From the January, 2018, issue of North Dakota Wildlife:
Moose are on the loose in western North Dakota. From Dickinson to Anamoose, and Williston to Underwood – and even all the way down to Bismarck – moose are becoming a more common sight on the landscape. But that hasn’t always been the case.Much more at the link. A great story.
North Dakota’s highest moose densities today are found in the northwestern part of the state.
The largest members of the deer family were rare to nonexistent in North Dakota in the early 1900s. They reappeared again in the 1950s, and by the 1960s, a small resident population was established in the Pembina Hills. As moose numbers grew, the animals also began to populate the Turtle Mountains and surrounding area. That northeast corner of the state remained the only region where moose were reliably found through the early 1990s.
The first hunting season for moose in North Dakota was 1977, when 10 licenses were awarded to hunters. Since then, the moose population has continued to grow, and the state has had a moose hunting season every year since that first season. In fact, the season has grown along with the population. Since 1985, the North Dakota Game and Fish Department has made at least 100 licenses available to hunters every year.
But that doesn’t mean the moose population has grown consistently across the state. In the last 12 years, moose numbers have declined in the Pembina Hills area. Aerial wildlife counts conducted by Game and Fish biologists note that about 250 moose were spotted in that region in 1995, but only two cow moose were observed in the survey areas flown in 2017.
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