This looks like it is probably only a week old at most. Usually/oftenthe barking is much higher, 7 or 8 feet.
The browse around the Supper Cove hut (and the barking) from the year before were still clearly visible (and identifiable) a year later, by the way. In fact two years later, as my daughter was able to point it out to me on our second trip there together in 2009.
You can still see it here in 2009 with a fantail sitting on it.
Bryn and I watched this red deer stag (centre) as we were crossing the Henry Burn. A decent zoom on a waterproof camera would be a plus! You will spot him eventually! Quite a big fellow really.
I canoed the Seaforth in 2009, probably one of the silliest things I have ever done. As I was portaging around the shores of Loch Maree – I was walking along the shoreline so I might see any prints rather than walking the track; the water level was low enough to do so that year – they were having a drought in Fiordland. It didn’t rain for the whole 13 days we were in the South Island altogether! Some of the trees in the valleys were browning off, something only real old Fiordland hands had ever seen before. Anyway, I came across an old set of moose tracks around about where the walk wire about half way along the Loch is. As it hadn’t rained for ages, they could have been over a week old. It had just come down to the Loch for a drink, then headed back up the little valley it had come down from.
I was at Supper Cove again in 2011 with Della, but we had to leave precipitously only about an hour after we arrived as Della managed to dislocate her shoulder slipping off a rock. Ouch! Thank goodness for helicopters! No moose that year!
I walked the track again in 2012 in company with a young American, Steve Hutcheson I met at Supper Cove and an Israeli, named Renan Tsorin. Steve and I had about five days at Supper Cove, him fishing and me tramping around in the bush looking for moose. I remember I found some old tracks on the ridge above the Supper Cove hut and in the Hilda Burn – and obviously some browse. I found the same thing along the Henry Burn. I guess I walked nearly half way up it to the fork you must follow if you are to walk over into Herrick Creek – so probably to about the place a couple of the Fiordland moose were shot, long ago. No sign of them now of course.
Here is a (very) old print (the triangular indentation above the glasses case) all filled in with leaves. This would have to be about as old as you are going to be able to see a print in Fiordland – say over a week. This one was over a kilometre up on the ridge behind the hut
Looking down towards the fiord coming down from way up there. The going is pretty steep:
Particularly above Loch Maree along the river on the true left bank there was a lot of moose sign, mainly older browse – say up to a year old. I walked along the river for about three kilometres by myself above the Loch Maree hut and up the Deadwood Stream a bit before crossing over to the track. The young fellows following the track were quite surprised at how I managed to get ahead of them! The river level that year was again very low, so I could do this (and avoid a slow, nasty section of track for the first hour upriver out of Loch Maree). I figured this moose was a resident of the Deadwood Stream which looks big enough to hold a number of them! There was old browse here and there along the river that year – but no tracks.
The moose browse is both higher (as much as 3 feet higher!) and on much thicker branches than deer browse. They bite right through stuff up to I guess over 1 cm thick. When they grab and break over even thicker branches (say 2cm thick) in order to strip them, you can see how their powerful jaws have shattered the branches longitudinally.
However as we walked up through the huge slip above the Kenneth Burn, a moose had walked along ahead of us barking the trees quite obviously. I remember pointing this out to Renan, using my fingernails to mimic the action of his giant teeth, and angling my head to indicate how he must have made the bites. This barking was sometimes I guess 9 feet up! I must look a circus sometimes. I wish I had taken photographs!
Then, just about where the saddle is before you start to go down again to the Gair Loch, there was a patch of fuchsia on our right which had been the home of a moose for I’d say the best part of a week. S/he had had a really good feed on I guess and acre or two of fuchsia. Anyone who doubted the continued existence of moose in Fiordland would be hard put to explain the extent of its high foraging activity there. I remember a couple of days later I was walking with Steve in the Upper Spey and also pointing out to him some very old moose browse there – in the vicinity of the Dashwood Stream.
This is part of the huge Fuchsia filled slip above the Kenneth Burn where a moose had been browsing for days in 2012. Plenty of food here.
It is a huge area of Fuchsia. There are many such in Fiordland – few as easy of access though. Look hos steep some of it is – near the waterfall!
I had a back operation in 2013 so any Fiordland trips were out that year.
I spent a few days by myself at Supper Cove in 2014 (flying both in and out on that occasion). It was lovely to have the hut to myself for a few days, to go out in the morning exploring the bush around about and in the afternoon catching myself some blue cod for my supper. The most delicious fish anywhere, trust me. Do bring a hand line and a fry pan if you venture that way. I was going to walk out, but on the very last night before the day I would have to leave the next morning of, a party of twelve young people arrived even though none had been there for a month! Of course I tried to persuade them to stay a day and do some fishing (even offering them my line, etc), but they insisted on starting out the next day as well.
All alone in the Supper Cove Hut
I could spread out.
And enjoy some tasty blue cod for tea.
Well one night in a crowded hut with people whose heads were filled with the usual certain certainties of the young was enough for me, so I called up Alan from Wings on Water (who had brought me in) and flew out again. I used the couple of spare days so gained to go have a look at the start of the South Coast Track (out of Tuatapere) walking out to Port Craig and back whilst I was there. I confess I was hurrying along this section – and even walked the beach ‘track’ all the way from the Hoka Stream. I was not looking for moose sign as I thought this was too far from their ‘normal’ haunts. I was just checking out the track thinking it was probably easy enough to take Della on the next year. (it was). I was surprised therefore when I spied (on the return trip of course) a small example of moose browse quite close the the shore somewhere after the Track Burn – before you begin the climb up the innumerable steps to the Rowallan. It was well off the track but you could see the characteristic branches snapped off so high up. Surprising really as there are a number of hunter’s huts in this area. It is a popular locale for deer and pig hunters – but I guess it is seasonal.
Della and I attempted to walk out to Westies Hut along the South Coast Track in 2015, but got only as far as the Waitutu River as it turned out, because of Della injuring her knee. We rested up and did walk all the way back to the Rowallan though. The same old browse I saw the year before was still there, but I confess i was just not looking out for moose sign along the way – I was looking out for Della!
We headed back out on the South Coast track again in 2016 intent on beating it this time, and getting all the way to Westies or even Big River. Westies as it turned out. It was a lovely trip, our reports of which you can read about eg here: http://www.theultralighthiker.com/a-walk-in-fiordland/ You should really do it! Again, I was mainly intent on looking after Della (who is partially sighted – 39%) to be paying overmuch attention to moose sign, though there was a bit of old sign about here and there – I noticed some for example a little over an hour out from the Waitutu heading for Westies.
When we were walking out from the Wairaurahiri with Pete Baldwin from the wonderful Waitutu Lodge at the Wairaurahiri Mouth, I was explaining to him what he should look for if he ever had the chance to get ‘into’ the Seaforth country. Right near the Edwin Burn trestle crossing there was an obvious patch of old moose browse, the branches snapped over and stripped in their characteristic way about 8′ up, but maybe 1-2 years old. Nothing else could possibly do such a thing. So, there are moose that far East in Fiordland yet.
I have now realised that I smelled a moose in the Hauroko Burn last trip (back in April 2017) and I am really kicking myself for not having stopped, camped and investigated See: http://www.theultralighthiker.com/follow-your-nose/). As I said there: ‘I have a confession (of stupidity) to make. Somewhere during this section between the two upper walk wires on the Hauroko Burn, Fiordland, NZ (You can imagine it is in the photo below) I encountered quite a strong ‘animal’ smell not unlike a goat. I recognised that goat smell instantly having had the largest dairy goat herd in Australasia back in the 1970s. I thought to myself at the time, ‘Well, it’s not a deer’. Then I thought, ‘Could it be a plant?’ You know how Dogwood in Australia is so named because it smells somewhat like wet dog. I thought to myself ‘I wonder whether the Leather Wood which you encounter just before the tops in NZ (and which is redolent with the musty odour of countless red deer) is so called because it smells of leather?’
There is another odour – a sweet cloying honey-like smell you sometimes encounter in these Fiordland forests I have never been able to identify, nor has anyone else I have spoken to been able to pick it for me. (it is not the flower of the ubiquitous tiny epiphytic orchid). It was not that though.
I am pretty good on scents having been a hunter all my life. I instantly galvanise to a whiff of fox, roo, wombat, stag, goat, etc. But I knew it could not be a goat or a deer. Possums are common in our back garden. It was not one of those. My father had many ferrets when I was a youngster. It was not a stoat. But what was it? As i said, there is this other smell in the Fiordland bush I had never been able to identify either.
I scanned the forest about. Saw nothing. Thought to myself, ‘I do not want to arrive at Lake Roe in the dark’ (The hut is hard enough to find as it is, particularly in thick cloud, being off the line to the right); I am old and also had a long way to go, so I carried on. Since then, I have bothered to check what a moose smells like. You guessed it. Goatish. Just like what I was smelling on the Hauroko that day! Damnation!
There was a moose not 200 metres upwind from me, and I walked on. Despite having a tarp and hammock and more than a week of food, so that I could have spent days hunting it! And I would have doubtless ‘put it up’ withing ten minutes! Dream on! Despite the fact that one of the important reasons I go there is to see a moose. Despite the fact that I had photographed fairly fresh moose barking just back there a little (as you can see below). Despite the fact there is a $100,000 reward for a photo of a NZ moose, I walked on! Lesson: Trust your nose!’
When I think back to the one in the Hauroko I now realise why I could not see it. It was most likely below my level of vision lying in the stream bed just as the one I put up in the Hilda Burn was 17 years before – why the idea never occurred to me then when I could smell it, I have no idea.
My knee is still not right from an injury in the Hilda Burn on that trip which brought an early end to my off-track explorations then (there was still old browse in the Hilda), so I am wondering about my future ability to do so again, but I am working on it – an hour every morning in the gym and an hour every afternoon walking – on top of my normal farming activities, but at just shy of 70 it takes longer to heal and to get fitter again. Every day though I feel stronger, and have just completed a six day off-trail hike in the Vic mountains, and climbed Qld’s tallest mountain, so there is hope!
It was interesting that the Hauroko was nearly eaten out, but with lots of old sign (and clearly a resident moose!) And that there was a ‘bloom’ of new plants coming up I had not seen in Fiordland before) Yet coming down from Lake Roe to Loch Marie for example, there was oodles of moose plants without much moose sign at all – though some barking. Clearly the moose are fairly light on the ground. Each likely has an enormous territory, perhaps 2-500 hectares or more, but that still adds up to a lot of moose in Fiordland National Park!
I had this note about the moose on the first of my posts about my 2017 trip: http://www.theultralighthiker.com/from-dawn-to-dusky/
The Elusive Fiordland Moose: Along the way there is sporadic moose sign if you are alert and keen eyed. Nothing else could reach up 2.5-2.7 metres (8-9′) and more, break off branches as thick as your thumb and strip them, or devour all the lower vegetation of their favourite broadleaf plants, or systematically bark trees, or leave footprints as big as a cow’s.These solitary leviathans yet roam these forests unseen. I took these shots in an arbitrary few hundred yards walking up the Hauroko.
This coprosma has been systematically broken off over 2.5 metres up.
NB I measured the tip of my hiking pole in my loungeroom held out like this so I could take a photo with my other hand at pretty close to 9′. No other deer can reach within 18″ of this height!
And this.
Broadleafs have commonly been stripped to this height.
They like to snack on nutritious bark as they amble along.
Leaving footprints as long as my glasses case. Like this:
Or this.
Someday someone will stumble round a corner onto one and snap its pic. A girl from Scotland wrote in the hut book way back in 2000 she had seen one! Already two confirmed C21st DNA samples have been collected, and one or two indistinct photos. It is only a matter of time…
I don’t know at this stage whether I will be doing a lot more ‘moose hunting’ in Fiordland. Mostly these days we go there for the walk anyway and because it is just so beautiful. Any moose we see would no doubt be a bonus – and we surely won’t see them elsewhere! I do have a couple of ‘new’ ideas on how we might find further proof of the continued existence of the NZ moose herd. More about that later.
And oh, I have been thinking about Ken Tustin’s theory that the red deer will ‘eat out’ the moose. I now suspect the opposite is the case because the moose can reach higher, and will obviously break branches down for their young. You can imagine the young moose nearing weaning – they suckle for a long time too – straining upwards as its mother feeds and vocalising, every now and then being able to snag a leaf she lets drop & etc. They are messy eaters at best. I figure she would get the idea and help it feed. They routinely ‘walk down’ trees for themselves, for example. I remember noticing this phenomenon the very first day I was in Fiordland (in the Hilda Burn back in 2000) and wondering what could have produced the phenomenon I was seeing. I had never seen anything like it in the Victorian bush despite it being overrun by sambar deer who are very keen browsers too.
I have noticed that in the areas which appear more eaten out (by moose and everything) that the moose browse seems to consist of more branches actually broken off completely whereas in the less eaten out areas, they tend to be just broken over. I need to spend more time there to confirm this, something which may not happen in this lifetime.
I realise I do not know how this ‘boom and crash’ population dynamics works (with any creature) though, so maybe I am wrong. I am not a wildlife biologist, but I have been a farmer and hunter for a long while. Some places look very eaten out by deer, particularly along river banks and near huts and other clearings, yet in other steeper places there is little sign of any grazing animals. Another interesting observation: along the Hauroko for example, there is this shiny leaf tree which moose obviously like. In many places it was browsed lower from the river bottom than it was from the river bank (but in each case as high as a moose could reach ie 8’+ up) giving it a lopsided appearance. I had not noticed this before. No doubt there are lots of other ‘signs’ which escape one’s attention for years.
Here is a tree moose quite like, (I don’t know what it is called). You can see that this one which is hanging out over a precipice (in the Hauroko) has still been browsed ( a long time ago) as far as a moose can reach out, and certainty further than anything else could.
Here the moose has been walking along in the stream reaching up and has mown these trees to a precise height. They have even managed to strip some of the branches hanging down. You see this everywhere. We went down the Wairaurahirti River in a jet boat (twice – and Della wants to go again, and again. So should you!) Anywhere this plant could be reached it was trimmed to about 8-9′ from the ground (or where a moose could stand) , but where nothing could reach it (eg in a very deep rapid) it was actually touching the water.
In 17 years I have not been able to get back to Fiordland in the summer. By the time we have been able to stop watering our garden and watching out for the ‘bushfires’ that a ratbag collection of maniacs have taken to lighting every summer in our part of the world it is at best late March, usually April, sometimes May. And of course I am often there when the ‘Roar’ is on so every moose has been scared well away from the valley bottoms by ubiquitous deer hunters. It’s like always going sambar stalking on a full moon, or in early Spring when the deer have moved back from the valley bottoms (as fresh feed pops out from under the snow – and the young are born. Not such a good time for hunting.
I do always find old sign though, sometimes not that old even. I am convinced if i could spend several summers walking along in the streams there I would put up another moose. I’m not sure whether at my age I can do such hard work in hot, steamy weather, and I don’t know whether I will ever be able to get away at such a time or not.
Perhaps!
PS1: I wrote this article at Ken Tustin’s request, as he is preparing a new edition of his book/a new book about the Fiiordland moose. He and he wife are the true moose experts and heroes of this interesting saga. More about them here: http://www.theultralighthiker.com/nz-moose/
PS2: To ‘keyboard warriors’ out there who have annoyed me with your thoughtless comments on your chat forums about my ‘mythical’ moose: I know the difference between moose and red deer sign. I have spent over 40 years hunting deer. The high sign I am identifying as moose is several feet higher (and thicker) than anything attempted by the largest sambar or red deer stag – similarly the very large prints and droppings I am talking about. Take a closer look at these two sets of droppings, for example.
The moose droppings are on the left and centre. The ‘tiny’ droppings on the far right are normal sized red deer droppings approximately as large as the first joint on your little finger. If you can see evidence of their mouths and of their rear ends, there has to be a moose in between somewhere!
And as I said before, there have already been several positive DNA identifications of live moose this century from Fiordland!
PS3: The ‘Cover’ photo was sent to me from Sweden by my son, Bryn on this day (24/10) 2011. He must have known I would find a use for it! European moose are smaller than the Canadian moose which live in Fiordland, by the way.
PS4 March 2020: A moose has just been spotted in Doubtful Sound: https://www.theultralighthiker.com/2020/03/04/new-evidence-of-fiordland-moose/
Published Mar 5, 2018
See Also:
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/hunting-in-fiordland/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/from-dawn-to-dusky/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/from-dawn-to-dusky-day-2/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/from-dawn-to-dusky-3/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/from-dawn-to-dusky-4/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/from-dawn-to-dusky-5/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/from-dawn-to-dusky-7/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/from-dawn-to-dusky-8/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/insects-can-ruin-a-camping-trip/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/dusky-track-canoeing-the-seaforth/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/dusky-track-adventures-1/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/eddie-herrick-moose-hunting-at-dusky-sound/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/eddie-herrick-moose-hunting-at-dusky-sound/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/a-friend-i-met-on-the-dusky-track-fiordland-nz/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/dusky-south-coast-tracks/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/dreaming-of-the-dusky-track/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/the-dusky/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/moose-hunting/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/fiordland-moose/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/fiordland-moose-2/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/hunting-in-fiordland/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/off-to-fiordland/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/shadowland-fiordland-video/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/the-best-toilet-view-in-the-world/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/10-days-in-fiordland/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/fiordland-2009/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/fiordland-nz-with-bryn/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/fiordland-april-2007/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/weather-for-fiordland/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/more-dusky-adventures/
Some other hunting ‘adventures’:
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/sambar-stalking-101/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/not-quite-alone-in-the-wilderness/
http://www.theultralighthiker.com/a-wild-river-stag/