Need help with scratch marks on trees

Deerdr said:
I feel there are 2 different reasons....The first post was definitely antler Rub!!! The pic of moose eating bark was obvious!!! The antler rubs are gores in the tree, gouges, when they strip the bark to eat it, they dig their bottom front teeth (that's all they have) into bark, and strip it off to eat. It's obvious at the top of the wound that bark has been pulled off. I have watched them do both, very different marks.
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I agree with Deerdr 100%. They are gouges in the tree, not strips of bark being tire off. Too uniform, if it were moose eating the bark, there would be tear marks where the moose would be stripping it off. They obvious gouges.

Mcmack, they are 100% moose tracks as there is nothing else in N.B. woods that makes a track that size.
 
Definitely moose, but not rubs, they are eating the bark as others have commented. They do it here a lot, especially on young maples in the winter. The marks closer to the ground are likely accompanied by calf tracks!
 
I've never seen this in all my years of hunting in Saskatchewan. There must be enough smaller trees and tall grass for them to eat in the winter. Must be hard on the teeth you'd think?
 
Dusty23 said:
I agree with Deerdr 100%. They are gouges in the tree, not strips of bark being tire off. Too uniform, if it were moose eating the bark, there would be tear marks where the moose would be stripping it off. They obvious gouges.

Mcmack, they are 100% moose tracks as there is nothing else in N.B. woods that makes a track that size.
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You are mistaken to think that moose do not make those type of gouges. I have seen them actually doing it.
Those bottom teeth are sharp, and cut that bark just like a knife.
Cheers, Dave.
 
Dusty23 said:
I agree with Deerdr 100%. They are gouges in the tree, not strips of bark being tire off. Too uniform, if it were moose eating the bark, there would be tear marks where the moose would be stripping it off. They obvious gouges.

Mcmack, they are 100% moose tracks as there is nothing else in N.B. woods that makes a track that size.
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Hey Dusty, I agree with you 100% for NB, but the OP is from Ottawa (at least that's what his avatar sez). There is quite a large herd of Elk (great success story by the way....) in the Bancroft/Algonquin Park area just wast of Ottawa and I have seen Elk tracks on my property near Haliburton that rival the size of a juvenile Moose.
 
Pretty normal around here late fall and through winter. Stripping the maples I call it. I followed a fresh trail of this through the woods this fall and walked up on a young bull moose! But alas no tag :(
 
Sask.Elk.Guy said:
I've never seen this in all my years of hunting in Saskatchewan. There must be enough smaller trees and tall grass for them to eat in the winter. Must be hard on the teeth you'd think?
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I had never seen it either, but where I hunted for moose there were always tons of small poplars and birch trees, which is what they would eat. Then again, maybe I just hadn't noticed it before?
 
There is a lot of soft maple where I moose hunt and you see this everywhere. It seems as soon as a soft maple is big enough that it won't bend to easy they strip and kill it. Interesting that they eat other trees to in other areas I've never seen it on anything but soft maple. That said I've never hunted moose anywhere else either.
 
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