When Moose Come Calling

delphinium, moose
moose

You probably saw a recent Facebook post of mine, in which I shared a photo of some beautiful delphiniums. The point was to explain that delphiniums will rebloom if you deadhead the previous flower stalks right away. The next morning, I discovered a moose had also admired them… and, may I add, very closely. Sigh.

It’s true that deer (and apparently moose) like delphiniums. But this particular delphinium is planted behind an ornamental grass and hasn’t been bothered in ages.

moose

A neighbor recently mentioned moose “bedded down in our yard after they ate some of our apples off the tree.” I recall thinking how they probably wouldn’t come up the hill to our yard. That’s because we haven’t seen moose for a few years, mainly due to local development. It turns out I was wrong. That very night, a mama moose and her twin calves decided to pay us a visit. Our game camera showed one of the calves helping itself to the delphiniums while the other one walked past him. Busted!

Moose are sneaky

orchard gate, moose

But that wasn’t all. We strolled through our front yard looking for more damage and noticed that mama moose hopped over our orchard gate. (see photo at left) She nibbled on one of the apple tree’s leaves. That’s the first time any critter has ever done that. There’s a wooden crosspiece about 3′ above the gate. We always figured a deer or moose would worry about hitting their head. That should be a good deterrent, right? Apparently not!

It’s not in our budget to fence off our entire front yard. But this made me realize we had a couple of potential weak points. Those were in our orchard and vegetable garden protection.

Our strategies for keeping moose out

orchard gate, moose

The first was that gap above the orchard gate. Bill used a scrap of deer netting and anchored it down. That was a fairly straightforward fix. We tend not to see moose during the spring and summer. That means we should be able to remove the netting during the growing season. Although, if we do start seeing them more regularly, we could certainly leave it in place. Bill attached it to the area with some zip-ties and bungee cords to cinch it down. That made it easy to temporarily remove it for mowing the orchard lawn, etc.

The other weak points happen to be the two arbor gates we have. The area is protected by a deer fence. But right above those gates is a large gap. I’ve found deer are willing to jump through it during the fall and winter months. That’s the time of year when they are more stressed and bolder about such things.

arbor gate, moose

Fortunately, I have a fall/winter fix for this that I put in place each year. For each of the arbor gates, I have a piece of deer netting that fills the entire opening. It is anchored to a metal pipe (electrical conduit) at the top and bottom of the piece. I put it in place and interlock the metal pipe within the structure of the arbor gate. This works great and should dissuade moose from going where they’re definitely not welcome!

When dealing with wildlife, sometimes you just have to get creative, right? Let’s hope we are good to go from here on out!