Bull the moose lives on the Doug Nelson farm in Irasburg. David Lawrence of Albany has raised him since he was abandoned by his mother at one day old. Mr. Lawrence visits him daily. Here Mr. Lawrence is feeding Bull a jelly doughnut. For more about Mr. Lawrence and Bull, please turn to page twenty-four. Photos by Bethany M. Dunbar

Published February 12, 2007

IRASBURG — David Lawrence of Albany pulls up in his four-wheel-drive pickup through deep, hard, wind-blown snowdrifts. It’s a trip he makes every day to see his friend, a huge tame moose he has named Bull. With him in the truck are a pail of apples, a bag of jelly donuts, a loaf of bread, a 12-pack of Budweiser and a curious newspaper reporter.

Bull lives at the Doug Nelson farm, in a 40-acre fenced area with Asian elk fawns. On the place there are also fallow deer, red deer, whitetails and other animals.

The fawns are pushing their noses through the fence, eating hay but hoping for some apples.

Bull’s pasture is next to a 600-acre fenced place Mr. Nelson uses for controversial “canned hunts.”

In other words, someone can pay to come into the larger fenced area and hunt for an elk.

When the fence was built, the state of Vermont had not made rules for such hunts. Mr. Nelson testified before the Fish and Wildlife Board at a public hearing in Montpelier on Monday night that he asked Fish and Wildlife officials at the time, about 14 years ago, what to do about the wild animals that would already be inside. He got no answer other than that officials did not want him to build the fence.

The board has still not made rules, but that is likely to change later this month. Mr. Lawrence is afraid the Fish and Wildlife officials will want to kill off the wild animals living within the fences, including Bull.

“I got him when he was a day old,” he said. Bull will be four on April 24.

Mr. Lawrence helps Mr. Nelson feed and care for the various wild and domestic animals inside the fences. Almost four years ago, he saw a cow moose inside the fence starting to give birth. He knew there was a bear in the fence also, so he stayed and watched from a distance to see that everything went okay. It didn’t. The calf’s birth was extremely difficult for the mother moose, and she ran away shortly after the calf was born.

Mr. Lawrence left the baby alone for the day, watching to see what would happen. When it became clear that the mother had truly abandoned the calf, he picked him up.

“Bull and I have been pretty much compatible,” Mr. Lawrence said. “I’m the only one he 100 percent trusts.”

He said Bull is quite domestic. He got out once last fall and was bothering the neighbors. At that time, they had not locked the fence and someone left a gate open, so Bull wandered out. But they got him back in and now the gates are all locked.

Mr. Lawrence said it’s not uncommon for a moose to abandon a new calf, and about two weeks after Bull was born it happened again at the Nelson place. Mr. Lawrence raised that baby, a female, and named her Cow.

Mr. Lawrence has done a lot of hunting in his time, but he doesn’t do much now. He’d rather take care of animals. He does some nuisance trapping for people, if they have a skunk or a raccoon bothering them. Last winter he had 16 skunks living in his barn. Those are animals that he trapped for people and released in his barn. By spring they were all gone, and there are none in there this winter. Earlier this winter he trapped a feral cat for someone and brought it into his house. He set up a litter box and food dish. He has not seen the cat since, but it is eating and using the box.

“I think he’s better off in my house until spring,” he said.

Mr. Lawrence tamed a coyote once. It was so tame it would ride with him in his truck, and she hung around for 12 years.

“Her name was Princess. She was blonde,” he said. “She was hard to control, but I did the best I could do.”

Mr. Lawrence even makes friends with chickens. He had a chicken once that used to ride in his truck with him, and liked beer. It would come running when he popped open the can.

“I used to hunt bear with dogs,” he said. “We didn’t have electronic collars.”

He used to tramp all over the mountains looking for bear instead.

Hunting bears in a pickup truck with dogs that have electronic collars does not seem worse to Mr. Lawrence than canned hunts. He said if you think about it, the animals inside the fence have a pretty good life and a clean death. They don’t get hit by cars and they have plenty to eat.

When Bull gets done his apples, Mr. Lawrence mentions that the moose likes beer, too. He says it’s kind of cold that day, and he might not want one. But he pops the top and holds up the can of Budweiser just in case. Sure enough, Bull reaches up to take a swallow. Pretty soon the can is mostly gone, and Mr. Lawrence finishes it off himself.

“Needless to say my world 100 percent revolves around him,” says Mr. Lawrence. He said he supposes Bull’s world pretty much revolves around Mr. Lawrence, too.

“Now what pisses me off about these Fish and Game people. They talk about Vermont tradition. Vermont tradition is really deer jacking, road hunting, and drinking beer.”

He said he thinks the Fish and Wildlife Department is jealous of Mr. Nelson’s operation because it actually makes money, while the department is short of funds these days.

“They’ve got too many biologists,” he said.

“If the government knew how they could make money, they’d be all over it — the same with marijuana,” he said.

He said canned hunts aren’t for everyone, and if you don’t like it, you don’t have to do it. But it can be quite challenging to find an animal within the confines of the fence, he said, and he is sometimes called in as a guide.

A lot has changed over the years, Mr. Lawrence said, and there continues to be more pressure on all the habitat. It’s a problem that’s not going to get any better any time soon.

“The biggest problem in the world right now is overpopulation of people.”

While solutions to all the world’s problems don’t seem to be right at hand, Mr. Lawrence will no doubt continue to ponder them with his friend, Bull the moose, while sharing a jelly doughnut and a Budweiser.