Moose spotted for the second time in north-central Kansas

A young moose has been spotted for a second time in north-central Kansas — a place which moose don’t normally call home.

On Dec. 20, the Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism Game Wardens’ Facebook page posted that the young moose, who traveled from Nebraska, was spotted near the Republican River in Jewell County. The post included a picture, showing a distant moose in a field. On Friday, the Game Wardens posted a picture from a trail camera showing the antlered moose still near the river in neighboring Republic County. The second post pictured a much closer look at the moose and was shared more than 1,000 times.

Moose are rarely seen in Kansas. The last spotting was in 1989, when a bull moose wandered into the state on its way to Oklahoma, a KDWPT research biologist told The Topeka Capital-Journal.

“It’s very rare,” Matt Peek told The Topeka Capital-Journal. “This is the first since the one in the late ’80s that we’re aware of. I’m not aware of any others before that, either. As for why, sometimes animals get out of territory occupied by their species and they just keep moving until they get killed or get back to others of their kind.”

In one of the posts, the game wardens noted that moose are not allowed to be hunted in Kansas.

This story was originally published December 28, 2019 at 3:01 PM.