On the trail of a forest colossus

Like El Dorado, the glistening city rumoured to remain hidden in the Amazon, the Fiordland moose has been a tantalising mystery that remains frustratingly unanswered.

It’s largely due to the forbidding landscape: parts of the thick, native bush of Fiordland are too hard to reach on foot, and the dense canopy is impossible to penetrate from above. There are parts of Fiordland no person has seen, let alone stepped upon.

It’s the sort of environment that invites mystery and allows the collective imagination to fill the gap.

In the 18th century, remnants of the southern Nga¯ti Ma¯moe tribe escaped into the forest during a war with Nga¯i Tahu. They became known as ‘‘the lost tribe’’ and there were reported sightings for decades afterwards: footprints on a beach, smoke from fires curling above the treetops, shadowy figures in the fog.

There have been elaborate hunts for a surviving moa population, somewhere deep in the bush where they were once common. In the 1970s, a Japanese scientist flew overhead, blaring the recreated sound of a moa’s call, hoping desperately for a response. Film crews have ventured into the forest, too, hoping to stumble across a bush moa.

These stories still exist in part because it’s happened before.

In the early 20th century, the Fiordland myths included the legendary notoris, a round, blue bird that lived alongside the moa, only known by skeletal remains found in the remnants of Ma¯ori bush fires. It was presumed extinct in 1897.

Fifty years later, a doctor from Invercargill went searching for notoris, an animal which had fascinated him since childhood when he saw a stuffed version in a museum. Against all odds, Geoffery Orbell found a surviving notoris population in the mountains, making global headlines. Today, notoris are better known as takahe¯.

The last known photographs of a Fiordland moose were taken just a few years after the takahe¯’s rediscovery, in 1952, about 60 kilometres away.

At the time, the moose were thought to be gone, last seen in the 1930s. At first, the trio of deer cullers found nothing, but they decided to extend their search further into the forest, slashing their way through the trees. They used wood to build a raft, which they rowed 8km up the sound to Herrick Creek, a known moose haunt.

They soon came across the large footprints of a moose, about a day old, and decided to split up. A shot rang out through the trees – one of the men, Percy Lyes, had been traipsing through the pepperwood when he saw a monster rise before him, nearly two metres tall at the shoulder and almost black, its pronged antlers emerging from behind a tree.

They left the dead bull moose, to forge a path back so they could return for the trophy the next day.

One of the men, Max Curtis, went in search of another moose he had observed earlier in the trip, hoping for a photograph. He was almost at the creek when he saw a female, resting in the water. He quietly put down his gun and reached for his camera, capturing a few photos before the moose wandered off towards Herrick Lake. Curtis followed and took more photos before it swam gracefully to the other side.

The next day, the final member of the party, Robin Francis Smith, stumbled across the same moose. He followed it to the same lake and waded into the cold water, crouching with his camera while the moose chewed on a fuschia bush. His photos from that moment are the last of a living Fiordland moose.

Two of the men have since died, but Smith, now in his late 80s, lives in Australia and is probably the only living person to have photographed a Fiordland moose.

Although there have been no photos since, believers say there is a wealth of physical evidence, right up to the present day, that suggests a small moose population.

In 1972, Ken Tustin found a cast deer antler, only one or two seasons old. In the decades afterwards, experienced hunters would report unmistakeable moose sign – sign being a term used for physical evidence of an animal’s existence.

There was a breakthrough in 2005, when two hair samples collected from separate areas in 2001 and 2002 – one taken from roughly the same place Tustin found the antler decades earlier – were confirmed through DNA testing by a Canadian University as being of moose origin. Because of the pummelling rain, hairs were only likely to last a month, dating the moose to this century.

For a while, the signs fell away. But new evidence has emerged.

‘It blew me away’

You can learn a lot from a broken branch.

A major difference between red deer and moose is the way they eat. A deer plucks the leaves from a branch individually, but moose, which have no teeth in their upper jaw, eat more violently. They lock on to a branch and strip it horizontally, before jerking their heads and snapping the branch.

What also gives a moose away, predictably, is its size. They rise on their hind legs to reach branches up to three metres high, giving them a reach nearly a metre higher than a deer stag.

For those familiar with forest animals, the evidence is unmistakeable.

One of them is Alex Gale, a professional hunter who first became interested in the tale of the moose in the early 1970s. At the time, there had been a brief media circus around a man named Gordon Anderson, a gruff, Southern Man type who claimed to have shot a moose in 1971.

He resiled from the publicity, and refused to talk about it further. He later confessed to a reporter who cornered him in a pub: he saw two moose, but would not say whether he had shot one, seemingly fearing some sort of reprisal from authorities or other hunters. It was never clear whether Anderson had indeed shot a moose, but it reignited interest in the mystery.

After many years of wondering, Gale and his son finally began the hunt in 2011. The helicopter descended through dark, brooding clouds and beneath the snow-topped hills. They took an inflatable boat and puttered through the dark and quiet water of Dusky Sound, combing the places where moose were most commonly seen, not far from where they were first released.

They found what may have been moose sign, but the persistent rain and impossible conditions made a thorough search impossible. They came home with more questions than answers.

They went back in 2013 and found nothing – disappointed, Gale concluded the moose must no longer be there. But on a return trip in 2015, largely to enjoy the landscape, everything changed.

‘‘It blew me away,’’ he says at his home in Christchurch.

‘‘I just couldn’t believe it. I felt the hairs stand up on the back of my head, I’ve never felt so moved hunting in years.

‘‘I saw this stuff and I could just not believe what I was seeing.’’

There were leaves eaten high in the trees, and branches stripped of leaves and snapped off. A wild, overgrown area he had nicknamed ‘‘Jurassic Park’’ on a previous trip had been completely eaten out, covered with bare branches stripped in the typical moose fashion.

Since then, he has returned a few times, documenting fresh sign through dozens of photos. He now has 11 automatic cameras in the forest, similar to the ones Tustin had set up, capturing anything that moves in front of one.

The cameras are in an area with few red deer, near where he spotted the most recent moose sign. He shows a series of photos from last year, taken from the automatic camera – months went by without capturing anything. Gale says that only adds to the likelihood the moose sign was authentic.

If there is ever evidence of a moose, it will come from cameras, he says – ‘‘The chance of you being there, on the day you’re there, and getting the drop on them without them hearing you, sighting you, or smelling you is virtually zilch.

‘‘It’s worse than looking for a needle in a haystack.’’

Gale says he will return to the bush in September. After more than 50 years of hunting, he believes the evidence is incontrovertible, and is now on the trail.

‘‘It’s a long shot, but if it comes off, it’ll be worth it,’’ he says. ‘‘After seeing all that sign . . . if I hadn’t done it I would have regretted it.’’

The game is on

Releasing an exotic animal like moose into the bush would be unfathomable today.

At the time, it was the product of hubris: Thomas Donne, the tourism minister largely responsible for introducing deer, chamois and moose to New Zealand, would later write: ‘‘Nature neglected New Zealand in providing game animals. Man has remedied the situation.’’

If moose still roam the forest, it would be an intriguing relic of that long-lost period. They have no legal protection, given they are technically deer, which are a pest. Despite being extremely rare, and internationally unique in their own right, the moose would not be welcome in the national park.

Those who are still searching for the moose, six decades after they were last seen, are captivated by the adventure. It is the closest thing to being an explorer in the modern age, uncovering one of the few lingering mysteries of the wilderness.

It comes with a fair amount of criticism. The moose hunters find themselves lumped in with cryptozoologists, the type searching for the Moehau, New Zealand’s Bigfoot in the Coromandel Ranges, or the panther supposedly prowling the Canterbury Plains. ‘‘People are quick to speak out of their own ignorance,’’ Alex Gale says. He’s been hunting for five decades and written books on the subject, and knows what he’s seen.

For Ken Tustin, the godfather of New Zealand moose hunting, the criticism has lasted across generations.

‘‘I get a fair bit of flak, and I’m quite aware that some people think of me as a bit of a crank,’’ he says.

‘‘But I know my deer, and I’m a biologist by training, and when you’re confronted with fresh sign, you’re left in absolutely no doubt at what you’re looking at.’’

It sounds unlikely, he says, but ‘‘when you’re confronted with sign like that, any niggling little doubts you have just totally evaporate and you think, my goodness, the game is on.’’

The number of moose in Fiordland would probably be small, a population fragment of a population fragment. They would be competing for food with deer, which are flourishing in number after the mass culls in the 1970s. Time is running short.

After nearly half a century hunting moose, Tustin is surprisingly unbothered by the idea he may never see one.

‘‘Will I see one in my lifetime? Probably not. Will someone else? They probably will. I’d get a great kick out of that. The story’s quite an enduring one, and I quite like it remaining a mystery, in some respects.’’

He has pictured the moment – staggering through the bush, the scent of moose in the air, the colossus of the forest just metres away, somewhere in the dark. If that moment comes, he won’t even reach for his camera.

‘‘I wouldn’t waste that precious moment of seeing one eyeball to eyeball,’’ he says. ‘‘I’d just enjoy the moment.’’