Photograph by Jason Soden

Last winter I skied Steamboat Springs, after the new chairlift on Mahogany Ridge opened. I followed a virigin cat-track through the woods to the Edge of the World Trail and emerged on a freshly groomed slope. I saw a sign posted mid-trail above me, but I was too lazy to sidestep uphill to read it. Instead, I pointed my skis downhill.

Later I would learn that the sign said “TRAIL CLOSED. MOOSE IN AREA.”

In my ignorance, I cut delirious arcs down the untracked corduroy. Then I blitzed around a bend to find a yearling moose eating snow on the right side of the trail. A few cautious turns later, I spotted its mamma browsing pine boughs on the left side of the trail. 

In between: 25 yards of no-skier’s land. 

The #1 rule of moose encounters is: Never come between a mamma moose and her offspring. And yet, that’s where the trail went. I was on the horns – or maybe the antlers – of a dilemma. 

I might have been better prepared for this encounter had I known about the Colorado Hunting Atlas, which provides a searchable map for Colorado beasts. When you click on “moose” and scan the north-central part of the state, you see a vast green blob spreading over Steamboat Springs. Mom and her yearling were at home; I was skiing their turf. 

Bruce Hutcheon, the CEO of HutchonHunting.com, introduced me to the Atlas. A former data analyst for the Research Institute of America, he now crunches numbers of charismatic megafauna to counsel hunters as they stalk bighorn sheep, elk and moose. And to hear him tell the tale, he does it in the name of environmental responsibility. More on that, later.

But for now let me say: I could have used Hutcheon’s animal expertise to negotiate the gap between mother, child and the hoofbeats of doom. 


Photograph by Dan Walters

Like many Colorado residents, moose are newcomers here. In the 1850s, hunters were killing bull-moose in our state. And the First People  probably hunted an occasional moose, before the Europeans arrived to upset the natural order. But the animals they stalked were probably just single moose that had wandered down from higher latitudes, where they’re happiest.  

Now you’ll see moose stomping around the west side of Rocky Mountain National Park, Brainerd Lake State Park, Steamboat Springs, Grand Mesa and the area around Creede. We have perfect moose habitat: willow flats, weedy ponds, browsable mountain sides, cold winters, cool summers at altitude and plenty of room to roam. In fact, those skinny moose legs can carry an animal a long way, fast, which is good for us short-legged humans to remember. 

In the 1970s, momentum built to reintroduce a breeding supply of moose to Colorado. Wildlife officials of the time got an earful from ranchers who shared their concerns about how moose, as aggressive browsers, might compete with their cattle for fodder. Biologists considered, and dismissed, the potential for a moose-bovine hay battle. In 1978, wildlife officials traveled to Utah and Wyoming to capture 24 Shiras moose – a smaller variety than those found in Alaska and Maine – for introduction to North Park, near Walden. 

If you poke around in the Moose Visitor Center in State Forest State Park, southeast of Walden, you’ll see a photo of a tranquilized moose, lowered by sling from a helicopter. That’s one way to speed up migration. Wildlife officials monitored the two-dozen transplants for a decade. Satisfied with the results (and the relative silence of ranchers on the matter), they recruited other moose from overpopulated habitats in the west, plus spare North Park moose. They established seed populations along the Laramie River in north-western Larimer County, on the Grand Mesa and the White River National Forest. Now there are about 2,500 moose galumphing around Colorado, including the mother and child I went skiing with. 


Photograph by Dawn Wilson

To observe moose without the risk of being trampled, stream Sean Ender’s documentary Colorado’s Moose, available on Amazon Prime. The filmmaker lives in Evergreen, where elk have been known to gore golf carts, so he knows how to get along with large ungulates. And moose are the largest – 6 feet at the shoulder! – as Ender well knows. A cow weighs in at around 700 pounds, and males can tip the scales in excess of a thousand. They seem docile, and almost ridiculous, unless they’re provoked. On a cross-country ski trip to Yellowstone, I talked moose with the snow-cat operator who drove me into the park. Her voice got all quiet as she recounted the time a moose held her hostage; the moose  wouldn’t leave her campsite, and wouldn’t let her leave, either. The standoff lasted for hours, until the moose walked away.

“My scariest moose encounter was with a bull who was shedding his velvet,” Ender said. “That’s just before the rut, when moose hormones are running high and they’re kind of ornery.” In that scary moment in the documentary, a large bull, with blood and tattered skin decorating his enormous rack, stares down the camera. If you need a warning about moose encounters, that’ll do just fine. 

“He grunted at me, so I backed off,” Ender said. Then he mimicked a bull grunt, and I wanted to back off as well. 

Not all moose encounters are dangerous, of course. Some are sublime. My personal favorite came when I was climbing Mount Katahdin in Maine. A majestic bull was snacking on water weeds in Sandy Stream Pond, at the base of the mountain. I found a rock to sit on, and admired nature in all its grandeur. But I wasn’t the only one heeding nature’s call that day. As the moose munched the lake bottom, it suddenly released a voluminous stream of urine, which foamed the water at its feet and flowed seemingly forever. 

Eric Bergman, a wildlife biologist with CPW, has been studying our moose populations for a decade. “There are 300,000 elk in Colorado and 400,000 deer,” Bergman said. “But there are only 2,500 moose, so there wasn’t enough incentive to study them, until recently.” But as moose populations in New England and the upper Midwest became threatened by parasites, habitat loss and changing climates, researchers noticed that our moose tribe was thriving. Now, there’s more impetus to see what we’ve been doing right. 

One unlikely moose helper in Colorado: our abundant wildfires. “When a fire goes through, it allows sunlight onto the forest floor,” Bergman said. “That encourages growth of the grasses and shrubs that moose feed on in the winter to help them recover from the stress of the rut.” 

One sure sign of the health of our moose populations: If you see a mom trailed by twins, she had a good winter. Moose cows under stress may spontaneously abort a fetus, so they can delay birth until a year when food is more abundant. So far, our moose populations have been growing, if slowly – a testament to our high elevations and chilly climate. A moose doesn’t even start shivering until it’s 10 degrees below zero, and our summer climate at altitude protects moose against heat stress. At least it has, so far. 

Meanwhile, Bergman and Hutcheon agree on how we can protect our moose: encourage hunters to shoot them. 

“I’m a firm believer in the North American Model of Wildlife Conservation [NAMWC],” said Hutcheon, firing off an email link to make sure I understand it. He’s suspicious of “anti-hunting radicals,” as he calls them, so he wants to make sure I’m not one of them. 

In a nutshell, the NAMWC posits that wildlife belongs to all of this nation’s citizens, that species should be managed for healthy and balanced populations, that hunting licenses and fees should pay for conservation efforts and that science – not sentiment, or God forbid voters – should rule the day. So, whether you want to eat wild animals, or merely admire them in Walden (“the Moose Viewing Capital of Colorado”), they need to appear in a gunsight near you. Hunting fees pay for conservation efforts, to keep animal populations balanced, make sure they have enough food and territory to thrive and not overwhelm their human neighbors. 

This year 600 applicants will earn a license to kill Bullwinkle. State residents pay $366, while out-of-towners cough up $2,686.

Does that make you queasy? It shouldn’t. According to the CPW website, this high-caliber conservation initiative has supported populations of many of our favorite critters, including lynx, elk, turkeys, black-footed ferrets and yes, moose. 

So, you’d think that Hutcheon, who has claimed impressive wolf trophies in Alaska, would be in favor of the wolf reintroduction, as another impressive creature to track and kill. But no. Hutcheon is up in arms, so to speak, about canis lupus in North Park, in part because of the impact wolves may have on moose. 

“The North American Model is built on science, and CPW does a great job in managing it,” he said. “But the voters took the decisions out of their hands.” He notes that elk populations in Yellowstone National Park were cut in half after the reintroduction of wolves there. He fears a similar devastation of moose populations in North Park. An adult moose can provide a banquet for a wolfpack. A moose calf would be a nice hors d’oeuvre. And while a moose flounders in heavy snow, wolves run right on top of it.

“Citizens are usurping the authority of scientists, and they don’t know what they’re doing,” Hutcheon said. “We paid millions of dollars to reintroduce moose, and now wolves will threaten them.” He starts doing multiplication tables of wolf populations, year by year, and predation by predation, on moose and their calves, and makes me feel guilty about my “yes” ballot for wolf reintroduction. 

“Voters know nothing about conservation,” Hutcheon said.

I asked him if, once the wolves are established here, perhaps CPW will launch a wolf hunt, and incorporate them into the same management strategies that are maintaining a healthy moose population. 

“That’s my hope,” he said. But he doesn’t sound hopeful. 


Photograph by Vic Schendel

Which brings me back to my moose encounter at Steamboat. I was caught between a moose and a hard place. How best to manage my personal human-moose encounter?

One thing to consider: To a moose, man’s best friend looks like his biggest enemy – the wolf. Dogs are, of course, nothing but domesticated wolves, and moose can’t distinguish between your golden doodle and a deadly predator. “A lot of the moose-human interactions come when a person has their dog off-leash in the wilderness,” Bergman said. “When a dog is chased by a moose and runs back to its master, the moose follows the dog.” 

That won’t end well for moose, man or dog.

As a moose maven, Bergman has had hundreds of encounters in the wild. His approach: If he can see the moose, that’s close enough. If they’re paying more attention to you than they are to browsing the willows, you’re stressing them out. And if they can’t eat comfortably, they won’t mate abundantly, which means fewer moose for you to see next year, and the year after that. 

On the trail at Steamboat, neither the moose mama nor her yearling were paying much attention to that weird creature up the trail, in a helmet and goggles. The baby kept eating snow, and the momma continued to prune the pine tree. Soon more skiers skidded to a stop behind me, and we discussed our predicament. “Hey!” one of them shouted, “There’s a trail through the woods over here!” 

He poled into the forest, sidestepped up a little slope and circumvented the moose family. I followed along, warily, until I finally made it back onto the trail, and glanced up the slope. No pissed-off moose in pursuit. I made it!

Will moose survive these close encounters – with me, with their hungry new neighbors? That depends on climate change, wolf reproduction rates, and how much moose habitat is gobbled up by ski condos. Meanwhile, they’re ours to enjoy – at a distance.  

Filmmaker Sean Ender said, “My favorite thing about moose is that they don’t immediately run off. They let you into their world. It’s up to us not to bother them, just to be with them. So, I advise people to enjoy being out there, watch birds and animals do their thing and let the moose just be moose.”