Warm day here in the high 30’s! Doing some early chores such as pulling potted/bagged plants from the shed. Looking at the forest outside of the fence I see moose activity all over.
Exhibit one: deer may go after bark as a last resort when all other food sources are gone. For moose bark is a common winter fare. The top teeth mark on this tree are 8 feet off the ground.
Exhibit two: the branch itself is about 10 feet off the ground, but they just reach to a lower branch and pull it down. A deer weights about 120 pounds, for an average 1,000 pound moose it is trivial to snap fairly large branches. On the background you can see another tree that got hit
Let me get this straight. We are swapping all my deer for all your moose. I’ll take that deal any day. I’ve got a least 50-100 deer to every one of your moose. Your moose is big, but when you combine the rub power of 50 bucks, I think I have your damage beat.
I’m just joking. You have all the fruit predators. I’m willing to bet your bears are way bigger than mine. Then again mine are pretty nimble climbing fruit trees.
The biggest problem with moose is that no size of tree is safe from them. If they can eat the bark they will strip it clean and whatever branches under 10 feet they just rip them down. And there is a pretty big number of them specially in the winter time when they come down from the mountains. Heck the city of anchorage has 200~300 moose year around and that number triples in the winter time. Probably just as with deer, if you don’t fence you may as well give up.
I’m in the suburbs and frankly we don’t have a problem with bears; they are too troublesome so my best guess is that they are not tolerated. Moose on the other hand are more protected in order to avoid abuse.
First pic was from earlier this winter and then the last two are pretty recent. The moose come out of the woods and raid the neighborhoods for your fruit plants when they get hungry. You can lose a year’s worth of work in a single visit. Most of the plants are still buried by the extreme snowfall this year though.
