What to do about aggressive moose
adfg.alaska.gov
adfg.alaska.gov
While the Northern European moose is smaller than the North American, we still treat it with a lot of respect if we ever come across them in nature. Especially if the moose has calves, you should steer well clear of it, because the mother will attack, and kill or maim you badly.
Sadly, being such a heavy animal – it can easily weigh a literal tonne – it’s also the source of some very serious car accidents, especially on lonely stretches of roads passing through forests, for which there is a lot of on the Scandinavian peninsula.
Being so tall, the car will hit its feet first, and then the rest of the animal will land on the bonnet and window, often crushing the driver and passengers.
Worst of all, they like to trek at dusk, or when the light is dim, so if you’re ever on a lonely, forested stretch of road during that time, you need to keep your eyes peeled. On top of that, that’s the time of day when the pelt disguises them the best against the surrounding nature, so you really must keep on your toes when driving during those hours.
Smaller deers are dangerous and you need to be careful with them. In Spain the largest deers are red deers (males over 200kg are very rare) and there are a few cases of people killed by them. Even small females are dangerous enough to kill healthy large man.
Even roe deers, which are quite small (maybe 30kg a larger male), can cause serious injuries because they are crazy agile and fast and their antlers are quite sharp. Here's a video of a man trying to feed one: https://www.club-caza.com/files/videos/Ataque-de-corzo-a-per...
Deers may not look dangerous because they are herbivorous and cute, but they are.
Good advice, and not something most people think about. As a general rule, all wild animals should be treated as dangerous and not cute and harmless. Even a baby squirrel will scratch the shit out of you. Cute little bunnies? Yeah, watch what happens when they're cornered and think they nothing left to lose. Experience says birds might be the one exception, though I've never tried to get close to an eagle. :-)
If it has claws, teeth, and doesn't live with me in my house, I treat it with a respectful distance until I have reason to believe otherwise, no matter how cute it might be.
But there are many videos of their wild African cousins destroying lions.
Suddenly rounding a corner on a semi rural forest road I saw something in the corner of my eye up ahead; I hit the brakes and then there was this massive elg crossing the road ahead of me, certainly not quite far enough away, turning its head to give me a fair bit of eye as its little ones followed.
I just sat there perfectly still for a few minutes, not giving it any reason to investigate me further - then kept going, still awestruck by what I had witnessed.
The Kangaroos and Wallabies I've come across down under whilst mountain bike riding are cool and all, but they don't hold a candle to the experience of a close encounter with a properly grown elg. Ah, the memories.
I remember pitching my tent in somewhere in the deep forests of Västra Götaland in Sweden. I had found the perfect spot with a soft, mossy surface. Little did I know that I'd get no sleep at all, due to the entire place being infested with rodents running like mad underneath before I got into real trouble.
When it started to dusk, I noticed slow thumping and the cracking of twigs beyond the small hill across the road not far from me, so I unzipped the opening and stuck my head out of the tent to see what was going on.
Then after a while, some majestic antlers crested the hill, and the biggest moose I've ever seen appeared before me. It was clearly minding its own business and having a great day. Until it saw me, that is.
It stopped dead in its tracks while ogling me. Then it snarled and sighed heavily, kind of like Sprocket - the dog in the Fraggle Rock Show - would make when fed up. It was clearly annoyed. Then it slowly turned, and trotted the other way, obviously quite irritated by having met some dumb camper.
During the night it got much worse, however. Except now it was pitch black. Suddenly I noticed the thumping again, from the same direction as earlier. And it was coming closer.
But this time, when I stuck my head out of the tent, I couldn't see anything. The night was pitch black. I couldn't even make out the stars in the sky. So, I quickly decided that it was a bad idea to light the torch. I didn’t want to become the only lighted target in all that darkness.
Meanwhile twigs were cracking. And the thumping just became louder and louder, and closer and closer. Thump.... Thump.... Crack some twigs.... Thump.... It was really slow, but also deliberate. And it was clearly headed straight for my tent, even though I couldn't see anything in the dark. For each thump the dread in me kept increasing.
At first, I tried yelling at it. This would stop the thumping for a bit, like the animal was assessing what was going on and sniffing the air for a bit. But then he just continued. So, I pulled out some pans I had and started desperately clanking them together while yelling into the night. But to no avail. The slow thumping just continued. Coming ever closer. Towards my tent. I've never felt so small and helpless in my entire life.
At some point I decided that I'd had enough, and I ran like a panicked little chicken to the car parked a few hundred metres away. Then I simply waited until I couldn't hear the thumping anymore and went back and dismantled the tent and slept in the car.
I had lost, and the King of the Forest had won.
The word "elk" in English just means a moose:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elk#Naming_and_etymology
In North America there is an animal which is not a moose, but which are "for their unusual largeness improperly termed Elks by ignorant people"!
> Sadly, being such a heavy animal – it can easily weigh a literal tonne – it’s also the source of some very serious car accidents, especially on lonely stretches of roads passing through forests, for which there is a lot of on the Scandinavian peninsula.
A Swedish friend told me that if you take your driving test in northern Sweden, there is an extra section about emergency stops, precisely because of moose danger.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elk#Naming_and_etymology
> In North America there is an animal which is not a moose, but which are "for their unusual largeness improperly termed Elks by ignorant people"!
I'd say at this point in time the word "elk" in English means elk, not moose, at least in North American English. The article you linked to is in fact an article about the North American species of animal called elk, or Cervus canadensis. The quotation you cite is from 1672.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moose
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ElkThe moose attacks exactly how akaska.gov says it usually does, with its front hooves. Unfortunately, this guy could not run because he was in a narrow path on a snowmobile.
Go slow, and don't use your horn. Unfortunately there is no way to avoid that road because there really are no others that aren't even worse.
Luckily I'd read enough about moose and started walking backwards, then sped up my walking as it got closer, and as soon as I rounded the bend, ran like crazy until I found part of the hill I could climb. When the moose got to where I climbed, it stopped and looked around for me. Eventually it moved on.
This would follow the same [i-mutation](https://www.etymonline.com/columns/post/imutate?old=true) that foot, tooth, and goose do, as well as mouse and louse
EDIT: Apologies, apparently we have them in Europe too
edit: this is a good sample:
It is certainly the closest I have been to a moose, but living in that area, I encountered them fairly often. They are usually pretty docile.
Meanwhile growing up you're basically taught "look, don't touch" and "back away slowly" with regards to anything the size of a goose or bigger. This comes with lessons like don't mess with big/wild cats, and however large you expect the moose to be, it will inevitably be bigger.
Of course, I'm sure there are areas of the world where that knowledge will completely miss the actual relevant risk(s). Probably something to do with spiders/snakes, as they're just generally harmless here.
> The aurochs was one of the largest herbivores in Holocene Europe. The size of an aurochs appears to have varied by region, with larger specimens in northern Europe than farther south. Aurochs in Denmark and Germany ranged in height at the shoulders between 155–180 cm (61–71 in) in bulls and 135–155 cm (53–61 in) in cows, while aurochs bulls in Hungary reached 160 cm (63 in).[45] (...) The body mass of aurochs appears to have shown some variability. Some individuals reached around 700 kg (1,540 lb), whereas those from the late Middle Pleistocene are estimated to have weighed up to 1,500 kg (3,310 lb).[5]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurochs
They went extinct in 1627.
By the way, the European bison (Wisent) almost also went extinct. In fact it was extinct in the wild, when the last free-living exemplar was shot in 1927, three hundred years after the last aurochs.
I assume the European moose / elk survived because it lived in colder, less populated regions.
Also:
> if a moose does charge, don't wait to find out if it's bluffing. Run and get behind something solid, like a tree, or retreat to a safe place.
Human agility and ability to go round corners faster is probably your only protection.
Often they don't chase. It's not like you're prey to them. If they got rid of you by scaring you off, they already accomplished their goal. Running away communicates very clearly that you don't plan to fuck with them.
They may make you run for a couple meters and once they're satisfied get back to whatever they were doing.
Aka... Driver is darwin'ing themselves..
I was with you for the first half, but I've seen moose on the road. They sometimes just appear, much like deer would just appear in the midwest. Even when you see them, you might not have much time to respond. It is amazing that they can blend into the woods so readily considering their size.
Possibly time of year dependent, I guess, but seriously, one weekend of nightly midnight drives out in the Shuswap area of BC was all it took. I now/still respect the effects of the deer, but marvel at their unmitigated stupidity.
I have surprised deer on the road, at night, and had them respond by running toward me. That did not help the probability of a collision...
I hit my first deer during a night-time driving lesson. It just manifested itself in a turn right in front of the car. It happened so freaking fast that even my driving instructor didn't get right away what happened. (To be fair this was his first deer accident too). There were just something flying in front of the car, getting hit and flying away to the side of the road.
It was very different from my imagination which formed during my childhood hearing adults talking about split second decisions in case of a deer appearing in front of the car.
If you ever see a deer cross in front of you, especially with a fawn in tow, slow down and be prepared to slam on the brakes because they might be preparing to jump right into your path. These kinds of accidents are especially deadly because they don't hit the bumper, they tend to smash directly into the windscreen, sometimes breaking through and crushing the front seat passengers.
I also came across a moose running across the road that cut through a forest and it never slowed down, they weave with their heads to keep the antlers from ramming into the trees in a way that is quite amazing. They run through a forest that I couldn't run through without clipping the trees and those animals are easily four times as wide.
Don't mess with moose.
In a split second they can walk in front of you before you can brake. Add wet, foggy, icy, or snowy conditions and the braking ability is even more limited.
I have no idea if this is really good advice or widely shared. I hope I never have to make that split second decision.
I was in my mid-30s the first time I saw a moose up close. It almost caused an accident between me and a logging truck. It was massive to the point of absurdity. If you've never seen one it's difficult to imagine how big they are.