The Alaska Moose is the largest of the deer family in America. Alces gigas is a comparatively new species, having been described in 1899. At present it is still quite numerous along the Yukon and its tributaries, though the influx of prospectors and the settling of the Klondike region has already resulted in a marked falling off in Moose and an increase of Moose meat. In the winter this is the staple diet of both Indians and whites, and on account of the high price paid—one dollar or two dollars per pound—many prospectors have found Moose hunting even more remunerative than mining.
Alces gigas was first collected by Mr. Dall De Weese, of Canon City, Colo., who spent three months, in 1898, on the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska, in quest of large mammals for the United States Museum. From the six specimens of the Alaskan Moose which he collected it is seen that this animal differs considerably from the Moose (Alces americanus) inhabiting the east United States and eastern and central Canada, being larger and more richly colored and having a much heavier mandible. Its general color is a grizzle of black and wood brown, darkening along the spine and changing abruptly to clear black on chest, buttocks and lower part of sides.
The horns of the Moose are very characteristic, being of immense size and palmated before and behind so that an average full-grown pair weighs seventy pounds and shows a spread of forty-six inches between the points of the posterior branch as against a length of thirty-eight inches. Our illustration is a photograph of one with horns of remarkable size, measuring about seventy-one inches from tip to tip in a line across the head. It is not until the third year that the horns are palmated, and they increase in size from year to year. In the winter the old horns are cast, but they sprout again in the spring, and by June have shed their velvet and appear a beautiful white. Although so large and characteristic, it is not known that they serve any more useful purpose than as weapons during the rutting season. In running through the woods the Moose throws his head back, and, despite the spread and weight of his horns, he is able to move about without breaking a twig.
The clumsy shape of the head is accentuated by the hump on the nose, which is due to the excessive development of the nasal septum and of the upper lip, which is long and supple, and adapted to browsing rather than to cropping grass. The short neck of the Moose would in any case interfere with the cropping of grass, even if it were found in the snowy inlands of Alaska. Its common food is the twigs and bark of willows and birches, which it rides down to reach the tops, lichens and mosses and the aquatic plants of summer.
In winter the Moose herd together in the snow, forming great tramped-down places called moose yards by hunters. In summer comes the rutting season, in which the great males shake their antlers and attack any animal that comes their way. With summer comes mosquitoes also, and these pester the Moose to such an extent that they are galled to a greater fury. So it is that the Moose is a most dangerous animal in the time when the ground is clear, the swamps full of mosquitoes and his horns new-stripped of velvet for the fray.
When the snow lies so deep that he cannot travel even with his long legs, the enemies of the Moose have him at a disadvantage, and often the yards are attacked by wolves or bears or, worse yet, by agile men on snowshoes. Killing in the snow is not recognized as legitimate sport, and is resorted to only by skin hunters or men lacking in the higher ideals of sportsmen. The ordinary method of hunting deer in the summer is by imitating the rutting cry of the male, the reply of the cow and the defiant challenge of the male again, followed by the thrashing and scraping of the trees and branches where the hunter lies concealed. These cries are produced by blowing through a birchbark horn, and on account of the blind fury of the rutting males they are often very successful in bringing them to their death.
ALASKAN MOOSE.
(Alces gigas).
The Indians and half-breeds of the far North stalk the wary Moose where he beds himself down after a night of browsing, but so acute is his hearing and sense of smell and so great his cunning that only the trained woodsman can hope for success. Leaving his feed-trail abruptly, the Moose moves off to one side down the wind so that any one trailing him will be surely scented, and there beds himself down for the day. The Indian follows the well-defined trail of the Moose until it becomes fresh, and then by a series of circuits down the wind and leading back to the trail, like the semicircles of the letter B, he gradually approaches the hiding place until at last, coming up the wind, he sights his prey and, startling it by a slight sound, shoots it where it stands.
The young are brought forth in the early summer and stay with their mother until the third year. During this time she defends them with the greatest ferocity from man and wild animals alike, using her sharp hoofs in striking out at wolves and men, often trampling them into the snow in her fury. The new-born young are very helpless at first on their long, tottering legs, and, roaming as they do in a wild land of wolves and beasts of prey, they could scarcely survive at all without the protection of their mother’s knife-like hoofs. So long and awkward are the legs of Moose that in running through the woods the hind feet often interfere with the fore feet, throwing the clumsy animal in a heap. The falling of Moose while running was considered so unaccountable at first that it was assigned to attacks of epilepsy, but it has since been discovered that when galloping the Moose spreads his hind feet far apart in a more or less successful effort to avoid tripping up his fore feet. But when we consider his load of horns and the fallen trees and broken branches of his native haunts it is a marvel that he is able to outrun his foes at all, whereas the Moose is in fact the swiftest animal in the Northern woods.