Be aware of moose with newborn calves

Spring is in the air, or should I say summer now that the Memorial Day weekend is here. This holiday marks two separate occurrences: the arrival of this season’s new crop of baby moose and the peak of hooligan migration in the Valley’s river systems.

Sometimes the two are even related!

In viewing Facebook over the last few days, I’ve seen at least two references to moose with newborn calves making the news. One video showed a mama moose with baby receiving a police escort as she led the youngster down the middle of a busy highway. The second showed a moose charging a bicyclist along an Anchorage bike trail and knocking him off the bike. This mama moose had twins that also looked to be only recently born. She was doing a great job of defending her babies from anything and everything.

My story with mama moose and a newborn baby ties hooligan and moose together. It happened a few years ago and goes something like this.

The evening before we were planning to travel to go hooligan dipnetting, I had gotten maybe four steps out the garage door with some gear destined for the motorhome when I heard the noise. It sounded like a grunt mixed with a growl. I stopped and turned to look toward the sound when I saw the cow moose coming out of the trees and across the yard on the double. Her ears were laid back and she was losing no time in trying to reach me. As I ducked back into the garage, I noticed a baby moose frolicking on the lawn only a few yards from the corner of the house.

Mama stopped maybe four yards from the building. She couldn’t see me and was reluctant to follow around a corner and into the open garage. I carefully peeked around the edge of the building and watched for several minutes as Mama patrolled while Baby played in the yard only feet from my spy post. I had seen this cow in the yard the day before and she was alone. She must have dropped her calf less than 24 hours before our chance encounter. I watched until mother and baby moved away from the house in the opposite direction from where the RV was parked on the driveway before I finished my loading chores. My wife and I were planning to head down to Twentymile River, near Portage, to try our luck dipnetting hooligan in saltwater.

The moral to this story is: be vigilant over the next month when you are doing anything outdoors if you live in moose country (read: all of Alaska, even Anchorage). I was preoccupied with getting the RV loaded and ready for our trip and hadn’t given a thought that the moose in the yard the day before might still be around. I’m glad I didn’t get any further out of the garage before Mama let me know I was in the wrong place at the moment!

On a different note, we’ve all heard about the young people who are eating laundry soap pods and snorting condoms. That’s stupid and tends to give a person pause about the future of our country if that’s the quality of persons populating it. However, those dummies are the very small exception – the main group of young people are intelligent and decent folks!

I recently attended the 25th annual BSA Troop 340 Turkey Shoot hosted by Dan and Nancy Moore on their property near Big Lake. I’ve been giving the gun safety lecture to the guys (and now gals) for the last couple of decades. The scouts fire shotguns, 22 rimfire rifles, high power rifles, shoot bows and arrows and slingshots, and throw tomahawks. There are different age group categories and a scoring system for each activity. Parents of the kids are actively involved in running each shooting or throwing station and act as the scorekeepers and judges in case of a tie.

This year’s 25th anniversary event saw double the number of competitors as previous events, including a special category for alumni. Some of the 22 alums attending travelled from as far away as Portland and the Denver area just for this function.

The grand prize for the top overall scorer was a 30-06 rifle and the second-place prize was a 22-caliber rifle. Impeccable sportsmanship was displayed by the two shooters vying for second place and everybody handled their firearms in a safe manner while enjoying the day’s shooting events.