being fired for no reason I'm furious and you work a lot with um ocean I work with I
work with all these people that are being fired I feel so bad for them that's awful and I think it's putting the the public so much at risk so much the Executive Branch if you want to thin things out stop with the executive branch get rid of those people
H okay now um oh Harriet says the same she says me too yeah okay totally agree with you so how how Bob how is climate change affecting the Moose I mean the warming it's allowing the winter ticks
to spread more uh more quickly and through a a broader portion of the population in extremely cold Winters the deer TS become dormant they've had mild Winters up there the deer TS a everywhere and they mostly they mostly
um infest the baby The Young Ones they'll go after the adult they they in they adult affect adults as well but the adults because of their sheer size can survive being having a blood drawn by ticks oh I see so they all the calf is
starting to grow and mature doesn't have the energy to have the lifeblood drawn from it right right it's like when we go to the doctors and you give blood they take a couple couple few small V and if they take a lot You' feel like a little bit funny imagine if they took a gallon out of
you you'd need to lay down and have some fluids and have some food just bring yourself back yeah so an 1800 pound moose can take having deer um winter ticks draw blood from them a couple hundred pound baby can't handle it and
they become anemic and they die from it so is the population every year becoming less because in Maine because population is St the population stable if anything the population should be growing but it's not really growing because of this yeah the state also has a Controlled
Hunt they give so many permits per year depending upon what the cre survey shows from prev the previous year how many moose are left in the state and they'll issue so many permits to thin out the herd by a specific percentage and then the permit is
stopped so they may only give 750 permits out to kill a moose and you can only kill a certain a bull moose or a cow moose but you can't touch the calf so is moose hunting season the same
time as they're mating no because usually hunting's in the fall hunting is in the fall and there different seasons depending upon what state you live in every state determines that so Montana has a different hunting season than Maine than New Hampshire than Vermont
every state has their own rules and regulations as to what time of year you can hunt with what method now people hunt with black powder people hunt with rifles weapons people hunt with bow and arrow and crossbows right there's a bow and arrow right the states the states
control the hunting methodology and the time of year and what time of year can you hunt with what method with what me so you can hunt certain times of year with black black powder you can hunt certain times of year with um a rifled weapon or a shotgun you can hunt certain times if
you with bow and arrow and that's controlled by each state I never heard of block powder in Vermont it's in the fall it's in muskets yeah in the fall because I know my my brother-in-law and um his grandson would go bow and arrow hunting that but that was for deer that
wasn't because we don't really have that many I mean we have moose but he never caught a moose um but I didn't know anything about this musket thing that's yeah people can hunt with muskets black powder weapons which is a musket um that's coming back actually people are
going back to Frontier Days 1700 say a musk right right huh interesting muskets are Extremely Loud black powder is Extremely Loud so you get one shot and then that animal's gone yeah I would
guess time you reload you've never been 100 reload that animals long G yeah yeah there's no there's no double barreled muskets yeah interesting all right now everybody does anybody have any questions about the moose has anybody seen a moose you
know have anybody been up in Maine or in the country and seen a moose they're all see them in north um northern New Hampshire there's moose Northern Vermont there's moose they're very quiet B you go to Grand ton or um any national park in the central
western part of the country there's moose everywhere Alaska has the largest her moose in the country okay so Harriet says yes in Alaska she saw a moose oh and you were in Denali Denali oh when
was that Harriet you can always unmute yourself and and talk to us we'd love that join the conversation yeah join the conversation that'd be great um oh that was um many years ago on a trip with the
Smithsonian um and we went it was light out very late in the evening and so we went out one evening um it was probably around 10:00 to um it was a water source and the the
moose was in the water um sticking its head down and eating the uh what you described it was probably foraging for the greenery below aquatic vegetation yeah it was quite a sight it was special you get any pictures or
video of it I did not oh I know I thought it was interesting how they are such good swimmers I didn't know that yeah they're uh very strong
swimmers I saw one probably 30 years ago swimming across Squam Lake in New Hampshire and I was just I was so aost struck I didn't even pick my camera up I was just like oh my God look at this instead of picking up the camera and taking a picture no I'm just kind of like
yeah wow that's something and the camera's hanging down in front of my neck I didn't pick it up and they have a pretty good um uh Constitution so they can keep at it for a long time swimming they're um they get tired as quickly as we do
yeah that's now what about other like pig animals like what about deer are they good swimmers deer are good swimmers as well yes so that type of animal they're good swimmers what about what about beers two there's two species of deer in the Northeast we have white
tail deer and we have moose we have the elk which is a third species of deer but there's no elk in New England you have to go to Pennsylvania or Upstate New York to see elk and then the Midwest and the Great Plains have elk herds still but there's no elk in New England other
than if you go to the South Wix zo and mendan they have a captive herd of elk in a 20 acre enclosure no 50 acre enclosure that they're wild elk they give birth Every Spring it's really cool to go on a train ride through that habitat so now what's the difference
between moose and Elk um about twice the size MOA twice the size of Elk a large bull elk probably comes close to 800 to a th000 pounds and his antler is much more ornate than a moose is but beef wise
he's not nearly as big as a bulos and the cows are much thinner they look like a small horse you know um my husband and I like to go up to uh Canada to park Omega which is a
wild animal park um that you drive through it's it's not too far from the capital um ont it's in Ontario no I'm sorry it's in um what's it called he's here on the call he'll remind me um but you can drive through
and see all these animals some of them are in enclosures but there's lots of deer there's lots of um all kinds of like different like really small ones and big ones and then they have elk they have bison um uh they have um moose one
moose at least one moose um beers there's a beer enclo a beer enclosure like the beer Valley is called or something they have white foxes um Arctic fox Arctic foxes white um yeah
white wolves it's fascinating yeah thank you Craig Park Omega in que it's in Quebec sorry it's in Quebec Park Omega it's beautiful and and the town there is called montabello I would recommend it to anyone um we've got my my sister and brother-in-law go there in the winter as
well and drive you can just you drive through in your car and you bring like a whole bunch of carrots and feed them through the window so all the deer come and they stick their noses in and drool all over you and get the car I OS upon you to send all of us an email with a name and address to that place oh sure I
will great I will do that yeah actually can it's really wonderful and Monte Bello also has a beautiful old hotel which is right on the river huge River and um a lot of boats come in there and dark and you can go and stay in the hotel it's it's a little pricey but it's
beautiful and there's some other um French um historic sites there you can visit and you can walk all along the river on these pths it's really a great place I'd be more than happy to send my any friends to our neighbors to the north they deserve it yes and so now
with the Moose Bob how many moose are in Canada there must be tons have no clue I have no you're all over every province in Canada so they have a very robust population of moose throughout the country I have no idea what the number is up there hard enough to keep track of it in
this country yeah that's very interesting so in in this place in um Park Omega uh in Montell they have um a whole walk that you can go through and there 12 different uh Native um Canadian
tribes that have their totem poles and the tradition and it talks about you know how they their spiritual beliefs and so forth um in Canada it's really and you go and walk around this is surround a lake it's really be it's a beautiful beautiful place we've gone
there several times it's really fun I really recommend it you know for kids too so all right do we have any more oh I think car has some more um message for us let's see here uh if I can pull this down um Haria do you have any more uh
things you want to share about your Mose experience she's there no not really other than it was very magical um I still have it in my mind's eye I can remember it that well so I encourage anybody uh if you get a chance to go on
a a moose uh you know uh watch or trip to do it because it's special thank you very much yeah very good thank you very much for being here everybody and Bob I think we're good if you think of anything later and you want any more info because he's quite the expert on
this topic do we want to do we want to tease them about what's coming up in May oh yes I do in fact I put it in the chat Bob so um I'd love to see some of you back with us um let's see here I've signed Bob up to do a talk Tuesday May 6
at 7M it's via zoom and it's called restoring Bird Island a Teran Turan colony in Buzzard's Bay on capod turn just tell them about that talk Bob um we have two species of turn that nest in
large numbers the ferally endangered rosette turn it's the largest popul in North America it's right off of our Coast in the middle of buzzit bay the state uh that Island was overwashed by Hurricane Carol in the 50s and then Hurricane Bob in the early 90s and the
state decided to build up that island so it couldn't be overwashed by storms anymore so they brought in barge loads of material and raised the level of the island up by about five or six feet so if a hurricane comes through again it's not going to wipe the turn Colony off the island and um I have before and
after photos to show the restoration I have the entire biology of both species of turns I got to go out on that island twice in 30 years it's a fascinating place it's off limits during mating season so you can't go out on the island while you're nesting but before and
after nesting season is over so this time of year if you can get on a boat in March good luck to you or after August you can go out to the island and check it out but during mating season it's it's it's roped off you cannot get on the island because if you if if you
alter the behavior of a federally en threaten a federally endangered animal you can go to jail you that that will be an interesting talk um let me see I think we have one more couple messages here um oh here you does he ever do
presentations on foxes I can answer to that because we had the presentation that Bob did about foxes and it was very interesting and Bob are you going to be giving that one again um well we actually I recorded it Harriet and I could send you um how to view it at
Milton access cable if you like would you like me to do that think she's still here yeah oh missed it sorry yes okay I will send that to you and the thing I learned from that the most important thing I learned from that fox talk Bob is that when they
pounce on their prey they jump way up and come down on top of it and we watched this lady in Milton um sent a video of that fox doing exactly that in her backyard remember Bob yeah it was cool you guys sent you that was very
cool all cool great well listen I'm very glad to have you all here and um I guess I'll see you next time so thanks for coming and um uh keep an eye on our listings and we'll try to continue having some animal talks because I find these really fascinating thank you Bob very much it's very interesting my
pleasure good to see you all again take care now you thank you very much bye bye good night everyone thank you night bye bye bye bye
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