Wildlife encounter leads Iditarod racer Dallas Seavey to dispatch and gut moose on trail
Published in Outdoors
One of those other mushers was veteran Paige Drobny, who was the third racer to arrive into Finger Lake a little before 6 a.m. Tuesday.
"It's dead in the middle of the trail," Drobny told a race checker in a video of her arrival. "My team went up and over it, it's that in the middle of the trail."
Less than two hours earlier when Jessie Holmes was the first musher to arrive at the checkpoint, he reported that he'd also had an encounter with a moose, one that was very much alive.
"I had to punch a moose in the nose out there. Oh my gosh," Holmes said.
[On the first full day of the Iditarod, mushers ascend the Alaska Range in fuzzy conditions]
News of the incident was still trickling out over the course of Monday.
"With the well-being of his team in mind, Dallas made the tough decision to fell the moose, resulting in a setback for his progression the trail," said a post on Seavey's official Facebook page. "Iditarod officials swiftly organized assistance to handle the aftermath, contacting the authorities and confirming the preservation of the animals meat."
Though animal encounters are not uncommon in Iditarod, rarely do they end in death.
(c)2024 the Alaska Dispatch News (Anchorage, Alaska) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Comments