That may sound like a startling achievement to urbanites, though I'm not certain it bears much relevance to her vice-presidential qualifications.

But there are women in other parts of the country who hunt moose for the meat - using either bows or rifles. And that got me thinking - What if I wanted to put myself to the moose test? How far would I have to travel to stalk the beast, and how much kitchen-counter space would I need to butcher it? After all, I only have a two-bedroom townhouse.

Is it OK to strap a 1,500-pound moose to a PhillyCarShare vehicle?

And if the meat from one moose would feed a family for a year, how many moose croquettes am I looking at? Maybe I'd better invite that pitchman from the Encore frozen-dinner commercials to bring his family along.

Clearly I needed more information, and here is some of what I learned:

Moose are vegans (no fish, no flesh, no dairy).

Moose are kosher, according to Jewish dietary laws, if they are ritually slaughtered.

And it's illegal to sell moose meat in this country. (The USDA only allows the sale of game meat that has been farm-raised.)

So the only way to get your mitts on moose is to bag it yourself or get some as a gift from a friend.

Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire have moose hunts, and Liza Poinier at New Hampshire's Fish and Wildlife office says the nine-day season, which starts Oct. 18, is a particularly festive time.

New Hampshire, home to 6,000 moose (versus 1.3 million people) sells its 515 moose-hunting licenses by lottery, and they always sell out.

Poinier says Palin likely had help getting her moose from point A to point B.

"They're awfully big," Poinier says.

Five hundred to 1,500 pounds big. So the animal generally has to be field-dressed and quartered just to get it out of the woods.

Field-dressing is a clean, efficient phrase to describe a gory task that can be harder than tracking the moose in the first place. Wear gloves.

Once it's quartered, the moose can be taken to a specialty butcher and prepped for roasting, grilling, stewing, or made into sausages, patties and the like.

What if I wanted to cook moose meat at home?

On this point, the old reliable Moosewood Cookbook is of no use, being for vegetarians. And I can't consult M.F.K. Fisher's essay How to Cook a Wolf, because that is, as they say, a whole 'nother animal.