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20/20: A wild moose chase

Oct 20, 2005 10:18 PM

Pete Cronshaw from 20/20 goes bush with a man who has spent the last 35 years searching for a herd of Canadian moose last seen in Fiordland more than 50 years ago.

The debate on whether they still exist has raged for years but took a new twist a few weeks ago when DNA testing suggested the legendary beasts might still be there.

The two metre prehistoric giant was given up for dead half a century ago but Ken Tustin swears it's no ghost he has come close to "maybe a dozen times".

The hunt has tormented Tustin for half his life. He's found footprints, an old antler and captured a blurry image on camera with the help of a natural history documentary team.

But what has turned his theory into a wildlife controversy is the discovery of a couple of hairs which forensic scientists say are moose.

Tustin sasy the DNA is so positive it is irrefutable and he says they weren't planted.

"I've got no reason to pretend anything. I wouldn't even dream of faking anything. That would be incomprehensible," says Tustin.

A small herd of 10 moose was released in Fiordland in 1910, but the fact that they haven't been seen for more than 50 years doesn't concern Tustin.

"People think big means clumsy...in the animal world that's not the case at all...you could be 15 or 20 metres from an animal and the vegetation is that dense that you wouldn't know."

The craggy tops are teeming with deer but Tustin believes the elusive moose may lurk somewhere below - hidden under the canopy of 500 square kilometres of dense impenetrable bush. He has used every trick in the book to find the moose, including hidden cameras.

Robin Smith has also defied the sceptics, rediscovering the moose in 1951 when it was thought to have been extinct for 20 years. He said the noise was "incredible" and his heart was "skipping pretty fast" when he heard it jump into the stream.

"I took a quick shot and shot it...it was really more luck than good shooting," says a regretful Smith who found the thrill of the hunt short-lived.

"The more I think about it the more disappointed I am that I shot it."

Smith's story has a postscript - he returned to Fiordland a year later armed with a camera and took photos which were the last confirmed sighting of a moose in New Zealand.

"I'm sure they're there, they must be. Ken Tustin has found so much evidence that they've got to be there and I think he's the unluckiest person in the world that he hasn't been confronted by one."

Tustin's wife Marg is his number one supporter.

"It is not an obsession...it's an adventure," she says. "We both love it."

The couple say teeth marks on branches above where red deer could reach are proof NZ's lost moose herd is alive and well.

Evidence is as elusive as the moose but while the 20/20 expedition didn't see the beast itself they found a cluster of hairs snagged in a broken branch that was delivered to a forensic lab for analysis.

It will be several weeks before 20/20 knows the results of their discovery but Tustin is determined to silence the critics and his search goes on.

"We'll get a photograph. We'll get a thousand DNA samples if that's what it going to to take. But we'll do it.

"Sooner or later we'll get the big guy."