Moose sightings, and collisions, are rare
Long-legged, thick-bellied, stately and solitary, moose seldom show their long snouts in public.
“We’ve seen moose scat on our property in Falls Village,’’ sad Paul Elconin, director of land conservation for the Northwest Connecticut Land Conservancy based in Kent. “But we’ve never seen a moose.’’
The worst way to see them is in your headlights driving on some back road. The odds are, if you fail to swerve, the hood of your car will go under the moose’s long legs and throw its considerable bulk crashing onto your windshield.
That’s what happened last week in Goshen when a 3-yearold pregnant moose bolted out onto Route 272. A car hit it and three of its passengers needed to be checked out at a hospital for injuries that included cuts caused by flying glass.
Collisions, like sightings, are a relatively rare occurrence in the state. Andrew LaBonte, a deer and moose biologist with the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection said that there’s about one or two moosecar accidents in the state every year.
“It’s been sporadic,’’ he said. And luckily, with only moose — not human — fatalities.
But it will happen. There’s about 100 moose wandering around the northern tier of the state, browsing on branches or snuffling their long noses underwater to feed on aquatic plants.
“About two-thirds live in the northwest corner and one-third in the northeast,” LaBonte said. “The towns of Barkhamsted and Hartland are the moose capital of the state.’’
They’re rare in the state because they’re at the far southern edge of their range. They are a cold-weather animal that lives only in places where the snow falls in winter.
And even in those places, they’re not just standing around and posing. They live in the woods — mostly alone.
“I’ve been going to Maine every summer for 50 years and I never saw a moose there,’’ said Frank Dye, of Danbury, professor emeritus of biology and environmental science at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury. “I went up to Canada in 2006 and finally saw one.’’
Unlike white-tailed deer — which brazenly stroll into your yard to feast on your rhododendrons and arborvitae — moose will never be suburban.
LaBonte said moose like scrubby brush and young trees. In Connecticut, that can mean the open new-growth woodlots. It can also mean red maple swamps, where there’s both trees and aquatic plants. (The word “moose” come from the Algonquin language. It means “eater of twigs.”)
Moose need to eat 40 to 50 pounds of forage a day. Because new growth forest and red maple swamps are in short demand in a state predominated by mature forests or development, limited moose habitat means limited moose numbers.
“That and the temperature,’’ LaBonte said.
And ticks. Moose can harbor tens of thousands of parasitic moose ticks — AKA winter ticks. Moose can lose their coats rubbing against trees to rid themselves on the ticks. Unprotected against the cold and weakened by blood loss, they can’t make it through the winter.
It is not clear if moose are even a native to Connecticut. LaBonte said some Native American tribal documents point to moose traipsing the woods before the Europeans arrived.
But there’s no record of Colonial settlers hunting them. And once those settlers cut down trees and turned the woods to farmland, Connecticut was no place for moose.
It wasn’t until people abandoned those farms in the late 19th century that moose started moving back down into the state from Massachusetts. In 1956, a moose was photographed in Ashford, in the northeast corner of the state – the first official moose record in the state.
By 1995, the state had its first moose-car collision. In 2000, naturalists saw the first moose cow with a calf here – proof that Connecticut had a breeding moose population.
People have seen young male deer — which can go wandering in the spring — as far south at the East Lyme. In 2007, one was killed by a car on the Merritt Parkway in New Canaan. Another strolled through the parking lot of New Milford Hospital in 2013.
Ken Elkins community conservation manager for Audubon Connecticut, said he’s seen moose tracks at the Croft Nature Preserve in Goshen. But not a moose.
“They’re most active at dusk,’’ Elkins said. “They’re kind of like the American woodcock. You know a place where they might be. But you have to be there at the right time.’’