Distress Call - What's happening to our moose? OOD Hunting Annual

Its the first article I read when I opened my latest issue of OOD. Given the author, I let myself believe that it would live up to its title.

I like Bruce Ranta's articles. His combination of scientific knowledge, hunting experience and direct style usually result in articles that offer more take-aways than the typically light-weight OOD pieces. But this time the author seems to have pulled his punches.

I've no doubt that someone like Bruce Ranta has some well-grounded opinions on the matter of Ontario's moose problems, and someday I'd like to hear those opinions. For now what we got was something that sounded like it was written by MNRF communications staff.

Perhaps as the discussion and study of the issue moves forward we will hear less Jolanta Kowalski and more Valerius Geist.

I read the article recently. I suppose the author didn't put forth any strong opinion on the reason for the decline because he, like the rest of the us, doesn't really have a good explanation for why the population is in decline. I doubt that there is one single factor that is leading to the decline.

Anyone that spends considerable time in the bush will tell you what's happening to the moose population for the most part, bears and wolves !!!!! There's no doubt other factors are at play, but I firmly believe predation plays a huge part.

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Originally Posted by rick_iles

Anyone that spends considerable time in the bush will tell you what's happening to the moose population for the most part, bears and wolves !!!!! There's no doubt other factors are at play, but I firmly believe predation plays a huge part.

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If we add to the fact that hunters without adult tags take a lot more calves than in the past along with increases in Coyote,Black Bear and Wolf populations preying on Moose calves for food,we've unwittingly set up a perfect storm. The old adage that "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" seems to apply to this issue,in spades. We've created a monster.

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Originally Posted by trimmer21

If we add to the fact that hunters without adult tags take a lot more calves than in the past along with increases in Coyote,Black Bear and Wolf populations preying on Moose calves for food,we've unwittingly set up a perfect storm. The old adage that "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" seems to apply to this issue,in spades. We've created a monster.

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In fifteen b most of the cows had no calfs with them witch would leave me to think something got them before the season

I think you are bang on on that.

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Originally Posted by exgunner

In fifteen b most of the cows had no calfs with them witch would leave me to think something got them before the season

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When they noticed the 'dry cows' during their winter surveys in 55B, the logic was that there were not enough bulls to breed them and they cut the bull tags to near zero. Never occurred to the great minds that maybe something was killing the calves?

The other thing that never crossed their minds is that when you sell a bunch of calf tags to guys applying for adult tags and they don't get any for several years - they become very efficient at calf hunting...they got that figured out after about 15 years.

Never give it much thought till after the deer hunt last year our trail cam had pictures of 3 cows in Aug, and during the deer hunt I walked up on 2 cows watched them for 45 mins and none off them had any calves with them.The bears are taking over where we are

I saw evidence of bear predation a few years ago. A cow was shot that had deep scratches on both haunches where a bear had grabbed her when she was calving, likely pulling the calf out of her. The scratches were wider than my big hands, and were not yet healed up.

There was an interesting article in the October issue of Petersen's Hunting magazine. The article was focused on the declining Moose populations Minnesota where Moose populations have declined from 9,000 in 2006 to 4,350 in the spring of 2014. The main argument has to do with an increase in the average temperatures and a resulting increase parasites such as ticks, liver flukes and brain worm.
They also touched on habitat loss. You can see this in northern Ontario by the closing of pulp and paper mills and the subsequent decline in logging.
I think that a combination of factors are responsible for the declining Moose populations, not just any one factor.