I’d say a worse problem is that animals that are rare throughout most of the northeast continental united states, and/or which never go after humans, ruthlessly hunt them down like carp on dwarf fortress. Its absurd. I’ve lived across western and eastern PA, as well as MD and VA. Some animals, like Bears, are indeed around. But they are not terribly common. I’ve gone hiking all my life and never seen a bear. Likewise, I’ve never heard of anyone IRL whom has seen a moose IN OUR AREA aside from dedicated hunters, who have to go on hunting trips to see them, or people who go on vacation out west. I have this vague mental impression of them just kinda hanging out in the roads out west or something crazy.
From Wikipedia:
In North America, the moose range includes almost all of Canada (excluding the arctic and Vancouver Island), most of Alaska, northern New England and upstate New York, the upper Rocky Mountains, northern Minnesota, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, and Isle Royale in Lake Superior
So, you have the potential for Moose in Maine and Vermont (big hunting states, admittedly, and areas where they’d go out of there way to stock them, basically) small parts of upper New York, as well as “less then a thousand” in Massachusetts. This is a real population…but keep in mind, again, throughout most of New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Conneticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, etc… they are not present and are functionally extinct. This is like 90%+ of the area the game covers.
Again, wikipedia:
The moose has been extinct in much of the eastern U.S. for as long as 150 years, due to colonial era overhunting and destruction of its habitat: Dutch, French, and British colonial sources all attest to its presence in the mid 17th century from Maine south to areas within a hundred miles of present-day Manhattan. However, by the 1870s, only a handful of moose existed in this entire region in very remote pockets of forest; less than 20% of suitable habitat remained.
That is not to say there shouldn’t be moose in the game. But they shouldn’t be land-carp. I think this has been improved in recent versions, certainly. But the tourists who are killed by Moose are largely idiots who go out of there way to approach them. They are not ranging across NY and PA and MD going through the forests looking for hikers to disembowel. Neither are Bears. We get bears near me all the time. They are here, I do admit this. You see them on the news every so often when someone spots one. But I have never personally seen one, and they are not in large enough quantities that hikers during a cataclysm are likely going to be seriously threatened by them.
