Biologists Scope Out City Life of Moose

Moose No. 6 wasn’t cooperating.

A loud, steady click from a radio receiver, like a metronome, showed the radio-collared female was close. But each time Fish and Game biologist Rick Sinnott ducked into the woods to look, the moose slipped away through birch and spruce.

Sinnott followed, carrying an antenna and radio receiver tuned to the frequency of the collar around her neck. Loud clicks meant he was facing in the right direction. CLICK. CLICK. CLICK. Faint ones told him to turn around and walk in the other direction.

“This is mildly dangerous because we’re sneaking up on a moose with a calf,” he whispered. “If you see me run, then run.”

He zigzagged through the woods, crossing the same road twice. Through trees, he sometimes spotted the moose’s yellow collar. Other times he caught a glimpse of an ear, an eye, a brown spindly leg.

Finally, Sinnott got a clear view. The moose had just one calf, not two. He jotted that down in a yellow field notebook, along with the coordinates where the moose and her calf were first seen.

So went another day in Fish and Game’s Anchorage moose study. The department is trying to learn more about how moose subsist in Anchorage. Where do they rut? Where and when do they calve? How far do they roam? What kills them?

Over the past 18 months, when he’s not responding to bear calls, surveying animals to determine population estimates or answering the public’s questions about wildlife, Sinnott and an assistant have darted 16 moose and slipped radio collars around their necks to follow them around the city. Four bulls and six cows are still wearing collars.

Each year hundreds of calves are born among the municipality’s estimated population of 1,500 to 2,000 moose.

Aside from calving, Sinnott’s main interest is to learn how much time moose spend in the city proper and how much inside Chugach State Park. For years it was assumed that moose spent winters in town to avoid deep mountain snow, then moved back into the park during the summer.

All of the moose in the study were captured and collared either inside the park or on the east side of town, since those moose are most likely to roam between the park and urban greenbelts and neighborhoods. So far, Sinnott has found that some moose follow the expected pattern, summering in the park. But other moose appear to spend most of their time in town.

“It’s complicated,” Sinnott said.

Moose cows tend to have smaller ranges than bulls, perhaps because cows move less once their calves are born. As expected, the moose also move around less from January to March.

Sinnott has found that the bulls in his study tend to rut in town in the fall, head up to the mountains before the snow arrives, then head back into town for the winter.

The study moose don’t seem to have discrete mating areas, with one moose rutting in several different locations in one season. The cows, however, have so far had their calves within a half mile of where calves were born the year before.

Since the study began, wolves have killed one moose while wolf-dog hybrids contributed to another moose’s death, according to Sinnott. Another was hit by a car, while another apparently fell and got trapped by a log. The cause of the fifth death was unknown. One bull moose slipped out of its collar.

Sinnott began his field day by searching for a cow inside Chugach Park. Moose No. 10 was easy to find. Her signal led Sinnott straight to a clumpy meadow. There the moose stood with her calf at the edge of the clearing.

Sinnott climbed atop a tree stump and waited for her to move to see if she had a second calf. The moose watched him, pricking her ears at each noise--a plane, a dog barking, someone in the neighborhood shouting.

“No human is as patient as a moose,” Sinnott said as he waited to get a better view.