How To Get A 950 Lb. Moose Out Of The Woods

By Raquel Maria Dillon on Friday, October 24, 2003.

listen:

Big game hunting in New Hampshire is a privilege and a challenge. More than 14-thousand hunters applied for only 485 permits this year. Once the lucky permitees kill a moose, they still have to pull the animal out of the woods. Since the average New Hampshire moose weighs 950 pounds, that task is a showcase for good old Yankee ingenuity and resourcefulness. New Hampshire Public Radio?s Raquel Maria Dillon visited Fish and Game?s Berlin moose check station on Opening Day and brought back this report.

The hunters will tell you, when they finally track and shoot a moose, the hard work has only just begun. Once the moose is down, it needs to be gutted carefully and quickly, then hauled out of the woods, and brought here, to a Fish and Game Department moose check station.
SOUND people?
This year Opening Day was chilly and grey ? hunters say that?s perfect moose hunting weather. Trucks line up in the driveway, with recently-gutted moose sprawled across trailers or pickup beds, steam still rising from the carcasses.
SOUND truck
Field dressing big game is a challenge even to a veteran deer hunter. It has to be done fast, because in a large animal like a moose, the meat won?t stay fresh for long, especially in warm weather.
Here?s a short lesson in field dressing a moose from 66-year-old Buck Dupree of Somersworth.
DUPREE :25 you start from the rear. a male, you have to um, de-bone him. Hehe. I don?t want to use the word. Skin it out a little bit, stomach all the way up. You can?t paunch him. if you stick your knife into the paunch, get away. ? mile away like. Huh? Gas. The gas from the animal -- it doesn?t smell too good. Hehe.

Dupree?s hands were still covered in dried blood, when he weighed in his moose. He was snapping pictures, drinking a beer, and telling dirty jokes to celebrate?
DUPREE :04 you have to have experience, if you don?t have experience, don?t even bother.

A moose weighs 25 % less after gutting, but that means the hunters and their friends still have to pull as much as 800 pounds out of the woods.
TERIO :03 well you gotta get a skidder, you know what a skidder is?

Jerry Terio of Berlin says the best way to get out a dead moose of the woods is to befriend a logger. Their skidders are designed to drag large, heavy objects out of the woods. And it?s not hard to flag one down in the North Country hills. Fresh clear cuts are prime habitat for both grazing moose and loggers too.
TERIO :16 I know a lot of the guys who haul wood around here. I went back to the truck. My truck was dirty so I wrote, ?need help?. And maybe an hour later the guy came up with his skidder. they know my truck.

Hunters also use ATVs and 4-wheelers, but sometimes several people have to sit on the front of the vehicle so it doesn?t lose traction and flip over.
HUNSACKER :08 these animals aren?t small, they?re not like a deer. So you have to give it a lot of forethought to how you?re going to get the animal out.

Bob Hunsacker?s forethought paid off. He bagged a large buck early in the morning.
HUNSACKER :08 If you don?t give it some thought, you?re be stuck in a hard place b/c once they?re down they?re huge and you just don?t pick ?em up and drag ?em.

His hunting partner, Chuck Kendall, lured a bull close by expertly imitating a female moose with a plastic moose call, purchased just for the occasion.
HUNSACKER :12 There ya go Chuck, blow her a tune! MOOSE CALL. He?s going on tour next month! FADE

Hunsacker rummaged around the back of his pickup, eager to show off the jerry-rigged tools he built for moose extraction.
HUNSACKER :23 the one thing that we wished we had and we used in years past, was a car hood. An old car hood? you put the carcass on it and it slides much better. we?ve got a nice little device to get this thing out. It?s a chainsaw with a capstand winch on it. If your wrap a rope around? you wanna see it?

Scott Beernaert, a taxidermist from Goffstown, customized an old pickup truck to pull big game. It?s got a 10-thousand pound winch and 150 yards of cable. He only takes it out a couple times a year.
BEERNAERT :12 1976 chevy from Wyoming that I drove back. 48000 original miles. It?s not high tech at all. it serves it?s purpose very well. I?ve just converted it into my little moose truck.

Beernaert will help other hunters load up moose ? for a small fee: $100 plus $20 an hour.
SOUND winch
Fish and Game biologists hoist the moose up with rope and a winch. They weigh each animal, measure the antlers and the width of the rack, and examine them for any obvious injuries or diseases.
Wildlife biologist Mark Ellingwood pried open the moose?s mouth to get a look at its teeth and a guess at its age. It was a quick lesson in moose dentistry for two UNH wildlife majors who stopped by for some hands-on education.
ELLINGWOOD :08 this is a good example of 5 ? years old, when those wear away on the 3rd molar? that happens at 5 ?.

Any hunter who kills a cow ? a female moose ? has to separate the animal?s reproductive tract and ovaries from the rest of the guts and bring them to the check station. It?s a daunting task for many a hunter, and because most are men, it seems to be the subject of a lot of jokes.
TERIO/VIENO :16 you wouldn?t believe the amount of guts in there. It?s just huge. And this thing here is right underneath that, we had to pull it up. I was a gynecologist in a previous life. Hehe. a moose gynecologist! Hehehe!

The ovaries are about the size of a quarter. Dave Scarpitti, a master?s student UNH who studies moose, digs them out as the hunters look on in amazement.
HUNTER :21 what do you? do you study those?
SCARPITTI The ovaries, every time they give birth, they produce an egg and you can see the scar inside there. And it tells you how many times they?ve been pregnant, been fertilized.
HUNTER We would have never found that!

If a hunter brings a dead cow out of the woods without her ovaries, the biologists send the hunters back to find them. Last year, the Fish and Game biologists had to send two brothers, Tom and Michael Massey, back for just that purpose.
MASSEY :20 We?ve hunted everything in our lives except that. Hehe. We were one ovary short. by that time, that pile of stuff has been out in the sun for 3 hours. Anyway, we brought back what we thought was everything we needed, and they pawed through it here and found the other one.

Tom Massey says there?s no hard feelings against the biologists. They need the information to get an accurate picture of the herd and make wildlife management decisions in the future. Besides, complying with Fish and Games requirements is the law. The Masseys say it was a mortifying moment, but it?s a good story
MASSEY :23 the end of the day nearly 5pm. And there?s a huge bull moose hanging and all these guys standing around debriefing and telling stories from the day and we come strutting out of the truck with our little jar with one ovary and some alcohol. Then we needed our own alcohol later on. Not out of that jar? hehehe

So the Massey brothers were hoping to shoot a bull this year. Many hunters hunt to bring home a trophy rack.
But as it turns out, cows and calves are tastier than bulls.
McMANN :07 that?s what I told my husband, ?don?t get a big tough one, you can?t chew the stuff.?

Louisa McMann?s husband, Hoot came back with a smaller cow.
McMANN :07 we?re having a supper at Kimball Hall up in Stratford Hollow. Gonna make some moose stew.

That?ll be quite a large supper ? the McMann?s moose weighed in around 450 pounds. That?s a lot of stew. For all that trouble, moose meat must be delicious.
For NHPR News, I?m RMD, in Berlin.