From a literal run-in with a bull moose to hungry bears keen on calves, the early stretch of the North American summer has yielded some striking—actually, downright harrowing—footage and photos centered on the largest member of the deer family.
First, the "run-in." Henri Kretschmer was motorbiking a backroad in Ontario, Canada last month when he came across the very first moose he'd ever seen, as the narration in his self-filmed video attests – a young bull moose, to be exact, which initially cantered away from Kretschmer's oncoming dirt bike. But only initially: The moose quickly turned round and charged the biker, who halted just before the bull lowered its head and slammed right into him with its velvet-coated antlers.
The moose promptly vanished into the roadside woods, and, after waiting a few moments, Kretschmer began righting his knocked-down bike. But the bull reemerged and charged again, prompting Kretschmer to back up amid spindly conifers while the moose swaggered around far too close for comfort.
Kretschmer was eventually able to return to his machine and continue on, the moose evidently exited from the scene. In the video, the biker said that he was "really sorry for the moose" and "didn't want to hurt it," noting (with admirable awareness) that his actions—namely, motoring along pretty closely behind the animal as it trotted down the road—were ill-advised.
The moose, it's worth noting, doesn't appear visibly injured; there would surely have been a better chance of that had the bike still been gunning forward when the bull rammed it.
Indeed, while more space should have been given to the deer in this case, motorbiker and moose alike were lucky they didn't collide while both were in motion. Moose-vehicle collisions are a real danger across the vast range of the giant deer in both North America and Eurasia, and motorcyclists are especially vulnerable to the severest consequences. At the beginning of this month, a biker who struck a moose on the Glenn Highway in south-central Alaska was hospitalized with "life-threatening injuries." Last October, a similar crash in Massachusetts, USA had tragic results: the deaths of both the motorcyclist and the moose.
Kretschmer's video demonstrates in plain terms that a moose feeling threatened or simply riled can be plenty cantankerous, and plenty swift. Folks who dismiss the big brown beasts as ungainly (or see them as dimwitted goofs, ala Bullwinkle) can get a very rude surprise indeed, as moose are about as aggressive as cervids come. Along with the general edginess of bulls in rut, that's in large part due to the moose's anti-predator behaviour: If a wolf pack or brown bear can't be outpaced, the moose is likely to opt for a stand-and-fight approach.
All the more so if we're talking about a cow moose and her offspring. A mother moose defending her calf is nothing to be trifled with. Take, for example, an incident we profiled back in 2023, when the riled-up guardianship of a mama moose in Alaska proved more than a match for a persistent black bear eyeing her pair of progeny.
But a moose calf separated from its mother, even by a short distance, quickly becomes much more vulnerable to carnivores. And some other recent videos show how risky a time of year it is for such little ones, given both grizzly and American black bears are definitely keyed up for snatching newly born ungulates—from deer fawns to bison calves—during this window.
A couple out to do some brook-trout fishing last month in Piscataquis County, Maine, USA spotted a nervous-looking cow "calling and running back and forth along a side road," as the Bangor Daily News reported. Then the cause for the moose's distress became evident: A moose calf dashed out of the woods and down the road toward the couple's rig, a hefty black bear in hot pursuit.
The people drove toward the oncoming bear once the moose calf had galloped past them, thwarting the ursid's attempt. (Intervening in this sort of perfectly natural predatory event isn't generally advised—and, of course, that moose calf represented critical protein for the black bear—but this wouldn't be the first time human nature overrode a let-Nature-takes-its-course philosophy. No guarantees, though, that the bear would have succeeded in killing the calf even if it caught up—again, that mother moose wasn't, apparently, far away.) The couple then tracked down the cow moose and calf, confirming they'd reunited.
Much, much farther northwest on the North American continent, another moose calf—this one in the vicinity of Alaska's Denali National Park and Preserve—found itself on the run from a bear late last month. Filmed by "Denali Dan," the calf, separated somehow from its mother, clattered onto the boardwalk at Denali Rainbow Village and dove between buildings. A minute later, a grizzly bear came loping and huffing onto the scene, quite obviously attempting to sniff out the calf's whereabouts—though, the Instagram video reveals, the young moose had "backtracked into the woods." (The griz was eventually encouraged by the human onlookers to leave the boardwalk vicinity, given it's not ideal for a bear to feel comfortable in such a setting.)
Well, let's face it: In this opening stretch of the boreal summer, more than a few moose calves are meeting an early demise at the hands of bears (and wolves), and, on the flipside, more than a few are escaping predators to live another day—in large part due to their mothers' super-protective grit. (One might imagine that an ears-down, eyes-bulging, mane-bristling mother moose could be regular nightmare material for, say, your average black bear out there.)
But, as far as people are concerned, the motorbiker's experience last month in the Ontario bush underscores that now's as good a time as any for outdoorsgoers to bone up on moose awareness and safety protocol, which ought to be a year-round priority. For starters (and for a few more dramatic-moose-encounter videos), check out this Earth Touch News article on the subject.
Top header image: Nate Hughes Flickr
Animal Behaviour
Predator vs Prey
Backyard wildlife
