Moose killed after attacking sled
4 dogs recovering at vet; still in race, says state-born Alaskan
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A large bull moose spent more than an hour stomping on the sled dog team of a rookie Iditarod musher in the wilds of Alaska last week — and the attack didn’t end even after Bridgett Watkins emptied her gun into the animal.
She said on Facebook that the moose, after seriously injuring four of her dogs, wouldn’t leave and that the ordeal stopped only after she called friends for help and one showed up with a high powered rifle and killed the moose with one shot.
“This has been the most horrific past 24 hours of my life,” she posted after the Thursday moose attack on the Salcha River trail system near Fairbanks.
But just days later, her four dogs are on the mend and she’s back training with the others.
“This isn’t what I was planning for, but these dogs and myself have trained for so long and so hard for this race … when I walk back out to my dog yard and I have 12 perfectly healthy dogs out of the 16 and they look at me and all they want to do is run, how can I tell them no?” she told The Associated Press on Tuesday. “That would be selfish of me.”
“These are freaking amazing athletes that just survived probably the most traumatic experience of any dog team ever in history, and they’re survivors and they’re still pushing through,” she added.
Watkins said that the attack, first reported by the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, happened while she was on a 52-mile training run for the nearly 1,000-mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. It starts March 5 in Anchorage.
“As he charged me I emptied my gun into him and he never stopped,” she wrote on Facebook. “I ran for my life and prayed I was fast enough to not be killed in that moment. He trampled the team and then turned for us.”
Watkins said she and a friend who was trailing her on a snowmobile took refuge next to the snowmobile.
The moose stopped its charge toward them about 2 feet from the snowmobile and she managed to cut free six dogs that were tied to the machine. But the moose went back to her sled and began stomping the dogs that were still tethered to it — standing over the dogs and trampling them repeatedly for over an hour.
“I have never felt so helpless in my life,” Watkins wrote. “He would not leave us alone and he even stood over top of the team refusing to retreat.”
She called friends and the moose was shot and killed after one arrived with a rifle.
Alaska State Troopers had been preparing a helicopter to respond but stopped doing so after they were told the moose was dead, agency spokesperson Tim DeSpain said in an email.
Her four injured dogs were taken to a veterinarian in the nearby community of North Pole and are recovering, Watkins posted.
Watkins, a native of Arkansas who moved to Alaska when she was 5, is no stranger to mushing or its dangers. Her father and step-mother are well-known mushers Allen Moore and Aliy Zirkle.
Meat from the moose that attacked her dogs was donated to charity.