OPP have responded to questions about why their officers shot a moose in the Beiers Road area this weekend.
The shooting caused a storm on social media Saturday after images of the dead animal were posted on FB with people wondering why it was killed and left for hours at the side of the road.
Now OPP Sgt. Jason Folz tells Country 102 that since Friday, officers from Bracebridge OPP had been noticing that there was a moose hanging around the general area. “Since Friday they’d been making attempts to try to get it to move on, move it away from the roadway with their air horns and trying to scare it back into where its not going to be a hazard on the roadway,” says Folz. “We started to receive numerous calls for this same moose.”
Folz says some of the responding officers have spent time in the north and watched wildlife.
“By the end of the day yesterday they came to the determination this moose was fairly sick – there’s a term for what they think they were looking at and it’s called ‘brainworm’,” he said. “The moose displays weakness and an inability to stand, they turn their neck and head, are lethargic, and they lose their fear of people and vehicles which is the bigger concern, so yesterday afternoon they made the determination that because this animal kept coming out on the road, that in the interests of public safety they would dispatch that moose.”
As to why the body was left there, it was due to the size of the moose.
In many cases when a moose is shot the remains are still edible and people come and take away/use the meat. In this case, due to the presumed sickness, the meat was inedible, explains Folz.
“We certainly don’t have the ability to take an animal that size away or do anything with it, then it was left to the Town of Gravenhurst, which I think also struggles with an animal that size. That’s why it’s sat for a little bit until someone has some equipment to move an animal that size.”
Folz hopes that someone by now has come to remove the animal, but again, he stresses it would involve heavy equipment.
“It wasn’t done in haste,” says Folz. “We certainly take our time before we destroy these animals – this is not something we like to do.”
(Photo of the moose while it was alive by Michelle Gladu Robinson, posted to Muskoka 411 FB Page)
