I found out last night that in Sweeden it's 176,000 moose harvested annually! Average moose was 1.5 years old is all, but up here it was 6000 annually.
I wonder what the biggest thing is that is done over there to manage their food source? From pix, it looks like a checker board with new growth all over the place.
Anyone know their cow to bull, cow to calf, bull to calf ratios they try to keep? And the birthing percentage rate?
Brent their is something possibly wrong with those #'s. I'm quite sure that the available total amount of moose to hunt is 176,000. You and I live in high density moose areas, only your moose are slightly larger in size. In Northern Ontario we are pushing the same #'s, and the total tag allotment was 17,000. The percentage taken is very low of that # to basically pertect the growth of the herd.
That's "exactly" what I thought too. I specifically asked Gary Olson if he was sure of those numbers when he was speaking at the F&G Advisory Board meeting last night, he said it was NOT 7,000 or even 70,000.... it was indeed 176,000 harvested annually.
Gary is the Founder and President of the Alaska Moose Federation and can be reached at 907-33-MOOSE if you'd like to ask him about it. He has some ambitious plans for moose management in the state in the future.
He recommended a book to me he had with him, the Moose Bible he called it. "Ecology Management of North American Moose" by Albert W. Franzmann and Charles C. Schwartz
ISBN # 1-56098-775-8
$40-50 another guy said.
Sweden is 1.3 times the size of Finland. We Finns harvest about 90 000 moose annually these days, itīs approx. half of our moose population,half of the harvested ones being calves. The population stays the same this way. Lots of food everywhere in the woods,partly because of the way our timber industry works. Young growth all over the place.
Our problem is to keep the moose population low and tolerable for everyone,including farmers,forest industry,traffic... just like in Sweden. Here we have the average of 2.5 moose per square kilometer, in Sweden the number is 4.
In addition to those numbers,we have about 4500 car accidents every year where moose or deer are involved. Quite a lot for less than five million people.
That reminded me: time to reload some more 300 grain Davekings... [img]images/icons/rolleyes.gif[/img] I mean Matchkings, they arrived yesterday. Thanks again,Dave. My revenge is on the way. [img]images/icons/grin.gif[/img]
Thanx Brent for bringing this up, and Petander for your info. Imagine the total size of this herd in order to maintain those #'s. I know the Moose Biologist for the Gov. in my area very well, and I'm going to bring up some questions to him? The pretty things (Deer) are multiplying in our area at a terrible fast rate and have inflected the brain disease on the moose in some locations. The other problem is the very large black bear population that affect the overall #'s of moose calfs. The boars (Male Bear) love eating moose calfs at birth. Sweden and Finland do not have a large bear population, but Alaska and Northern Ontario have including wolves. Later to-day after talking with the Biologist I'll get back on here with more info.
Gary said, the population in good conditions would grow by 40% annually. That's pretty quick!
That should give a pretty good indication of the total population over there, if it's being sustained.
One of the main concerns up here is road kill reduction, using either electric or chain link fencing and overpasses to reroute highly used crossing areas.
Brent: I spent sometime talking to our Regional Moose Bioligist ( has a degree on the subject) and the figures from Sweden and as Petander stated are correct. He is well aware of the report on moose management from Sweden, BUT. They are very carefully managed by the Gov. and in most cases their are game keepers that work with hunting CLUBS. In a lot of cases the game keepers know the moose by names eg. this one is 2yrs and this one is 5yrs and his name is such and such. They make a decision to cull this many by age and sex in tightly controlled small zones. Also, as stated to me there are NO North American Indians in Sweden as you and I have that take a great deal for sustenance purposes, which is their right rather we agree or not, but remember they where here first. Northern Ontario's Native population FAR EXCEEDS the white man's figures!. Now back to Sweden. They do not also have the large wolve and bear population that you and I have. The Norway Pine also contributes to the healthy growth of which we do not have. We do a lot of aerial spraying because of the large Plup @ Paper market here which would contribute to a lower grade of food for the moose. Now Northern Ontario Moose figures!. We have presently 130,000 moose with a target of 160,000. They issue 17,000 plus tags of which about 10,000-11,000 get filled every yr. Me personally love calf better and wait tell Nov. to shoot because they gain apprx. 60lbs. per month at that age. Hope this helps you guys up their in this matter.
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