You better be ready to run if you mess with a mother moose.
There’s an abundant variety of wild animals that call Grand Teton National Park (located in northwest Wyoming) home. Visitors are likely to see bald eagles and ospreys flying above, bighorn sheep traversing the mountainous terrain, and animals like elk, moose and bison wandering along in the flats of the property.
If they are lucky, those stopping in to see the beauty of the national park framed by the Teton Range might also set their eyes on the many predators in the area, like black bears, wolves, and grizzly bears… obviously from a safe distance. That goes for all animals really. The National Park Service says that visitors should stay 25 yards away from more docile animals, and 100 yards away from more dangerous creatures.
I personally think that the 100 yard rule should also be applied to any animal that’s a mother.
Some tourists in Grand Teton National Park almost paid the price recently when they walked too close to a mother moose and her calf. The people in the video – posted by Tourons of National Parks – clearly weren’t respecting the personal space of the animals. Eventually, the moose became fed up and went “full mom mode” on one of the tourists in particular.
You may think that this moose was being overly protective, but that’s just the moose’s motherly instincts kicking in. A moose typically cares for and protects their calves for up to a year, and this one was still in need of protection. So the mother thought it would be in the best interest of the people in the area to get the heck out of dodge, and charged after one of them, sending them running back to their car.
Fortunately, the mother moose was really just charging to clear a path for her and her offspring to keep moving through the area. Could the moose have done some damage? Oh, you bet. Moose are the largest of all deer in the deer family, and their height and weight might surprise you. Males are typically bigger than females, but both are still larger than you might think. On average, a female moose usually stands at 5 to 6 feet tall at their shoulders, and can weigh anywhere from 800 to 1300 pounds.
It wouldn’t take a lot for an animal that size to do some damage… which is why it baffles me that people were trying to get close to the mother moose and her kiddo in the first place. The person who took the video described the incident as this:
“I caught some tourons on Antelope Flats Road in Grand Teton National Park. A mama moose and her baby were chasing people getting too close.”
Good for the mother moose for chasing the tourons out of there.
We’re not even to the summer months yet and we’ve already got videos of tourists acting a fool in the national parks. Once we get into the heat of the summer, when people tend to go on vacations, footage like this seem to hits the internet at breakneck speed. We’ll keep an eye out for them as they become available… and trust me, they’ll become available.
