Keeping moose calf gets trouble for Willow man

WILLOW — A man has been cited for illegally keeping a moose calf.

Farley L. Dean, 53, of Willow, was cited Saturday for possessing a moose calf without a permit.

Alaska State Troopers say they first got wind of Dean’s calf on June 18, when they were told he had taken the calf in on either June 13 or 14 and was laying plans to bring the calf to the Palmer Reindeer Farm. They say Dean admitted to keeping the moose and feeding it for several days at his home at Mile 71.5 Parks Highway.

With cameras from an Animal Planet television crew running, the moose was taken into custody by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, said Lt. Tory Oleck with the Alaska Wildlife Troopers. Fish and Game, in turn, brought the moose to the Alaska Zoo. Oleck said he does not know if the moose is still there.

Oleck said the film crew had been following wildlife troopers in recent months.

“They are filming Alaska Wildlife Troopers throughout the state here and they are doing it with our permission, with our encouragement,” he said.

As for the month that elapsed between finding out about the moose and citing Dean, Oleck said that was due to a couple of reasons.

First, “this is a relatively sensitive topic and, of course, my department wants to make sure we handle these things appropriately,” he said.

And second, “the officers that I have had assigned to these cases have been really busy” enforcing the rules during sport fishing season.

Asked what Dean should have done when he came across the moose calf, Oleck said he should have called Fish and Game and let the department know where the calf was instead of taking it in himself.

In more general terms, he said the public shouldn’t make assumptions when coming across a lonely baby moose.

“What we want folks to do first and foremost is to not immediately assume that an animal by itself, a baby animal by itself, has been abandoned. In fact, that is most often not the case,” Oleck said. “The females put their animals in one spot and they leave them be while they go off and do what they do.”

As for the charge — possessing live game with out a permit — Oleck said such permits do exist but aren’t generally easy to obtain. There are ways of going about obtaining exotic pets. Oleck cited as examples recent trends in pet communities favoring pygmy hedgehogs and certain types of ferrets.

But moose are a different story.

“Can a person get a permit to possess a moose? Odds are no,” he said.

Certain organizations have been successful in obtaining permits. The Alaska Zoo is a good example. But individuals, he said, don’t stand much of a chance.

A message left for Dean at his business, the Willow Creek Resort, was not returned as of press time.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.