Moose destroying crops, but province says they can't be shot: farmer

Moose are apparently devouring vegetable crops in some parts of the province, and farmers claim a change in provincial policy removes their long-standing right to shoot the moose at night.

Kent Fudge of Wooddale in central Newfoundland said he lost $5,000 worth of cabbage in a single night. The moose take bites out of each cabbage, rendering them unsellable, he said.

“It doesn’t take long to lose a lot of acreage,” Fudge said.

“Basically, they are putting farmers out of business.”

The moose also go for turnips, broccoli and carrot tops, which then makes using a mechanical carrot harvester impractical, Fudge said.

"Once they know it is there they come back every single night."

Fudge said he learned of the policy when he recently went to get a nuisance licence. Fudge — who has been farming on his own for 23 years and comes from a farming family — explained that in the past farmers could watch over their the fields at night with big, bright lights and when they caught the massive vegetable bandits in the act, they could shoot them, following a set of rules.

The rules, according to Fudge, included alerting wildlife officials of the kill, and then a moose-licensed hunter would be brought in to retrieve the meat so it didn’t go to waste.

He said farmers have always been careful and conscious of their surroundings when taking shots at moose.

“The problem with farming in Newfoundland is there’s no real big fields. There’s a lot of smaller fields everywhere,” Fudge said, noting fencing does not deter the moose.

Neither do electric fences — it just makes them run faster, he said, explaining they are used to running through rough brush and trees.

Noisemakers or other distractions will work for a night or two and then the moose get used to them and ignore the deterrence, he said.

Fudge said he has even tried leaving his tractor running in the field to scare moose off. He has also left a radio playing loudlyin the field, but that doesn’t work long, nor does a device that mimics the sound of a loud gunshot.

“Unless I pay somebody to go in and stand up all night long to make noise, who is going to do that?” Fudge said of the conundrum.

He said in a typical year, he might kill multiple moose roaming his fields.

The fields are also situated far apart — 15-16 kilometres — so he wouldn’t be able to run around all night from field to field, chasing off moose.

“How are you supposed to harvest during the daytime? You have to sleep sometime,” Fudge said.

Other than the crops that the marauding moose love, Fudge said, he only plants a small amount of lettuce and some potatoes.

“The lettuce is only a joke and you can’t survive on potatoes,” Fudge said.

“They’re going to put me under. It’s a drastic thing they got done.”

Mount Pearl Progressive Conservative MHA Jim Lester, a farmer by trade, said he has been looking into the issue and has tried to get answers from the Department of Fisheries and Land Resources, with no response.

Lester, like Fudge, said moose get accustomed to the noisemakers and fences, and ignore them.

He said if the province is concerned about safety, that can be mitigated with additional training, or regulations that require farmers to use weapons like shotguns rather than high-powered rifles.

Lester said it’s wrong to leave farmers without anything to battle the moose.

“It puts (the farmers) at considerable risk,” Lester said.

Fisheries and Land Resources — asked Thursday to verify the policy change — said they could not respond to The Telegram’s inquiry until Friday.