Biology Reference
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husband were walking in Maine when a big bull moose charged them. They managed to jump
into their truck but the enraged moose started slamming the front of their truck with its hoofs,
causing quite a fair amount of damage. Moose running speed can be quite deceptive as they
have sort of a swinging, clodding, circular limb gait but can in fact cover a lot of ground in
very quick time, as I have seen on our old Swedish family farm.
My Grandparents farm that was run by 10 siblings but now my Cousin runs alone as a
dairy farm
In fact, in 1973 when there was a large population of moose, I read there were 200 people
killed a year in Sweden from motor accidents with moose, which compares with some 300
deer related fatalities in the USA. State Farm estimates there are 1.1 million motor vehicle
accidents yearly with deer, elk, and moose in the USA. In 2009 and 2010 four people each
year were killed in deer related motor vehicle related accidents in Ohio and this increased to 7
in 2011. In the Medina area just south of Cleveland, a traffic officer says he has to shoot 6 to 7
deer every week during the fall because after they are injured by motor vehicles, mostly on I-
71. Now in Sweden there are high fences on either side of busy highways to keep moose off
the roads, but still 5000 motor vehicle accidents occur each year. Out of a population of some
300,000, each year 100,000 are shot in an October hunt that is carefully controlled by the
national hunting association. The hunt drive is mostly done by people or moose hounds driving
moose towards hunters stationed at a “stig” (a stand overlooking a clear line of sight). There is
little distinction made between shooting cows or calves as opposed to bulls although cows
with calves are not shot. The emphasis, as one would expect in Sweden, is not on trophy
quality but on the egalitarian sharing of meat among all hunters. Part of the reason for shooting
of calves and females is because this was found to reduce the total population more
effectively, particularly by targeting females and young, since when only trophy animals were
shot, the population boomed until disease killed off large parts of the population and restored
the numbers to more manageable numbers. There are some lessons here for African game
management. Firstly, if the off - take is only trophy males, the population grows. Secondly, on
the contrary, if the aim is to control the population, for example elephants, then off - take of
females and youngsters reduces the population, and hence this may have been partly the
mechanism the elephant population was controlled by native African hunters before the arrival
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