Anyone know if newborn moose imprint on the first thing they see?
This claim seems a bit far fetched to me. I raise horses (four new born foals this month already), cows, sheep and goats and have a fair bit of knowledge on how things need to progress so the baby is healthy and has a chance to survive.
First off it must have been raining. A newborn animal is usually cleaned by their mothers within the first hour of birth and the moms start cleaning it immediately. Next they need to stand so they can nurse, and even after standing it takes them sometime to find the tit and usually with a lot of encouragement and nudging by momma. This is the critical time, as the baby needs to get the life sustaining colostrum in the first few feedings, as that is the only time that the mother will produce it, without it they will die rather quickly in a day or two. We always have colostrum available which you can get it from any local dairy or buy it in dry powdered form to mix with warm water to feed to the bottle babies that are rejected from their mother or maybe they may be too mentally lazy to nurse which requires intervention to save their lives.
If this guy had to keep it overnight, fresh from birth with no colostrum it most likely would have died before he got it to the shelter, and even if it didn’t it chances of surviving would be no more than a day or two.