Wednesday, October 18, 2017

The Wild Moose Chase

As close as we got

Anything huge and brown in the woods garnered a second look. We spotted scores of toppled trees, nurse logs, moss-draped rocks and even a possible beaver dam. More than 1,000 miles, most through heavily treed wilderness, and neither of us sighted a moose.

Picturesque and not an ungulate in sight.
I knew our chances of spotting any moose on Isle Royale died the second the ranger pitched the possibility. With the wolves’ population collapse, Moose on Isle Royale lack predators. They shape the forest by grazing and rubbing on tree trunks. They are frequently sighted near one of the Isle’s campgrounds, but no one reported sightings that Sunday, not before the ferry gurgled back to Grand Portage.

Our hunt did not stop at Isle Royale - had we spotted one, it could have. We took the Gunflint Trail Scenic Byway into the mountains above Grand Marais. After scouting a few trailheads on the edge of the national forest, we drove deeper. Then we encountered what could have been evidence of a moose or other ungulate. A man stood along the scenic byway. He seemed calm, as if waiting. Drawing nearer we realized he stood next to his overturned SUV. Whatever the circumstances behind his rolled car, we decided to turn around and work our way back to Grand Marais. Visits to Elbow Lake and meditated crawls down country lanes produced the same result, nothing wilder than farm dogs lounging in the gravel.

What else can Nancy and I do to spot a moose? We have sat lakeside in Maine, Minnesota, New Brunswick, Montana and Ontario, crossed dozens of protected parks and forests and we can claim nothing more than hoof prints on a sandy beach in New Brunswick’s Fundy National Park.

For eight days of North Country, the only moose we witnessed stood in the Isle Royale visitor center – a skeleton assembled next to a famous male wolf restored by taxidermy

I flipped past plenty of moose captured in a book loaned to me by the Mangy Moose Hotel’s owners, The Wolves of Isle Royale. The photos taken by researchers were unsparing and graphic – wolves stalking moose, moose kills and wolves dead from malnutrition, among others. In winter, the isle is a laboratory for observing the two species without human involvement.

This doesn't count either.
But it wasn’t the kills that struck hardest. One of the last pages showed a bull with malformed antlers. The main branches and points did not fan out gracefully, but were stunted and ended abruptly in a series of bumps and polyps. Indians called this poor fellow a windigo, a name shared by an evil, cannibalistic spirit in Native American lore and Isle Royale’s western port. Moose lurk in those woods, maybe even an odd fellow like that one. I would have gladly observed one like him. Any moose would do, even one that evokes the sadness of nature.

Moose don’t need to respect international borders. If anything, our odds seemed better in Canada. But the same issues reared up repeatedly. The Lake Superior, Isle Royale and Thunder Bay shorelines caused problems. In many spots the terrain jutted abruptly from the water at a grade too steep for large mammals. Despite its serene waters, no creatures beyond chipmunks bothered with the shore of Sleeping Giant’s Lake Mary Louise.

Different country, same problem.
Also a problem is the very conundrum of the moose – how does a creature that large hide so well? Moose warning signs hammer home that size. A moose strike on the rented sedan we drove would crush the car and possibly kill us both. Yet they can cross a two-lane road in a few steps and vanish among the trees.
 In Ontario, Sleeping Giant Provincial Park offered the best opportunity to spot wildlife. The protected peninsula not only counts moose among its fauna, but black bear, gray wolf, coyote and even Canadian lynx. Some deer grazed in the evening golden hour at Silver Islet.

Leaving the North Shore Scenic Drive to plunge into the interior posed new prospects. Northeast Minnesota’s millions of unspoiled acres host a large moose population, but more places to hide and a healthy wolf population throughout the Superior National Forest.

Minnesota routes abandoned traffic and after a point, pavement for nearly 50 miles. The lack of people emboldened us to hope for an encounter. National forest and state forest, then isolated communities, farm country on higher ground in the Iron Range– then 24 hours of driving rain. Nothing would emerge from the forest during that torrent, even on the cusp of the Boundary Waters Wilderness Area. The rain followed us into Duluth the next day, moose out of our minds.

As the hills faded and we resumed the flat crossing to the Twin Cities, Nancy and I scouted every copse, every lake, stream and corn field, desperate for one glimpse, any glimpse. We would have settled for the rump.

You already know what we found.

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