Steve Kroschel said he was brewing a cup of coffee at his kitchen sink near Mosquito Lake when he looked up to see a small bull moose across the swamp on a snowmachine track.
“I was like ‘Oh my god, there’s no way!’” he said.
Duck Moses, a yearling bull moose, had wandered off the property of the Kroschel Wildlife Center in mid-September just before the start of hunting season. Three months later, on Dec. 23, a moose that looked pretty similar was outside his home.‘Could this really be him?’ Kroschel thought.
Kroschel, a filmmaker, turned on his iPhone 15 and started letting out snappy falsetto cries of “Mama!” (“I’m not his mama, so it’s some reverse psychology,” he said.)
The moose responded, turning his head towards Kroschel to reveal a familiar face. With his video camera turned on, Kroschel grabbed a pail with a few apples, a rare treat Kroschel affords the ungulates, which rarely find sources of sugar in the wild (“It’s like cocaine for a human”).
The moose came trotting towards him.
“It was like ‘please, let me go home’” said Kroschel. “It was emotional. There were tears coming out of my eyes.”
He said the moose trotted up into the horse trailer and started eating the Mazuri brand feed pellets that Duck Moses grew up on. Kroschel said the moose nudged its head into his chest.
“He’s more affectionate and warm and happy,” said Kroschel.
The year’s heavy snow has been tough on moose, whose long, thin legs make deep snow travel difficult. There have been a high number of moose spotted on snowmachine trails and roads as they try to avoid the deep snow, but that makes the demand for food intense. Still, Kroschel said Duck Moses appeared to have grown and was in good condition after a few months living in winter conditions.
Duck Moses’s reappearance came at a time when Kroschel said the center was facing pressure from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. Emails shared with CVN from the summer showed that staff were concerned about the body condition of Duck Moses, something Kroschel vociferously denied. Banff, a wolverine that was a popular attraction among the thousands of visitors to his park in the summer, died in November. Kroschel said he asked Fish and Game for another wolverine, but so far the agency hasn’t approved the request.
“I’ve done more for that species than anyone, ever, in history,” said Kroschel, who has worked with the animals for 45 years.
Kroschel said Duck Moses’s return was a vindication of his animal care record. He said he hasn’t had any other animals escape in his decades of running the wildlife center.
He said Duck Moses escaped after a worker at the park inadvertently left a gate open. Based on tracking the moose, he thinks it may have tried to return to its enclosure, but was stopped by an electric fence around the perimeter. After its initial escape, Kroschel tracked the moose across the road to where the prints disappeared in a swamp, and spent much of the final 48 hours before the start of hunting season looking for it..
“That moose coming back is hopefully a testament to the kind of animal care I give to all the animals here,” he said.
Fish and Game officials said they haven’t inspected the fencing since last year. A planned inspection of the wildlife center last fall never happened, according to Stephanie Bogle, who oversees permitting for Fish and Game.
She said that for now, there are no concerns about the welfare of Duck Moses.
“Everything that we’ve heard, it sounds like it’s healthy but we haven’t gone out and checked anything,” she said.