It’s been fairly quiet for awhile on the moose news front in Norway, but soon the forests will be anything but. Hunting season gets underway on Friday and more than 50,000 rifle-toting enthusiasts are expected to start spreading out in the woods all over the country.
All told, reports newspaper Aftenposten, they’ll probably collect around 8,000 tons of moose meat (called elgkjøtt in Norway) but the per-kilo price is likely to be higher than ever before. Landowners who allow hunting on their property are demanding high fees that can add up to as much as NOK 30,000 (about USD 5,000) for a large moose ox. Some packages advertised in local papers recently offer three days of hunting for three hunters for NOK 45,000. If each hunter shoots and kills a large moose, the price can double. The package includes lodging, food and guides with dogs, however.
All told the sport can easily cost NOK 1,000 an hour, but landowners selling hunting rights say they don’t have problems finding takers. One landowner in Aurskog, northeast of Oslo, said that a wealthy hunter from Hungary bought a package “that I won’t even tell you the price of, but he clearly had enough money.
He also had room on his wall for a moose trophy after years of hunting all over the world.” Nearly 36,000 moose were killed in last year’s moose hunt. Authorities encourage the hunt, to reduce the large moose population in Norway.
By Views and News staff
