The moose here seem to be only interested in the aspens when they're young shoots; they don't seem to browse bigger trees, even when I cut them down and they're on the ground. They do a good job of trimming the young aspens around the edge of my pad every winter. The rabbits savage the bark on the downed trees, but the moose seem to much prefer willows and birch, which they break branches off as you describe, and when I cut one down in winter I leave it whole until the moose have had their way with it. It's fun to watch out the window. I have never seen them browse aspen/poplar bark like this, and there's a LOT of this aspen around this region. I've seen wild horses do this to mountain cedar in Utah in the summer... they had to be pretty hungry to do that!
I'm told by a botanist friend in Anchorage that he sees a lot of this barking of aspens by moose in the local parks around the city. The "city moose" down there have much more limited forage than here in the Interior.
|