Moose Stories

We have seen dozens and dozens of moose in Algonquin and other places.   But we have had a few up close and personal interactions with moose. We are very cautious around them but I do love them.  I think of them as one of the “Big Five” of Canada.  Moose, bear, wolf, beaver and fox.  At least those are my Big Five !  So onto our encounters…..

October 2016 – Algonquin – We were up early every morning to go see Jack, the one eyed Moose.  (Get it?  One eyed Jack in a pack of cards?  Just wonderin’ cause it took me a little bit to figure it out! )  We have lots of nice photos of Jack, us and 1,534 other people  lol !  Anyways, stay on topic Susan………….one morning we went to see Jack and he was not in the usual spot but there was a male and female moose standing around.  Well she was standing around, he was trying to get lucky.  It was rutting season and he never gave up. But I didn’t want to post moose porn on my site.   It was a very exciting morning for us.  We had the opportunity to be in their presence for a good four hours, getting lots of photos and memories. I had never seen a male moose rubbing his antlers on trees and this guy took the cake.  He literally destroyed a couple of small trees, rubbing the bark right off and a good portion of the tree itself.  They do this to get the velvet off their antlers.  I have read that its a prelude to rutting and I have read its to harden their antlers for fighting other male moose.  If anyone knows the reason or has another idea, please let me know.  Google is not always the most reliable source.   At one point in the morning, they  both took off and it was something to see them charging across the field.  It was a great morning for moose.  We still wondered where Jack went to though.  Here’s Jack below !

And below is the moose couple.  How cute are they?

June 2016 – Algonquin – We love to paddle in this park, if there is water, we put our canoe in.  We decided to paddle March Hare Lake, on Arowhon road.  There is a small marsh area and across the back is a beaver dam and of course the lake behind THAT !  So we trudged through the marsh, climbed onto the beaver dam to put our canoe in.  FYI the beaver dam was full of leeches…….yuck…….so we headed out in our canoe and paddled all around the lake, taking a few photos.  Headed back to the dam and guess what?  A mom moose and her twins were lunching in the marsh.  There was no other way to get off the lake, cause we paddled around and looked.  So there we sat for another 45 minutes to an hour in our canoe waiting for them to finish eating.  If you have ever watched a moose eating you probably know they pretty much never stop eating……..But !  this family did and headed off out of the marsh and into the woods.  A friend said to me that we must have had good photo ops, well not really we were at the back of the beaver dam and they were below it.  So if you need pics of moose ears, we got ’em.  Below are pictures of other Moms and calves.

October 2013 –  Algonquin – We decided to go for a short bike ride before dinner.  We always travel with bear spray, a tarp, flashlight, water etc because you never know………..so I guess we don’t ALWAYS travel with that stuff because as this was going to be a “quick” bike trip we had our cameras and nothing else.  We went down the trail towards Rock Lake and maybe went 20 minutes down and thought “Meh, nothing to see here, let’s turn back”  Went not too far and had to brake quickly.  There were two moose in the middle of the trail and guess what they were doing?  Eating…..as usual.  They are such big animals, it must take forever to fill them up.  Anyways, we stopped a distance away and tried to call to them and startle them to get off the trail.  They were having none of that, they were settled in at their own personal little diner.  We had a lake to our right and to our left was hilly and dense bush, plus we had our bikes so you know, we waited.  And Waited. And Waited.  Eventually a woman came pedaling up behind us and she stood with us and waited and waited and, well you get the point.  Thankfully a guy was heading towards us on his bike and as the moose were so intent on US and what WE were doing; they did not see him or hear him.  Strangely he did not see the moose, although in his defense it was dusk and for a large animal they are hard to spot.  Anyhow….. he startled THEM and they took off down into the water and the three of us took off as fast as we could peddle.  The guy going the other way really didn’t get what was going on I don’t think ! lol  So moral of the story is: take everything with you that you normally do when heading off, you never know what’s going to happen.  FYI we had left our camp about 545 pm and got back about 730, they had us stopped for over an hour.