Misplaced moose?

Byline: Mike Stahlberg The Register-Guard

Move over elk. There's a bigger critter in town. Moose, North America's largest game animal, are moving into northeast Oregon.

If moose establish a permanent antler-hold there, they will accomplish through migration what the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife once failed to do through the importation of Alaskan moose.

A member of the deer family, moose are generally associated with Maine, Minnesota, British Columbia and other northern regions. Both Washington and Idaho, however, have enough resident moose to allow limited hunting opportunities.

The fact that those populations are apparently expanding their range southward is catching many Oregonians by surprise.

Among them is Darryl Jones of Halsey, a Union Pacific railroad conductor who often hunts in the Blue Mountains northwest of La Grande.

While helping a friend pack a spike elk back to their hunting camp in the Wenaha River drainage in early November, Jones found himself doing a double-take.

"I saw two black objects running about 180 yards away in heavy mahogany brush," Jones says. "I said to myself, `Man, those looked like moose.' But then I talked myself out of it. Because I'd shot a bear in that area before, I figured, `It had to be bear, that couldn't have been moose.' '

Jones would learn otherwise later.

While taking a shortcut through a stand of old-growth timber, he spotted a large animal that obviously wasn't an elk.

"It looked to me like somebody had lost a mule, because I'd once had a mule that was the same color," Jones said. "But I put my binoculars on it, and here's this cow moose. Then I turn around and here's a bull moose like 30 feet behind me giving me dirty looks. I know how a moose can be, and I'm between this moose and his cow and he's not very happy."

Jones eased away from a possible confrontation, hurried back to camp and began rummaging through his gear, looking for his camera.

"My buddy asks what I'm doing, and I said, `I'm going to go take a picture of a moose.' And he says, `Yeah, right, Jones.' And I say, `You're coming with me because I have to have a witness.' '

Although they dared not approach as close to the big bull as Jones had been in his first encounter, Jones and Phil Horton of Eugene succeeded in getting snapshot evidence, which they later showed to an Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist.

"We've had quite a few reports and sightings, just in the past year," said Patrick Matthews, the ODFW's assistant district wildlife biologist in La Grande. "Since April 2004, we've had 29 different sightings (of moose) here in northeast Oregon."

One of the sightings created quite a stir.

"We even had a young one right here in La Grande," Matthews said. "walking around town for a few days" - not unlike the young moose seen before each episode of the old television series "Northern Exposure."

According to the ODFW's weekly wildlife viewing report for the Northeast Zone, that particular moose moved through La Grande and wound up south of the Elkhorn Wildlife Area, then moved back through La Grande later in the month on its way north. Other moose sightings occurred near Timothy Springs in northern Union County.

Matthews said the "small core population of moose" living in the Blue Mountains most likely got there by crossing the plains between Spokane and Moscow, Idaho.

"Sometimes younger animals just start wandering," he said. "A moose can cover quite a bit of ground in a day."

Moose could also "swim the Snake River pretty easily," he said, adding that there have been sightings of moose emerging from that river on the Oregon side.

The appearance of moose in northeastern Oregon is not new.

In 1992, Eugene hunter Larry McKinney shot and killed a young moose after mistaking it for a cow elk, for which he held a tag. Upon discovering his mistake, McKinney notified Oregon State Police. The investigating game warden said it was clear the moose shooting was "totally accidental," but that he had to issue a citation for "taking game, closed season" nonetheless.

There is no moose season in Oregon. And there's not likely to be one - unless the migrant moose do unexpectedly well in areas considered to be "marginal" moose habitat by wildlife biologists.

Indeed, the best moose habitat in Oregon may well be located between Florence and Reedsport on the central coast. That area sure looked like prime moose country to state wildlife managers in the early 1920s.

According to an Oregon Sportsman article reprinted in the 1976 edition of Oregon Wildlife, an ODFW publication, the attempt to transplant moose to Oregon came during an era of wildlife "experimentation." Prompted by their success with ring-necked pheasant, wildlife managers imported several non-native game birds and animals to see how they would fare here.

The "Great Moose Adventure," as the magazine called it, might have turned out better if wildlife managers had imported wild moose, rather than moose calves that had been bottle-fed by humans.

Six animals - three males and three females - were shipped from the Kenai Peninsula to Oregon via San Francisco in October 1922. One bull died on board ship. After a short stint being displayed at a zoo in Portland, the five survivors were released on the shores of Tahkenitch Lake, which is thick with the kind of aquatic vegetation moose find to be tasty.

The next year, deputy state game warden Art Fish noted in a report that "Mr. Everett Pollock, who lives on a homestead on the upper reaches of Bear Creek, in western Lane County, enjoyed a real surprise on the morning of Sept. 30th, on opening his door to find a monstrous bull moose in his front yard."

A month later, word reached Marshfield that one of the moose had a broken leg, and Fish - with the help of a Coquille veterinarian - "managed to rope and throw the animal and put a cast on the leg."

A few weeks later, however, the moose fell and re-broke the leg, and a second plaster of Paris cast was applied.

It is unknown whether that moose survived, but the herd did grow in size.

"The first baby moose has made its appearance in the moose colony in western Douglas County," a correspondent for the Umpqua Courier reported in 1926. Later that year, the Oregon Sportsman commented on the birth of a second calf and upon the death of one of the older females, "who died from injuries sustained when knocked from the train trestle near their haunts."

The transplanted moose never became very wild.

"They frequently pay the school children a visit at the Ada school house," one story said.

As the newness of the big animals wore off, so did some of the welcoming spirit among area residents.

The Feb. 20, 1928, edition of the Oregon Journal reported: "Resolutions are ready to be sent to the State Game Commission asking that the commission remove a herd of moose from the lake region of western Lane County."

The story noted the original herd of five moose "has increased to nine and the animals have escaped from a reservation set aside for them, and have committed depredations over a wide area, breaking through the stoutest fences to reach orchards and gardens.

"The farmers claim that some of the animals are vicious, and that they are afraid to let their wives and children go upon the public roads for fear they will be attacked by the moose."

Whether the game commission ever authorized removal of the moose is not clear, according to the article in Oregon Wildlife. But, quoting a 1939 report in The Oregonian newspaper, the last misplaced moose came to an unhappy end in 1931.

The last bull could be heard calling across lakes in the area, searching for female companionship.

To drive the noisy moose away from their homes, the story said, "people peppered the lonely bull with birdshot, increasing his irritability, and eventually ... somebody fired a charge of birdshot into his face, blinding him."

Wandering into the timber, the bull reportedly became lodged between two fallen logs. Game Warden Fish reportedly found the animal and "ended its suffering."

So, too, ended any official thoughts of turning Oregon into moose country. Now, however, it appears some moose may do it on their own.

CAPTION(S):

Moose feeding in the morning mist was once a common sight at Tahkenitch and Siltcoos lakes on the Oregon Coast. Darryl Jones This snapshot of a moose was taken in the Blue Mountains of northeast Oregon, where the habitat is considered marginal. Mike Stahlberg / The Register-Guard This marshy area where Fiddle Creek enters Siltcoos Lake was a favorite haunt of Oregon's moose colony in the 1920s. Now the birds have it to themselves.