Orillia naturalist David Hawke says it’s rutting season and suspects the wayward moose was seeking a mate<\/p>\n
A moose running around Collingwood trails this morning was tranquilized and taken away, but not before police, fire and MNR staff pushed it up a bank and into a trailer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After at least three days of moose sightings reported to Collingwood and The Blue Mountains OPP, the young bull was located this morning in Harbourview Park and later tranquilized by staff from Bear Wise in the Arboretum at about noon.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The moose ran, ending up in the water by the bridge at Harbourview Park east of the Awen Gathering Circle, where it collapsed from the tranquilizer dart.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bear Wise staff and OPP went into the water to pull the moose to shore immediately, and waited for reinforcements.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Collingwood firefighters arrived, and more OPP, including Detachment Commander Insp.\u00a0Loris Licharson. The group loaded the moose onto a plastic sled and used a winch to pull the sled and moose from the water, up the bank and into a trailer. The group of police, fire and MNR staff steadied the moose on the sled and pushed it up the bank.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The dramatic event drew several dozen people to the waterfront.<\/p>\n
Bear Wise and MNR staff tended to the moose while police kept the crowds back.<\/p>\n
Insp. Licharson said police deferred to the MNR for the incident and helped out where they were asked.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The moose will be taken to a location farther north.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Orillia naturalist David Hawke\u00a0confirmed it was a bull moose. He said,\u00a0since it’s rutting season, he was likely wandering in search of a mate. He’d been spotted in Thornbury yesterday as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hawke said moose have been seen further south than is typical. There’s a moose family in Tay Township, another in Brechin and he’s seen some in Copeland Forest in Hillsdale.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Occasionally, a moose will wander into the Orillia area and be encouraged toward Lake Couchiching where it can walk and swim up further north and be relatively undisturbed, said Hawke.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In Collingwood, however, there weren’t any options for the moose to find his way north. Instead, he’ll be getting a ride. The Bear Wise staff, who came from Midhurst this morning, will take the moose to a new home.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Orillia naturalist David Hawke says it’s rutting season and suspects the wayward moose was seeking a mate A…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":905778,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":["post-905777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-science","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=905777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/905778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=905777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=905777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=905777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}