IF YOU’VE EVER wondered: what would happen if a moose were to pass through camp in the middle of a dark moonless night? Would it trip over a tent? Would it panic and do a number on the poor unsuspecting human lying within the tent? Would there be a trampling, a stomping, a pulverizing?
Well, if you have ever wondered, I now have a first hand answer for you…
To be honest, the idea of a moose tripping over my tent wasn’t a possibility I ever seriously worried about. But it was a question I’d considered, although more out of curiosity than concern, an idle query of mild hypothetical interest, no more serious, really, than the old cliché: if a tree falls in the forest when there is no one around, does it make any sound?
I didn’t think it would ever happen. The odds of a nocturnal moosey misadventure seemed astronomically low.
And I had good reasons for thinking the odds low. The first reason: moose aren’t nocturnal – they are crepuscular, which means they are most active during the twilight periods of dawn and dusk, so why would a moose be wandering about a forest in the dark? And even if one were, how likely is it that it would trip over a small lone tent?
Which leads to the second reason: forests are immense and moose are not exactly omnipresent. You can visit a forest that moose frequent and ninety-nine times out of a hundred you won’t see one. But to have one fall over a tent – what are the odds? Needle in a haystack odds, surely?
The third reason: I never camp on game trails where ungulates like moose typically tend to wander. That’s common sense, right? I use my eyes. I think about location. I look for signs of animal activity and avoid places where they’re present.
And finally, fourthly, and perhaps most crucially, moose go to great lengths to avoid people, and who can blame them? Moose have a superior sense of smell and backpacker’s are – it’s fair to say – fairly smelly. A moose’s osmatic expertise is a critical survival mechanism that compensates for its poor eyesight. This fact alone makes it unlikely a moose would ever fall over a tent. Why the hell would a moose wander into camp when it could smell it on approach and simply avoid it?
But then again… what if?
What if a backpacker maintained a clean, odor-free camp and had recently cleansed away their own odors, too, in a nearby creek? What if a moose’s olfactory perceptions had been compromised in some way, or if the subtle scents of hiker and tent were masked by the pungent tannin-rich aromas of an autumnal forest? And what if there was no moon, and the forest night was truly black, and a moose with its deficient eyesight couldn’t see what it was about to step onto, or was proceeding by the memory of a place, not by current observable conditions?
Yes, what if?
I was having a fabulous fall weekend, wandering off-trail to avoid the crowds in one of Colorado’s most popular locations. It was peak leaf-peeping season and there were hundreds, if not thousands, of fellow leaf peepers about. But like a moose avoiding people so I avoided all the bipeds, too. I spent eight-hours wandering in off-trail solitude through fabulously unkempt forests to a leave-no-trace camp in a high cirque, then another eight-hours the next day over a fourteener to a second leave-no-trace camp, this one down in the valley, surrounded by shimmering aspen.
I first spotted the moose at twilight. Let’s call it: Act One. I was returning to camp after an evening stroll to a nearby beaver pool and there the moose was, out in the open in a marshy, willowy area – preferred moose habitat. It was a massive bulky being, with huge shoulders, and coarse hair almost black, and rather small antlers it has be said, but a fully-gown bull moose all the same, and who knew what it’s mood was at this stage of the rut? It was roughly fifty yards away, a reasonable distance, although not as reasonable as one hundred yards would have been. Moose can run thirty-five miles an hour when they feel the urge. To an ‘ornery moose, fifty yards could be covered in seconds.
The moose must have heard me because when I first saw him he was already looking in my direction. And he was looking hard; a ‘working things out’ kind of look. I caught no sense of fear within the glance, no readiness to take flight. What was the alternative: flight or…?
The moose stared. Perhaps it couldn’t figure out what it had heard and couldn’t see enough in the gloaming to work out what, exactly, I was. So I spoke softly to let it know I was one of them annoying human thingies, then grabbed a quick photo, and then retreated into thick aspen and returned to camp, roughly one-hundred yards away, although I now wished it were further.
I spotted the moose a second time half an hour later when daylight was all but gone. Act Two. Shortly before turning in for the night I noticed a large black shape looming among aspen trunks, roughly fifty yards off again – a hundred and fifty feet. Was it a boulder? I wondered, even though I couldn’t remember seeing one in that direction during daylight. But no, it moved a fraction, in a way boulders don’t. It took a single step, in a way boulders don’t. Straining my eyes into the near-dark forest I sorted animal shape out from the trees and reached a clear conclusion: it was the moose. It was… lurking, just standing there, doing nothing much of anything…
Perhaps I should have felt fear, but honestly I didn’t. I’ve had lots of moose encounters over the years, some really close, and I’ve only once and only very briefly felt threatened. I know that moose can be dangerous when surprised, but I’ve never heard of an unsurprised moose choosing to attack someone for no reason. Even though moose kill five to ten people every year in North America, tragically, it’s never done in a predatory way, only in self defense. This moose had no reason for a defensive attack. I was no threat. He must surely have known I was present. But just in case he wasn’t I began a soft but firm conversation and turned on my flashlight, feeling certain that these two things would encourage the moose on its way.
They didn’t. The moose remained exactly where he was, loitering… with intent, and with what intent, that was the question. I took a long look at the lower limbs of a tall pine ten steps from camp. Good, easily climbable, I thought, a useful escape route in an emergency. Black bears can climb trees after fleeing hikers. Moose can’t.
I was ready for bed, but with a full grown bull moose loitering nearby I wasn’t inclined to actually get into bed. Again, I didn’t feel fear, just alertness. I began a rational assessment: what was the right play here? Should I dismantle camp and move on? Well, with night already fallen, that wasn’t an attractive idea. Who knew what else I’d run into in the dark? Should I try making even louder noises to scare the moose off? Or should I stay quiet and leave him be, hope he wanders off on his own accord as he probably would eventually? Yes, that was probably the best move, except … what if he doesn’t go? What if he hangs around, then trips over my tent at some point during the night?
So I opted for making noise, for kicking up a din…
On one other previous occasion in camp, when a behemoth of a bull moose had appeared across a clearing and had shaken his antlers at me, banging my pots had scared him off. But I couldn’t do that on this occasion: my pots were hung out of reach a short distance from camp, along with all my food. So, instead, I flashed my light on and off, and politely but loudly suggested the moose relocate itself forthwith…
“Hey you daft bugger you,” I shouted, “go find some other corner of the forest to haunt. Go on with yer. Git out of it… gertcha, GERTCHA!”
But the moose stayed where he was. Lurking. A massive black form.
If only it had been a boulder.
But I had an ace in the hole, a final trick: a nearby tree, a tall and utterly dead aspen with rotten roots. It was ready to fall any day now – so hurrying along the process wasn’t a true leave-no-trace crime. I moved slowly to the tree, then began pushing and pulling the trunk until it swayed further and further like an arboreal drunkard. Finally, it toppled in the direction I wanted, towards the moose. It fell with a wonderful tearing, splintering, resounding, gun-retort KER-RACK and CRASH. Do falling trees in the forest make any sound? Goodness, do they ever!
The moose’s reaction was comical. All four of his feet left the ground at once. I saw it clearly. A cartoonish moment. He jumped as though someone had lit a firecracker beneath his arse, then ran for several steps, before slowing, looking over its shoulder, then carrying on away, vanishing into the void of the night. Which was a grand sight… and a relief. There’d been a small chance my lumberjacking might merely have pissed him off.
I listened intently as the sounds of movement faded away until I couldn’t hear them any more. Well, alright then, I thought, result, and went happily to bed.
Act Three…
I don’t know what time it was when the moose returned. But it was late. Or, early. Two a.m., perhaps. I was asleep, and then… I wasn’t. There was no moon, and barely any light. I couldn’t see anything but feint grayness coming through the partially open entrance of my tent, open at the top for ventilation. As I lay in stillness, essentially trapped within my straight-jacket sleeping bag, I heard the crack of a twig, then deep hollow breaths drawing closer – not a fun sound – along with the footsteps of something very, very large and heavy…
There was no time to assess, no time to do anything. My mind, seconds earlier asleep, was still trying to work out what was going on. I lay there befuddled and confused for the split second it took. And before I knew it the moose was upon me…
Well, fortunately, not quite upon me. After all, here I am in one piece telling the tale.
The moose, it turned out, didn’t trip over my tent and go into a blind panic and trample me to death as it might have. Instead, it passed casually by a mere half step away as though neither my tent nor myself existed. It slipped through a narrow gap less than two feet wide between my tent and a boulder, threading the needle, so to speak. I saw it through the entrance, and it was a sight I’ll not soon forget: the moose’s towering form far above, the black shape of an immense body and broad shoulder hump, and long legs, all of it too close to be seen all at once – but the entire ensemble lumbering jauntily by in the night.
From where I lay on the ground looking up the moose was a profoundly impressive sight. Moose. Are. Big. Take it from me. Especially when seen from ground level, from practically right beneath their feet. They are BIG!
But anyway… it answered the question: what would happen if a moose wandered through camp in the middle of a moonless night? Would it trip over a tent?
The answer was: no, no it wouldn’t trip over a tent. Moose are too smart, too aware. Never going to happen.
Which was jolly good news – good to know that moose aren’t interested in causing mischief to sleeping backpackers either by intent or by accident. It was reassuring… in the middle of a dark, dark wilderness night.
Happy with what I’d learned… I rolled over and went back to sleep. There was no Act Four.
