PDA

View Full Version : hitch up the moose grandpa....



greyhair biker
03-16-2007, 06:29 AM
This is a real photo. This guy uses his moose to clear land up in Maine...COOL!

Alex
03-16-2007, 06:31 AM
WOah, wonder if he raised the moose since it was a cub?

RugerShooter
03-16-2007, 07:09 AM
How much do you think he can pull

Rev. Coyote
03-16-2007, 07:30 AM
Grey;

I hate to tell you, but that's a photoshopped picture. Look at the log piles -- they are mirror images cut and pasted.

But don't despair -- here's a real picture of the same.

Cheers.

jumar
03-16-2007, 07:40 AM
http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/workmoose.asp

greyhair biker
03-16-2007, 02:20 PM
sorry, I should have put this with it:





Moose logging story
The man in the picture is Jacques Leroux who lives up
near Escourt Station and has always had work horses, first
for actual work and then for show at Maine's' many summer
fairs. I think he had two matched pairs, one Clydesdale and
the other Belgium's. He would turn them out to pasture each
morning and then work them in the afternoon dragging the
sled around the fields. Three springs ago, he noticed a
female moose coming to the pasture and helping herself of
the hay and what grain the work horses didn't pick up off
the ground. Jacques said he could get within 10 feet of the
moose before it would turn and move off.
Two springs ago, the moose foaled(?)at the edge of the
work horse pasture and upon getting to it's feet had not
only the mother in attendance but the four horses. The young
moose grew up around the horses and each afternoon when Mr.
Leroux took the teams for their daily exercise the yearling
moose would trail along the entire route next to the near
horse.
At some point, the yearling got so accustomed to Mr.
Leroux that, after he had brushed each horse after a workout
, he started brushing down the moose. The moose tolerated
this quite well so Mr. Leroux started draping harness parts
over the yearling to see how he would tolerate these
objects. The yearling was soon harness broken and now came
the question of what could you do with a harness broke
moose.
As you may or may not know, a great deal of Maine is
being bought up by folks "from away" and some of them
understand principles of forest management. Well the folks
buying small parcels of land up in the area of the Allagash
have it in their mind that they don't want big skidders and
processors and forwarders on their small wood lots. Enter
Mr. Leroux with his teams of horses.
Every morning, when Mr.. Leroux loaded the teams into
the horse trailer to go off to the days job, the yearling
moose got quite riled up and one day loaded himself right
into the trailer with the horses. At the job site, Jacques
unloaded the horses and as the moose stayed right with them,
he would take the Clydesdales and his brother Gaston would
take the Belgians and off into the woods they would go with
the moose trailing behind. They would put the harness on the
moose in case they encountered someone who they could kid
with the explanation that the moose was a spare in case
something happened to one of the horses. The work required
them to skid cut, limbed and topped stems to the landing
where the stems could be loaded onto a truck for the pulp
mill.
All morning long the two brothers brought out twitch
after twitch of stems with the moose following the Belgian
team for the most part. At lunch break Jacques had the
bright idea of putting trace chains and a whiffle tree on
the moose's harness and all afternoon the moose went back
and forth following the Belgians in and out of the woods
dragging his whiffletree along the ground. As there were no
stumps in the skid trail, the whiffle tree never hung up on
anything and that first day in harness went great. So next
day, they hitched on first a small stem and the moose
brought it out just fine following the Belgians.
Mr. Leroux told me they were up to four small stems now
and the moose was doing just great. He cautioned however
that there were a few problems with using a bull moose. Come
June, when the new antlers start, the new bone is "in
velvet" and must itch like crazy as the moose stops every
once in awhile and rubs his rack against just about anything
to appease the itch. Once, before the brothers learned to
tie him of by himself while they had lunch, moose was
rubbing his antlers against the hame on the Clydesdale
called Jack and got it wedged there for a bit. Jacques said
he wished he had a camera as it looked like moose was trying
to push Jack over.
The other problem is the rutting season. The brothers
learned quickly to leave moose in the barn as he was
constantly on red alert in the woods during this time. The
brothers are also considering trying this with two females
to make a matched pair which would become an instant hit at
the Maine Fairs. The trouble with the bulls is their racks.
They would be constantly rubbing and hitting each other and
yes they would have to be gelded as I just couldn't imagine
getting the two bulls anywhere near each other, let alone in
harness.

DiscGo
03-16-2007, 02:33 PM
That is awesome! And that looks like one of the biggest moose I have ever seen (or maybe that guy is really small)

Mtnman1830
03-16-2007, 03:25 PM
Cool. I want one!

greyhair biker
03-16-2007, 03:30 PM
:lol8: I get stuff like this all the time...probably over half of them are real, which means the ogther half are like this...but COOL eh?!