Ultimate Iditarod Update

As Tyrell mentioned in his last report, I was involved with a moose attack while training for my first Iditarod with the Seavey team in the winter of 1998-1999. I think that the story of the attack is a good one to tell because it illustrates an event that is rare to experience, but also one of the most feared by mushers in the north country.

The Seavey family has a great system of winter trails around the central Kenai Peninsula, including several miles of trails that run on top of a buried natural gas pipeline that runs between the city of Kenai and Anchorage. The gas line runs through the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, which is a favorite home for moose, especially during the winter when deep snows make travel and foraging especially difficult for the moose. The Seavey's have used that trail on the gas line ever since the mid 1960's, and until the early morning hours of February 6, 1999, they had never had a serious problem with a moose, even though moose were commonly seen on the trails.

Typically, when we encounter moose on the trail, we yell at the moose, and the moose moves off the trail and into the woods not wanting to interact with the loud-mouthed human or the team of dogs pulling him or her. However, unusually deep snows fell on the Kenai Peninsula in December of 1998, and the scarce supply of winter food for the moose was made even more so. In late January of that same winter, the temperatures plummeted to some of the coldest ever recorded on the Kenai. For over two weeks, the warmest daily high temperature recorded in Sterling, Alaska, was -21^oF. The night often brought temperatures as cold as -45^oF. This compounded the lack of available forage for the moose because the moose were in need of extra food in order to stay warm in such cold temperatures. Many moose began to starve, and the result was that many moose went literally insane before falling into a coma and dying. Insane, tired moose don't react like normal moose, and Danny Seavey, Caleb Banse, and I discovered this on a cold, moonless night thirteen miles from the nearest source of help.

Danny, Caleb, and I were each running a team on a camping trip training run where we ran out from home for 30 miles, camped for four hours on the trail and fed the dogs, and then returned home. Between the three of us, we had 29 dogs and three sleds loaded with food, supplies, and survival gear (including sleeping bags), and each armed with a high powered pistol for protection (mostly from moose, but also wolves and bears, who can wake up very hungry in the middle of winter).

The first part of the run was great. The weather had warmed from a stretch of 30 below up to a "balmy" minus 20, and we were enjoying a chance to get out with the dogs after a week of reduced training due to the intense cold. After spending four hours taking care of the dogs, feeding them, and then huddling around a campfire, we packed up the sleds, woke up the dogs, and took off on our return trip to the kennel. Because the temperature had started to drop after sun down, we left the coats on the dogs for the run home so as to provide a bit of extra protection from the cold and wind.

The first part of the run home was relatively uneventful, and the three of us had settled into an easy pace with Danny leading the way with ten dogs, followed by Caleb driving nine dogs, and myself, bringing up the rear with a ten dog team. At about 1:00 AM, we were thirteen miles from the kennel and running on the trail that follows the natural gas pipeline. Danny was about 200 yards ahead of Caleb, and I was following only about 50 yards behind Caleb, so a space of 250 yards encompassed our three teams.

As Danny reached the top of a very small rise, he sighted a moose on the trail at the top of the next small rise. As we normally did in such cases, Danny slowed his team (which usually speeds up at the sight of a moose) and began to shout at it. The moose did not get off the trail as usual, so Danny stopped and continued to make noise until the moose slowly moved off the trail. I should note that moose like to be on the packed trails as much as possible because walking is much easier when deep snows cover the woods. The fact that the moose didn't want to readily get off the trail wasn't a real problem in itself, but once he did leave the trail and Danny started past, he immediately charged back onto the trail and began to chase Danny. However, the moose quickly broke off pursuit and went back into the woods right at the top of the small rise where Danny first saw him.

Mushers use battery powered head lamps to see the dogs and the trail at night. The dogs are able to smell, feel, and sense the trail without the aid of the light, but sometimes they don't take the correct trail, and mushers need to be able to see the trail markers at night just to be sure. Headlamps are also good safety measures to make teams visible to snowmobilers.

During the Iditarod, about 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness exist because the race runs in March right before the spring equinox.

Danny realized that the moose was beginning to get a little impatient with people passing by, so he flashed his head lamp in the direction of Caleb and me. I saw this flashing and realized that he must be warning me about a moose and immediately flashed my light back. Caleb never saw the warning because he was at the base of the small rise where the moose was standing in the trees. Just as I finished flashing my light, I looked to see Caleb 50 yards in front of me on the top of the rise. From his left side, the moose came out of trees and ran directly into Caleb, knocking him and his sled completely on their sides with the sickening sound of solid bone meeting solid bone. Imagine the sound of football players colliding without pads (or just a friendly game of rugby).

Caleb amazingly was able to hang on to his sled, and had the presence of mind to yell to his dogs to keep moving and pull him out from under the feet of the moose, who had started to jump up and down trying to stomp Caleb. Some switch had flipped in the moose's brain, and it was going for the kill. The only way to stop the moose was to shoot it.

Danny had also seen Caleb get hit and immediately pulled his pistol from his sled and began to look for a clear shot at the moose. But finding a clear shot was not easy because one moose, 29 dogs, and three humans all were along the same straight stretch of trail, and the snow on the side of the trail was deep and hard to move in. The only clear shot that Danny could take was to shoot at the hind quarters of the moose. This was not a lethal area, but he hoped it would stop the moose from continuing to attack Caleb. He fired at the moose, and then again, and again, and the moose backed away and headed back to the top of the rise where it first hit Caleb. Danny pulled on the trigger a fourth time, but the trigger would move. The gun was jammed! (We found out later is was a problem with improperly seated bullets in the ammunition he was using).

After I saw the moose hit Caleb, I stopped my team and pulled my own gun, but I didn't go chasing after the moose because I didn't want to run into any shots coming from Danny or Caleb. The rise was between my team and I and the rest of the dogs, the moose, and Danny and Caleb. All I could see was the occasional sweep of the beam from a headlamp, and all I could hear were three gunshots. Then, as a result of Danny's shots, the moose reappeared on the top of the rise, and I saw an apparition that I can still see clearly today--nearly three years later. The moose stood broadside on the top of the rise, and it was backlit by the beams from Danny's and Caleb's headlamps. Steam formed from the dogs' hot breaths had filled the air, and the shadow of the moose was projected, larger than life, right above me in the vapor. It was a surreal hologram. My dogs saw the shadow too, and Cuda and Emmie, my leaders, actually turned the team around in fright, but I turned them back to face the moose and told them to stay. Danny and Caleb were yelling for me to come to their aid, and I didn't want the dogs running in the other direction while I was away.

The moose had gone back down the rise toward Caleb's dog team, and I ran to the top of the rise, yelling to Danny and Caleb not to shoot while I did so. When I got to the top of the rise, I saw Danny's team stopped at the top of a hill 60 yards distant with Caleb laying in the snow next to Danny's sled, yelling at the top of his lungs for us to kill the moose. Caleb's team was stopped in the depression between the rise I was on and the hill that Caleb was on, and the moose was standing beside the trail right next to the middle of Caleb's team. Danny came up to me and said that he was going to try to move Caleb's team up the hill so that the dogs were not in danger of behind trampled by the moose and so that we had an easier shot at the moose, who was wounded and very mad. Danny yelled to Caleb to try to move his team forward so that Caleb's team could get further from the moose. Caleb, leaning against the sled for support, pulled out the snowhook anchoring Danny's team and commanded the dogs slowly forward as Danny did the same with Caleb's team. I stood "cover" ready to shoot the moose if it tried to attack Danny or the dogs.

Caleb's team, under Danny's control, was able to get passed the moose, but when Danny went by the moose, the moose immediately charged Danny. Danny jumped off the sled, and tried to get away, but was bogged down by the soft snow on the side of the trail. The moose, a two-year-old bull who had already shed his antlers, bowed his head and moved it upward in one huge thrust, catching Danny's back side and throwing him into the snow. I could do nothing but watch. I had no safe shot at the moose. "My God, he's charging at our lights," I said to myself. The moose was starving and delusional, and he perceived our headlamps to be a threat. He was aiming for our heads.

Danny was able to scramble to his feet and get away from the moose, and I was able to get into position on the side of the trail to where I had a safe shot. But it was hard to pull the trigger the first time. The confusion, darkness, and fear led me to question my judgment, and darkness meant that I couldn't know exactly where I was aiming--I could only aim for the biggest part of the moose. "Know your target and beyond," I reminded myself, quoting my hunter's education training from when I was 12. "Okay, I'm sure. No dogs or people are behind the moose--only trees." I fired three times. The moose remained standing, and Caleb was still shouting at Danny and I to shoot the moose.

Danny appeared at my side. I handed him the gun and told him to shoot. It was thirty below, and my hands were numb, and I wasn't confident in my ability to kill the moose without knowing where exactly I was shooting. Danny took the gun and moved to a slightly different angle hoping that he would have better luck. He didn't, and the moose moved down the trail so it was again standing in the middle of Caleb's team, which stopped when Danny got hit by the moose. Now my gun was empty and in Danny's hands, and I had the extra ammunition, but the moose was between Danny and I. Danny's gun was jammed, and had been lost in the snow when the moose hit him. Only Caleb's gun, tucked safely away in his sled, was available, and Caleb was yelling at us to get it and use it.

I moved to his sled and started to open up the cargo bag while trying to cover my light so that the moose wouldn't see me and come toward me. But the moose did see me, and it started to walk down the team toward me. Luckily the moose was going into shock, and it wasn't moving with its earlier speed. I was able to get Caleb's gun out, and by the time I did, the moose was beside Caleb's sled, with me two feet away on the back of it. I was literally eye-to-eye with a moose. I moved to the other side of the sled in order to keep it between the moose and me. Then, I cocked Caleb's gun, raised it to the moose's head (which was just beyond my outstretched arm), and fired. The first shot must have missed because the moose did nothing, but the second shot was the coup de grace, and the moose painlessly fell at my feet right next to Caleb's sled. He was so big that his head was by the back of the sled, and his hind legs nearly reached the wheel dogs nine or ten feet away.

The moose was down, and the attack was over. Although this description took me a full half hour to write, and undoubtedly took you, the reader, several minutes to read, the attack likely lasted less than five minutes, and I hope those are the only five minutes of combat I ever see.

As soon as it was over, we made sure Caleb was okay. He was very shaken, and was going into shock due to his collision with the moose, but he didn't appear to have any major injuries. We packed him in Danny's sled inside two sleeping bags. We looked over the dogs. They were all a bit shaken up, and some of them had blood on them, but we were able to determine that the blood came from the moose and not from the dogs because the dogs were wearing coats. The blood was only on the top side of the coats, meaning that all of the dogs escaped injury, even though the moose was jumping and stomping near the dogs. We divided Caleb's team between Danny's team and my own and headed for home as quickly as we could.

A little less than an hour and a half later, we were back in the dog yard helping Caleb out of the sled and into the house. Danny and I then unhooked all the dogs and brought them to their houses, but we left all of our gear and equipment sitting in the dog yard. It was 3 AM, and we were both very worn out.

Caleb was just fine after the moose incident and went on to run in his first Iditarod the following year. This is his team as they make their way through Rainy Pass. Thanks to Jeff Shultz for the photo.

Caleb turned out to be just fine, although he did have some problems with his sternum for some time after the attack. I think the moose may have broken some of the cartilage that connects his ribs to his sternum. But Caleb didn't complain. He's tough, and he still insists that he could have driven his own team home after the attack. Danny and I simply shake our heads.

As for the moose, we notified the Alaska State Troopers, and they took our statement and gave us a pile of paperwork to fill out. State law allows people to shoot animals "in defense of life and property," and we definitely figured we were within the law. The troopers agreed, and they were nice enough to go out to the scene of the attack and get the moose and bring it to a needy family. Normally that would have been our job, but we still had lots to take care of.

As they say, "All's well that ends well." And we have all lived to run the Iditarod, and now Caleb is married to a musher from Montana, and Danny and I are attending college and running dogs.

Below is all I wrote about it in my training journal the day after it happened. I think I was still a bit shaken by the whole event as I am not usually one to make understatements.

"While we were on our way home, we ran into problems with a moose. It charged Caleb and knocked him over then chased him and tried to kick him. It also charged and hit Danny. They are both fine, but we had to shoot the moose to prevent it from hurting any of the dogs or from going after us any more. It gave us a good scare. But the important thing is that we and the dogs are all fine. Alaska is still a wild place."