Moose Country: The Story of the Moose in Newfoundland by Darrin McGrath satisfied my curiosity about these animals on the island. I bought this book in the summer of 2024 during a trip to Newfoundland. During that time the news reported on two fatal car accidents involving moose. I was always worried that one would suddenly dash out onto the road, especially at night. McGrath devoted one chapter to moose-vehicle collisions, but I was puzzled by the statistics he reported on page 43:
“In Newfoundland there are, on average, 300- 400 moose-vehicle collisions each year.” [1]
and then on the same page he stated:
“In the six year period from 1988 – 1994, there were 14 human deaths resulting from 5,422 moose-vehicle collisions.”
That averages to over nine hundred collisions each year. Is that statistic correct, where collisions suddenly skyrocketed from three to four hundred annually to over nine hundred?
Moose are not a native species to the island and they were introduced in two waves. A breeding pair was brought over in 1875 and then four more were introduced in 1904. McGrath wrote about moose management and the difficulty in obtaining accurate population figures. Helicopters have been used over sample areas to try to calculate a census figure. At the time of the book’s publication in 2008 a general figure of one hundred thousand has been estimated.
Although the first major chapter is devoted to moose biology, that is not the focus of the book. The Dewey Decimal Classification is in the 799’s, which is for fishing, hunting and shooting. McGrath is a hunter, and the book is filled with his own hunting stories as well as tales from others. The outfitting industry supplies millions of dollars to the Newfoundland economy as hunters from around the world come to the island to try to bag a moose. Unfortunately, poaching is a problem as there are hunters who flout the laws regulating what kind of moose one can hunt and when and where one can do it.
Photos feature lots of shots of hunters posing over their quarry. It might be unnerving for some readers to see so many dead moose and to hear hunters rejoice in the thrill of the kill. I side with McGrath in knowing that the moose hunt helps to regulate the population and it also provides meat for many families for months. I have eaten moose at the home of a Newfoundlander and have no problem with hunters eating and sharing what they kill.
The author made a case providing evidence of moose predation by coyotes, a fact that biologists doubt except in cases where a moose might already be injured or in distress. McGrath backed up his claims with plenty of experience in the wild to have encountered such phenomena.
One chapter was devoted to moose poetry and songs and I enjoyed reading these as the words were accessible and direct in meaning. There was even a chapter with moose recipes.
McGrath employed words and terms common in Newfoundland English, and I had to look some of them up because I was curious about their origins, even though I could deduce their meanings. Duckish and droke, for example, were two such words in the text; the former was used more often as it was a feared time when to encounter a moose while driving ( = dusk or twilight).
[1] I am reproducing the text exactly as it was presented, thus the dash was to the immediate right of 300 without a space.