History Box

Making a Mi’kmaq Moose Call 

 Nobody really taught me how to make a moose call, but my father told me how my great-grandfather made a moose call. I pretty well taught myself, and as a canoe builder, I make a strong moose call. Because I don’t usually make moose calls like anybody else. A lot of people say, “Well, that’s the strongest moose call we’ve ever seen.”   

Because I have a piece of wood in here, and then I have all this spruce root that’s wrapped around. And it can’t go through because that piece of wood, you see. The interesting thing, I use a lot of leftover bark from my canoe projects—the pieces that I don’t use. That’s what I use to make containers, or little things, but also moose calls.   

A lot of times I use young saplings. I use sometimes witherod. Witherod is a wood that bends very easily, and it doesn’t crack. A lot of our old chairs were made with witherod. And this is spruce root, birch bark. So, the bark is turned inside out, so the white, white bark is inside there, as you can see.   

The bark we use for canoes, some of it’s called white birch. My father always told me the best bark is grey birch. And I thought, “Well, there’s nothing that I know of that’s called grey birch.” But now I know exactly what he meant. White birch can be used for many things, but it has a paper on the outside. A lot of times you can tear that paper off.   

Grey birch is darker, and it doesn’t have the loose paper on it. And again, when you’re working with birchbark, if it’s fresh off the tree, it bends very easily. But if it’s 10 years old, it’s like very, very stiff and hard. But as I’ve learned over time, even if it’s 10 years old, you can still use it if you know how to.   

So, how do you bend a piece of bark that’s very rigid, stiff, dry, and if I try to bend it, it will crack? I had a nice piece of birchbark. And I had the woodstove going. It was in the fall. And I had this nice piece of birchbark laying on top of my woodstove. And I forgot about it. And by the time I remembered, the heat from the fire, I grabbed the birchbark, which was laying on top of the stove, but it was like a piece of rubber.   

So, I thought, “Wow, that bends so easy. I could bend this right around.” So, what it was is inside the birchbark there’s oil. There’s oil in this bark, and when you heat it up, the oil allows the bark to be extremely pliable. So, now I know that I can use fire, I can use a heater, or I can use an electric heat gun, and I can heat this bark, and I can bend it. I can actually sandwich this bark together and it won’t break. But if it’s not done properly, it’ll crack. So, I’ve learned over the years that, my mistake of leaving my birchbark on top of the stove, actually taught me how to bend birchbark. 

Calling Moose  

Our ancestors, and a lot of the grandparents and great-grandparents, they would hunt moose. So, they would make a moose call. And so, if you’re hunting moose, a wise hunter doesn’t go through the forest, running out to try and catch a moose. I mean, that’s a hard thing to do. The forests in Nova Scotia, at one time, were extremely thick. But a moose could run through it and hide. And as a hunter, if you thought you were going to go and catch that moose, by running after it, you would be pretty hungry, because you’d never catch it.   

Say, if we want a male, or a bull moose. You want the bull moose, the ones with the big antlers. So, we’d go out in the forest. It might sound familiar, but if we want to find a boy, we make a sound like a girl. So, we make a call. And we’re out there, and the female moose will make this call. And the male moose will hear it, and he’ll go towards that sound. So, when they get there, they think they’re going to see a female moose. But there’s the hunter waiting for him. So, he’s very smart.   

So, I’m going to make the sound of the female moose, the cow moose we call them. And then, after that, I’ll make the sound of the male moose. So, the male didn’t say much. The female moose does the most sound. So, it goes like this … And they’ll go all the way down, and when you see a moose call, a lot of times the moose will put their head down low, and then they’ll go way up, and all the way around. So, that’s what I’ll do. So, here’s a call of the female moose. The male moose, he doesn’t say too much. He’ll just say… Just like that. But the long call is what the female moose would sound like.   

And in the fall, in October, is the time you could make that sound, and then the moose would come to you; you don’t have to go to the moose. With the moose call, you can project that sound; you can make that sound go. Other than that, the sound goes everywhere. But with the moose call, you can direct it in a certain area. So, our ancestors, they learned quickly that if they made a funnel, they could send that sound in that direction. Other than that, some people use their hands, and just try to call with their hands. But I’ve heard a lot of people say, there’s fiberglass moose calls, there’s all kinds of different ways. But the birchbark moose call, for some reason, it has a really good sound to it.