Minnow's Guide #6: When do moose calve?

In mid-May, all the gravid cow moose that have been hanging around town will disappear into the woods and we won't see them for about a month, when they will reappear accompanied by their calves. The cows calve around the same time every year, in effect flooding the area with their calves, who are most vulnerable when they are young and small. At birth, they weigh between 28 and 35 pounds. The incidence of twins is not well defined--as many as 75 % of births may produce twins, but as the summer progresses, we usually see fewer and fewer twin calves wandering around with their mothers. As the cows recover, and the calves get bigger, they are better able to protect themselves from predators: dogs, bears, wolves. You can tell the young calves because they are a dark red color compared with the adult moose, who are a dark brown-dark gray color. Moose are browsers, feasting on tree buds, especially willows, but in the summer, they'll eat water weeds and sedges and any greens they can find, including my neighbor's flowers right from his planters.

One of the saddest things I ever heard was last summer, when a calf was somehow separated from its mother in town. The poor thing ran straight down Kobuk Street (one of our main streets) bleating for its mother. I don't know where she was, but she was probably long gone, because that piercing sound was enough to break your heart. The calf was only a couple of months old, surely not able to survive on its own.

The best book I have ever read about moose is "Ecology and Management of the North American Moose," which was compiled and edited by Franzmann and Schwartz.

Minnow's tip #1: The cows are very serious about protecting their calves. Some people even go so far as to call them aggressive. If you see a calf, do not approach, because the mother may be standing nearby. Due to the innocuous brown color of the mature moose, they are well camouflaged. Everybody around here has more than one story about how they almost got stomped by a moose. For years, there was a big cow with a shaggy mantle who used to chase us down Katmai St if we even looked cross-eyed at her and her calf. So be smart and do your calf viewing from the zoom lens of your camera.