The following shares three short articles that appeared in the December 31, 1896, edition of the RANGELEY LAKES newspaper.

(Contemporary commentary shared in Italics).

RL.12.31.1896

Since the visiting hunters have stopped coming so fast the guides have had more leisure to loaf around the hotels and stores, and new tales of adventure in the woods are coming to the front every day. Last September the Sun contained a story telling how Joseph Sterns, a young sports man from Providence, R. I., paddled his canoe alongside of some moose that were feeding among the lily pads by night in Ripogenus Lake. By putting a jacklight in the bow of his canoe he succeeded in placing his hands on the flanks of two moose and buckling a leather strap around the body of the third.

While he was trying to place a strap on another moose the animal got frightened and tipped the canoe over, spilling Sterns and his guide into the water. Last week, Frank Harlow, a guide who is also employed on a small steamboat owned by Frank Wesson, the revolver maker, of Springfield, Massachusetts, shot a moose at Loon Lake that had a leather strap buckled around its body back of the fore-shoulders. Though he cannot be sure, he believes it is the very same moose which Mr. Sterns met on Ripogenus.

(I may be speculating, but I believe that alcohol may have been a factor in Sterns and his guide deciding to ‘lay hands’ on feeding moose from a canoe by night! Wildlife biologists share that some moose prefer to live in just one area all year-round. They may live within a range of only five square miles their entire lives. Other moose are migratory. They can move more than 100 miles between seasonal areas, so this leather-strapped moose, if it were the one strapped by Sterns was an outlier. Ripogenus is over 190 miles from Loon Lake).

Woodland Caribou

Everybody who knows Charles Anance, the Indian guide, who stomps about Moosehead Lake, and has heard him tell his adventure with a cow moose whose calf had been killed by a bob cat. She came out to Anance’s camp and hung about for several days, bellowing, and making heart breaking outcries for her dead calf. One night when she was drinking from the lake Anance went up to her and put his hand upon her side. Instead of jumping away, as Anance had expected, she looked at him for a moment, and sticking out her big nose, licked his hand with her rough tongue, “ She just licked me like I was her calf,” said Anance, when he told of it to the fishermen in his camp.

Of course, the anglers did not believe him and kidded him so much about his adventure that he got mad and offered to bet $5 that he would go up to that cow moose and milk her while she was drinking. The money was put up, and the next morning Anance took a can and went out and got more than a quart of moose milk. Anance says the moose not only licked him with him with her tongue while he was milking her, but actually shed tears of gratitude. There are people who have doubted this story, but they have kept their opinions to themselves until they were far away from Anance, because he is a “stout young man and is quick-tempered.”

(Charles could have made authentic Moose Tracks ice cream)!

Other strange tales about the ways of moose are told around camp. Last summer John Gerrish saw a four-year-old bull moose swimming in the lake. Sending to the camp for a stout line he got into a canoe and kept the moose from landing until he had placed a slip noose over its head and drawn it up about its neck. Then he swam the moose about in the lake until it was tired and led it ashore the way he would a cow. Gerrish kept it in a log pound for a month, and did not liberate it until a game warden told him he would be liable to a fine of $100 and costs for keeping a moose in close time. The animal stayed nearby in the woods all summer and was shot early in October by a New York hunter who came for game.

(A sad ending even by the less conservation-minded attitudes of the late 19^th century. We’ll close with the tale of a ‘nosey’ caribou and a sage elder of the woods…)

Two years ago, Fred Wing, who was running a hotel at Molunkus, found a pair of young moose in the woods that had lost their mother. He put them into the hotel stable and fed them on cow’s milk until they were as tame as lambs. When a game warden informed Wing he would have to pay $200 for keeping two moose in captivity, he pulled down their pen and let them run at large. Though they had the freedom of the woods, they came to the stable every night for shelter. In August, he sent them to Bangor, and they were on exhibition at the fair.

Four years ago, next February Ben York of Millinocket was fishing through the ice of Millinocket Lake for pickerel when he saw four large animals coming down the lake with the wind. As they drew near, he saw they were caribou, and, having no weapon but an ice chisel, he expected they would gore and trample him to death. Standing rigidly erect, he awaited their oncoming with much uneasiness. They stopped about a rod away from him, and one came up and nosed him over, licking his coat with its tongue. After this the one that had made the investigation went back to its companions and all trotted off down the lake.

Mr. York believes that moose and caribou, while they are endowed with a keen sense of smell, are very nearsighted. So, when they approach a man from the windward side, they cannot tell what manner of animal he is until they smell of him. When he has been to the leeward of moose, he has had these animals come up within a rod of him before taking alarm. Mr. York is 70 years old and has spent his life in the woods. In all his experiences he has never known a moose to attack a man unless the moose has been wounded.

Have a wonderful week everyone and be sure to make some great Maine history of your own!