“Mac” trotted alongside us for quite awhile going 15 mph. Not veering off, our driver moved up to 30 mph and he galloped with us until she punched it and left him in the dust! It was the best moose adventure I’ll have in my lifetime!
The recent article regarding the presence of moose on Isle Royale brought up the question of how they got there. Historically there have been low numbers of moose on the island, but what caused there to be enough for the population to be permanently established and increase substantially has been up for debate.
The idea of numerous moose walking across on ice during the winter of 1912-13 has been the commonly accepted explanation even though about 50 years ago Dr. L. David Mech effectively refuted it in his book “The Wolves of Isle Royale” (1966). He studied the moose-wolf situation on Isle Royale from 1957 to the early 1960s. He pointed out that moose are not herding animals so any that crossed on the ice that winter would have been too few to increase to a population estimated at 200 only two years later. Second, moose rarely cross even short stretches of ice due to difficulty maintaining their footing. He felt it more likely that moose swam from Ontario (Sibley Peninsula or vicinity) to the island a few at a time in the very early 1900s. Michigan biologist P. F. Hickie believed they arrived about 1905.
As D.N.R. Area Wildlife Manager in Cook County (1969-2000) I agree that moose rarely cross ice unless there is adequate snow to prevent slipping. I encountered numerous deer on the ice of Lake Superior who were unable to regain footing. Examination of those carcasses which could be safely recovered showed considerable damage (torn muscles) between the hind legs, likely caused by the animals “doing the splits” when falling. Although moose may be found feeding together in groups of a dozen (or so), they come and go as individuals rather than as a cohesive herd.
Physician Dr. Lyman Clay of Lutsen related an alternative explanation to me over 30 years ago. He said that during a road trip in the early 1950s he had stopped for gas in a small town in Manitoba; an elderly man noticed he had Minnesota license plates and asked him how the moose were doing on Isle Royale. The old man then said that when he was a young man living in northern Minnesota, he and several other fellows were hired by the State of Michigan in about 1905 to live trap moose near Baudette, MN. About a dozen moose were captured and in the spring were transported to Two Harbors (he had become ill so was unable to accompany them) to be shipped to Isle Royale.
I tried to verify the story, as there was no reason for either Dr. Clay or the old man to fabricate it. I thought the Baudette newspaper might have run a story on the project, but the paper lost all its back copies when it (and much of the rest of the town) burned in 1910. The Minnesota Historical Society gets copies of many Minnesota newspapers, but they did not start getting the Baudette paper until 1913. Then I thought that perhaps the State of Minnesota had issued the State of Michigan a permit for the project. However a search of the early Minnesota records found nothing. In 1999, Dr. Rolf Peterson (who had taken over the Isle Royale studies) decided to check with the State of Michigan. He too, found no records. It is a likely explanation but not verifiable.
I thought I had hit a dead end until I remembered that in the mid 1990s an Alaskan biologist Dr. Kris Hundertmark of the Univ. of Alaska wanted moose tissue samples from across the U.S. and Canada for a genetics study. He was examining mitochondrial DNA that tracks only the maternal history. All offspring have the mother’s mtDNA, the mtDNA of the father is not transmitted to offspring. To summarize a long story, all Isle Royale tissue samples were of one mtDNA type. Ontario samples were of three mtDNA types, none of which were the Isle Royale type. Minnesota samples were also of three types, one was the Isle Royale type, one was one of the types from Ontario and the other was totally different. Of interest is that the only sample I was able to obtain from northwestern Minnesota (which includes Baudette) was also the Isle Royale mtDNA type. This is still not conclusive, but does show that at least the female ancestry of Isle Royale moose likely came from Minnesota.
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