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Five-time Iditarod champion Dallas Seavey told race officials he was forced to kill a moose in self defense on Monday after it injured one of his dogs during this year’s race, according to the Associated Press.
The veteran musher shot the moose with a handgun around 2 a.m. Monday morning after it “became entangled with the dogs and the musher,” per race officials.
Race rules dictated that Seavey gut the animal and report the incident to officials at the next official checkpoint. Any other mushers who encountered Seavey on the trail would have also been required to stop and help him gut the animal. Alaska State Troopers were informed of the situation and efforts were being made to salvage the animal’s meat.
“It fell on my sled, it was sprawled on the trail,” Seavey told Iditarod Insider. “I gutted it the best I could, but it was ugly.”
Musher Paige Drobny also confirmed the dead animal to race officals.
“Yeah, like my team went up and over it,” she said.
Race leader Jessie Holmes said he also encountered a moose at a similar point in the race and said he had to “punch a moose in the nose out there.”
Seavey is not the first musher to ever kill a moose in the history of the 1,000-mile dog-sledding race across Alaska. In 1985, four-time champion Susan Butcher had to defend herself with an axe from a moose before another musher came along and killed the animal, though not before it killed two of her dogs and injured 13 more.
One of Seavey’s dogs was injured and was transported to an Anchorage veterinarian.
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