Kawartha Moose

By Mike Fitzgerald

We were driving along a stretch of the old 503 between the Kirkfield lift locks and Centennial Park Rd when a dark mass caught my eye. When we spun the jeep around to get a good look at what we thought might be a horse, it turned out to be a cow moose feeding on buds behind an old beat up corral. Twenty years ago, this would have more than likely made the local papers, but on this day neither of us were particularly surprised at all to see this moose.

That’s because moose are becoming increasingly more common in the Kawartha lakes region. In fact, over the last ten years alone during my travels around the area, I’ve seen moose near Balsam Lake, Coboconk, Fenelon Falls, about three minutes north of the Lindsay Airfield, and just last winter, one chewing on someone’s garden right in the middle of Rosedale.

My father, who grew up in the Kawartha region back in the fifties and sixties, has told me on several occasions – usually due to moose sightings – that when he was a kid living on the large family farm, moose were mostly unheard of. In fact, back then, but what did show up with a fair level of regularity were wolves. As the years passed, the wolves seemed to have disappeared, and I can’t help but wonder if in the wake of that happening, the moose slowly moved in.

I know, that’s all loose speculation, but consider the following – in one calendar year while deploying several trail cameras on two properties near Lake Dalrymple, I captured sixty-one videos of moose passing by. The first batch was of two calves with tiny little antlers, then a cow with two small calves showed up in July. A giant bull appeared around October, followed by a smaller bull trailing a cow in November and December. That’s eight different moose by my count.

Now, I’m not entirely sure if those numbers are incredible for being as far south as they are, but what I do know is that their presence on the Kawartha landscape adds a certain cottage country authenticity, even if that means it’s at the expense of some pretty expensive garden plants during the winter and early spring.

In any event, these days as I’m travelling up highway 35 before hanging a left in Coboconk onto ’48, I’m keeping one eye on the usually empty road and one eye on the shoulder just in case one drops out of the woods. For me, I’m happy they’re here, and by all accounts, doing well in this beautiful place we get to share with the moose, too.