Hanging around with Algonquin Park Moose

In a previous post I talked about our wild turkeys, waking me up with their calls in the early morning hours.

I mentioned then that Ontario obtained the ancestors of these now nicely acclimated and settled in wild turkeys during an exchange with Michigan.  We gave them Moose, from Algonquin Park.  They gave us turkeys.    Think about that.

I said then that I was going to try to ferret out some of the photographs my father took during the 1985 Moose/Turkey exchange.  And, amazingly enough, I was able to find them.  Thanks to the miracle of modern technology, I was also able to scan the slides and -- ta da! -- you, gentle reader, can see the Moose, hanging about. So to speak.

The top close-up photo of the air-borne moose shows the muzzle, to protect their noses and their lungs from too much cold air kicked up by the helicopter.  They were also blindfolded, and had earmuffs put on, to protect them from the helicopter noise, and from the (for a moose) probably scary sight of the earth slipping along beneath them.

Moose -- and motorists passing by -- are unaccustomed to views like this.  Tree-topping moose.

When the moose arrived at the Mew Lake Campground, they were welcomed by a well padded, helmet wearing landing crew. Each person in the crew was responsible for grabbing one leg, and ensuring it was folded up carefully underneath the sedated moose so it wasn't injured during landing.   Now, when I saw sedated moose, don't think of Bullwinkle mildly accepting his new status as flying moose.  The sedation doses had to be a bit of guesswork, it being a challenge to weigh the moose before hand.  For some of the cows, they were blissfully snoozing throughout the flight.  For some of the big bulls, they came in cantering along under the helicopter, legs on the move.  A misplaced leg on one of these fellows could be broken, so the ground crew had quite a task, grappling with a flailing leg as the chopper settled toward the ground and the snow begin to kick up around them.  There was another crew in the yellow Huey -- their job was to collect the moose from the wilderness where it had been sedated and prepare it for transport.  For them, the moose were usually more groggy, but also often less accessible and in areas where the snow had not been packed down for the landing area.   The people who worked on this transfer did heroic work, and careful work. And compassionate work. 

At the landing zone, the moose were weighed, blood and hair samples taken, wormed and thoroughly examined before being loaded into Safari crates to be loaded onto a truck and driven non-stop to the release point.  The crate was constructed around the moose: walls attached, rear wall and roof locked on. Hay was placed inside to provide something to nibble, and a big scoop of snow added to provide something to moisten the mouth.  Just as the front door was being moved into position, the vet would step in, and administer and antidote to the sedative. He then leapt nimbly out as the front door of the crate was slammed shut.  Often on nearly a ton of moose who was already scrambling back to his feet, dazed, disoriented and thoroughly unimpressed with the entire operation. 

And this is how we sent moose to repopulate the Michigan pan handle, and they have done a sterling job of it.  As, at this end, have the wild turkeys.