A Bull Moose (Alces alces): The Biggest, most Dangerous Animal in my Yard

Yearling Bull Moose (Alces alces) with spike antlers taken
in my backyard on February 6, 2012.
Photo by Brad Sylvester. Copyright 2012.

Sometimes I have to go to great lengths to find the animals that live in my yard, but when a bull moose (Alces alces) walks through the yard within 50 feet of the house, it's pretty hard to miss. This moose is definitely male, because it has antlers. Female moose do not grow them at all. Bull moose actually shed their antlers and regrow a new set each year.

The little spiky antlers on this moose tell me that it is almost certainly a yearling moose. Yearlings may keep their antlers later in the season than their more mature brethren who may drop their antlers around December. February or even March is not too unusual a date to see such a young moose still carrying last year's beginner antlers. You can tell that these are antlers from the prior season rather than newly developing antlers by the lack of velvet covering over them. In the pictures, the antlers of the moose that was in my yard appear hard and bony.

Moose Antler Growth

Bull moose showing developing antlers with brown velvet
feeding on aquatic plants in Errol, NH in July, 2011.
Photo by Brad Sylvester. Copyright 2011.

They would start out as buds around the end of April and begin growing with a brown, fuzzy covering called velvet. The velvet peels and gets scraped off on trees to relieve the itching as the antlers get ready for rutting season. The picture below shows a bull moose in July with his antlers coming in. The velvet shows clearly. You'll also notice that even though they are not nearly finished growing for the season, they are clearly going to be much, much fuller than those of the moose from my yard. This shows that the bull moose in the picture I took last summer in Errol, is older. You can see the full video of this adult male moose eating here. According to the New Hampshire Fish and Wildlife Service (NH F&G), the antlers of a mature moose may weigh 40 pounds.

Bear Killers

Even though it is still young, the yearling moose stands 6 feet tall at the shoulder and about eight feet tall overall. Moose are big animals. Already, this moose weighs more than a typical full grown black bear. During the fall mating season when it is full of hormonal aggression, it is also more dangerous than a black bear. The most dangerous moose, however, is the female with a young calf. They are fiercely protective and can not tolerate any creature physically getting between them and the calf. The NH F&G website claims that female moose have been known to kill not only people and black bears, but also the larger grizzly bear while defending their calves. These are very dangerous animals.

Although a female moose isn't as big as a male, an average adult moose weighs 1000 pounds and big bulls may go as high as 1500. The North Country News says that the largest female moose taken by hunters in New Hampshire was about 1100 pounds estimated live weight, while the largest bull taken in the Granite State would have tipped the scale at an estimated live weight of 1400 pounds.

Bull Moose trotting off down into the forest in my
backyard.
Photo by Brad Sylvester. Copyright 2012.

That makes the moose the biggest wild land animal not just in my yard, but in all of New Hampshire by a wide margin although cattle may weigh more. Despite its great size, moose are vegetarians eating leaves twigs and buds of trees during the winter and aquatic plants during the summer. Their noses close up to prevent water from getting in while they stick their heads underwater to graze.

There is a large marshy area in the valley below my house, perhaps a mile and a half away. This would be ideal summer grazing territory for moose while the forests make good winter habitat. Moose are excellent swimmers. Having watched one swim across a lake, I think I'd be pretty hard-pressed to out swim a moose for very long. On land, however, there's no question; the moose easily wins with a running speed that can top out around 35 miles per hour.

Moose Scat



Old moose scat from the woods at the back of our property
Photo by Brad Sylvester. Copyright 2011.

 About a month ago, I found moose scat down on the back part of my property, but it appeared to be at least a year old. Because it contains mostly woody material from the moose's winter diet, moss was actually growing on it. It looks a bit like compacted sawdust. Each pellet is about an inch long, much bigger than deer pellets. When we first moved here about 4-5 years ago, I saw a very young moose crossing the road about five miles away and we have seen moose tracks in the snow within a mile of our house, but this is the first time we've seen a moose on our property. Here's a video I took of a very young moose with its mother in Northern Maine.

The two depressions behind the print on the left are from
the dew claws of the hind foot of the moose.
Photo by Brad Sylvester. Copyright 2012.

After giving the moose in my yard a head start of about an hour, I followed its tracks through the woods in my backyard for over a mile onto a neighbor's property and into a protected wilderness area on the other side of that. I was curious to see where it went, but couldn't devote the entire day to following it; perhaps another time. I did find one hair from the moose's coat stuck on a tree branch that it pushed aside as it walked through the forest. You can see from the photo below that it is much thicker than a human hair placed next to it for comparison.

Moose tend to be solitary creatures. With the exception of mother and calf, and during the rutting season (mid-September to mid-October), they will most often, though not always, be spotted alone.

Moose hair on right,
human hair on left.
Photo by Brad Sylvester.
Copyright 2012.

Moose Tracks

Moose tracks are also big. They tend to have obvious dew claw marks in the snow, especially on the rear feet. The tracks from the moose in my yard measured six inches long without the dew claws, nine inches with them. They were 5.5 inches wide. Like deer prints, if the moose is running or trotting then the front part of the hoof will tend to be splayed open with more space in between the two halves.



The red arrows point to the dew claws at the back of
each hoof. The dew claws of the rear feet tend to show
up more prominently in the moose tracks.
Photo by Brad Sylvester. Copyright 2012.

 The stride of this moose varied from about three feet to about seven feet between prints depending upon the speed at which it was traveling. The rear prints tend to fall directly on or very near the front hooves, leaving a track pattern not unlike the one that a person would leave with left and right prints alternating.

Quick Facts about the Moose (Alces alces):

Diet: Moose eat twigs, leaves and buds from trees, especially during the winter. In the summer, they prefer grazing on aquatic plants pulled form the bottoms of shallow lakes, rivers and marshes.

Habitat: Forest and marshland.

When is it here? The moose lives in New Hampshire all year round, but may move from forest to marshland depending upon the season.

Home range: From 1-25 square miles according to NH F&G.

Where does the moose go during the winter? The moose will forage in the forest or at the forest edge during the winter. It is not bothered by cold, unless its coat is damaged or worn off by scratching (such as might be caused by a tick infestation).

Life Cycle: Moose mate from mid-September to mid-October. 1-2 calves will be born in late May or early June. The calves are cared for by their mother for about a year. Females are ready to mate during their first year while bulls take a few years to grow big and strong enough to challenge for the right to mate by clashing antlers with other rutting males.

Moose Lifespan: Moose typically live 10-15 years.

Moose taxonomy:
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Artiodactyla
Family: Cervidae
Subfamily: Capreolinae
Genus: Alces
Species: Alces alces

Trailcam catches a white-tailed deer- finally!

The broad, brown tail with a white tip confirms the species
as a white-tailed deer.
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2011. Do not copy.

After determining that white-tailed deer do, indeed, live in my yard based on the tracks they left in the snow and the droppings they left, I placed my trailcam in a spot that I thought was likely to be frequented by passing deer. The evidence of tracks in the snow at this location made that an easy choice, but there are other clues that this might be a good travel route for deer as well.

Glens (long, shallow valleys among the hills) are
often preferred terrain for deer trails.
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2011. Do not copy.

The daylight photo at the right shows the terrain a little better. You'll notice that it is relatively clear of underbrush, making it easy for deer to walk through. Second, a little glen runs through this particular area. A glen, of course, is a small valley-like area or a low point with higher ground on either side. Deer seem to choose glens, most likely for the natural cover they provide, as their preferred  routes of travel through the forest.

Male or Female?

At this time of the year, male white-tailed deer have antlers for the rutting season. later in the winter, their antlers will fall off, but for now (and during hunting season) antlers are the easier way to distinguish bucks from does. The lack of antlers on this deer says that it is a doe. From the size relative to the plants around it, it looks as though it is an adult female. It looks well-fed.

Determining a Deer's Sex with Hoof Prints

In the photo, you can see that as this deer is walking, it move its right front and left rear feet at the same time and vice versa. With each step the rear foot comes up near the front foot of the same side.
When tracking deer, I've been told that you can tell the sex from the hoof prints alone. I didn't know if it was true, but this picture seems to confirm what I've heard. The story goes like this: female deer walk with their rear feet outside (or wider) than their front feet because they have wider hips for giving birth. Bucks, on the other hand, have broad, muscular chests to carry the weight of and fight with their antlers. This widens the distance between their front feet making the buck's front feet wider apart than their back feet. I can't verify the accuracy of this method, but that's what I've always heard and this picture of a doe confirms that her rear feet are indeed wider than her front feet. With a number of similar photos of both sexes, we could answer this for sure, one way or the other.The rear foot will often be placed either a bit behind the front foot print, or even on top of it, partially covering it.

Trailcam Photo Quality 

The trail cam photo of white-tailed deer at the top left of this entry has been adjusted by me using a basic photo editor. I adjusted brightness and contrast until I felt the deer was easier to see. You'll notice the small branch in front of the camera that seems to have affected the focus a bit. I've removed the branch so that, hopefully, the next photo will be clearer. The original, unretouched photo is at the lower left of this entry.

Unadjusted trailcam photo taken using an infrared
flash in the dark of night.
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2011. Do not copy.

You can also see from the time stamp on the photo that it was taken at 2:58 a.m. EDT on the morning of December 10th. That was the day before a full moon and there was quite a bit of moonlight giving good visibility that night. The trailcam's date stamp feature lets you know what time deer are active at specific locations. BY tracking time patterns, you can see if a particular deer uses the trail regularly, perhaps to journey back and forth to a preferred feed spot.

I've mentioned previously that deer tend to feed in the early evening hours and early morning hours, right around dusk and dawn. Remember what animals with this pattern are called? They are called crepuscular feeders. White-tailed deer are often hunted during the daylight hours when they can be found walking around actively. Finding them active also at this late hour of the night means that deer can be found roaming the woods at practically nay hour of the day or night.

White-tailed deer drops more clues in my yard

Pile of droppings from a white-tailed deer.
Photo by Brad Sylvester. copyright 2011. Do not copy.

In my last entry, I showed the tracks of the white-tailed deer in the shallow snow in my back yard. Read details about deer tracks and white-tailed deer information at this entry. I have had the trailcam set up for 24 hours in a position where the tracks suggest deer pass fairly regularly. Checking it this morning, it recorded no activity.

However, I did find new evidence of white-tailed deer living in my yard yesterday morning when I was setting up the trail cam. That evidence was scat or deer droppings. As I mentioned in the previous post, white-tailed deer are ruminants, meaning they have several chambers in their stomachs and chew their cud to get the maximum amount of nutrition from their food. This results in droppings or scat with a very uniform consistency, there are no identifiable bits of wood fibers or anything else in white-tailed deer scat.

Detail of white-tailed deer scat showing tapered nub at
the ends of the pellets.
Photo by Brad Sylvester. Copyright 2011. Do not copy.

White-tailed deer scat takes the form of a small pile of pellets each measuring roughly 5/8" in length. The pellets are all very similar in shape. They are little ovals with a small nub at the end as it tapers down as shown in the detail picture to the right. Rabbit pellets will be distinctly round as opposed to oval shaped. Porcupine pellets will vary in length and shape as opposed to uniform deer pellets.

Some animals leave droppings outside their dens and it eventually builds up to large accumulations of droppings. Deer are not one of these. Deer droppings will be found in small, isolated piles along the path the deer followed.

Depending upon the deer's diet, the pellets may all be stuck together in a clump, but in my experience, this is fairly rare in New England and you are much more likely to find deer droppings as individual pellets as shown in the photos on this page.

Determining the Age of Deer Scat

The exact color of the white-tailed deer's scat may vary according to diet as well. Generally black to dark brown when fresh and turning light brown to tan when old and thoroughly dried out. The dropping shown in these pictures are between 2 days and 5 days old. I can tell that they are fairly fresh from the look of them, but I walked the trail on which they were found several times a week and so was able to establish that time window for their deposit. If you slice them in half, deer droppings tend to dry out from the inside out and you can tell about how old they are by the amount of drying inside. I'm not cutting these open to demonstrate. It takes some practice, but to learn the typical drying patterns, find a fresh pile along a frequently travelled trail and cut open a pellet every day so you know the exact age of the scat and can see how much it dries each day. This may vary by the season and weather, as well. Then, when you are hunting or scouting hunting locations, you'll be able to tell the approximate age of the scat and determine how fresh the trail you're following may be.

Other aging clues are the amount of fallen leaves or other debris on top of the scat pile or snowfall.

With the tracks I had already found, I was quite confident that white-tailed deer lived in my yard. Now, the scat provides even more solid evidence of their frequent presence in my back yard, so we can definitely say that white-tailed deer live in my yard.

Candid Camera: Using a trailcam to identify animals

Trailcam poised and ready to strike
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2011. Do not copy.

Last year, I spent about six weeks doing some volunteer work for a local conservation agency. As a thank you gift, they gave me a gift certificate to the Kittery Trading Post, an outdoor sports and recreation specialty store in Kittery, Maine. With the certificate, I bought a trailcam. A trailcam, for those who have never heard the term, is a camera designed to be left outdoors along a suspected game trail to photograph animals as they pass by. It uses a built-in motion detector to determine when animals pass by. Once the motion detector is triggered it snaps a photo. This particular model works in both daylight and in complete darkness as it has an infrared flash that enables night-vision photos.

The trailcam is an ideal tool to help me capture photos of the animals that live in my yard. It can be set up by a bird feeder to snap pictures of every bird that visits during the day, or it can be used to catch nocturnal or crepuscular creatures that live in my yard that I might never see myself. Today, though, I have set it up to try to catch a shy diurnal mammal that I know lives in my yard.

Stripped pine cones and loose scales mean that something
was eating pine seeds here.
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2011. Do not copy.

To determine where to place the camera, I look for clues like the one in the photo to the right. There are several pine cones here on the ground that have been stripped as some animal pulled them apart to get at the tasty pine seeds nestled inside the cone. I found a number of these pine cones around the base of a big tree, with many of the cones and associated debris on a large flat rock next to the tree. The rock makes a great lookout point from which a hungry, but wary little animal might work at the pine cone while watching all around for any threats. At other times it might take the pine cone up into the tree to eat in an even more secure location leaving pine cone scraps all around the base of its favorite tree.

I strongly suspect that this is the work of a squirrel. A chipmunk would also eat pine cones like this, but would most likely eat on the ground and not climb a tree for that purpose. Although it is not above using a tree to escape a predator, chipmunks are ground creatures. Their nests are burrows. Squirrels (with some exceptions), on the other hand, are more arboreal, which means they live in trees. They build nests in the high branches of a tree or a cavity in the trunk and raise their young there. They are more comfortable in a tree than on the ground and are more likely to take their food up into the canopy both to eat immediately and for winter storage.




Trailcam aimed at the base of a large pine tree in my
 front yard where the scraps of pine cones were
found in abundance.
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2011. Do not copy.

  Rather than placing a trail cam at any random location and hoping to catch something, finding clues that some animal frequents the spot first helps improve the odds of getting the picture you want. In this case, I set up the camera to aim at the base of the tree, on the side where the flat rock lies. The one thing I don't like about the camera is that there is a delay of a several seconds between the time when the motion detector is triggered and when the picture is taken. This is fine to allow larger, slow moving animals like deer to fully enter the camera's field of vision before it takes a picture, but for small, fast moving animals like squirrels, it can mean that they trigger the motion detector and are long gone before the picture is taken. We'll see how it works.

I'll post an update when I have some pictures to show of whichever animal has been eating the pine seeds. In New Hampshire, where I live, there are four species of "conventional" squirrels: the grey squirrel, the red squirrel, the northern flying squirrel and the southern flying squirrel. I say conventional squirrels because the woodchuck is actually a kind of squirrel as well, as is the chipmunk. I suspect the culprit in this case is either an eastern grey squirrel or a red squirrel.

Reader Question: Mystery Creature's Night Sounds

I recently received a question about a mystery creature in the comment section of one of the earlier posts on this blog and I wanted to share it and my reply with everyone:

Question:
"I hear a sound out of my 200 year old oak tree at night that sounds like clipping scissors. am suspecting it to be a squirrel. It's very sharp and keeps me up at night? am I right? What else could it be?"

Answer:
Some squirrels do indeed make a short, sharp high-pitched noise which is often regular in frequency for an extended period, perhaps every second or two. Most squirrels, however, are diurnal, sleeping at night. The exception is the flying squirrel (Glaucomy sabrinus or Glaucomy volans). Depending upon where you live, this might be the best possibility, although I don't know from first-hand experience what a flying squirrel sounds like. There are some birds and many insects that call at night as well, and these can't be entirely ruled out without more information. Try this experiment: place an 18" square piece of anything that's very flat and smooth (and preferably dark colored) out near the tree from which the sound originates. Sprinkle a light coating of talcum or other very fine powder evenly over the flat surface and placed a few peanuts, some peanut butter, or a crust of bread in the center of the board. In the morning, look for foot-prints in the talc. Flying squirrel feet would have tiny but well-defined finger-like toes. The front feet will leave prints almost like tiny hands and the rear feet will have pads that are a bit longer. Both prints may show evidence of the pointed claws they use for climbing. Use an online or printed animal footprint guide to compare against other small rodents which might be active at night.

You can also use an automatic trail cam to snap a picture of anything that comes to take the "bait" instead of using the tracking powder. If you place the baited platform several feet off the ground under the tree, you may also see evidence of the flying squirrel "landing" after leaping from above, providing even more evidence.