A moose attack, an injured dog, an improper gutting: drama at Alaska’s Iditarod, explained

This year’s Iditarod sled dog race in Alaska got off to a bumpy start.

Mushers and their teams of 16 dogs, who train year-round to race across a 1,000-mile stretch of ice and snow, try to prepare for all eventualities during the treacherous journey across Alaska. But they weren’t quite prepared for the twists and turns of this year’s race.

It was particularly tough for Dallas Seavey, five-time champion. He first encountered a moose that attacked his dogs and injured one of them, before Seavey shot and killed the moose. Subsequently, Seavey was punished for not properly gutting the elk as required by racing rules.

For those just catching up on all the dogsledding drama, here’s what you need to know.

Is everyone okay?

So it seems. One of Seavey’s dogs, Faloo, was injured and flown to Anchorage for emergency veterinary care. She “arrived in critical condition and underwent surgery shortly after,” Seavey’s kennel wrote in a Facebook update, but has since been recovering well. She has been allowed to return home.

Who was the troublesome moose?

Seavey may not have been the first musher to encounter this particular elk. Racer Jessie Holmes, who had been ahead of Seavey, told Iditarod Inside that he also saw an angry moose on a narrow part of the trail and tried to run past it.

“He started getting up and going after the back dogs,” he said, before kicking at him. So Holmes struck back. “I just punched him in the nose because that was the only thing I could think of,” he said. “He stopped chasing us and stopped kicking us, and we just drove past. It all happened so damn fast. It was actually the scariest thing that ever happened to me on a dog team.”

What happened after Seavey killed the moose?

Several mushers coming after Seavey came across the carcass on the trail and had to lead their dogs over it. “I can’t say I’ve ever led a team of 16 dogs over a moose, so that was pretty interesting,” musher Bailey Vitello told Insider. “So check that one off the bucket list – I don’t know if I want to do it again, but it was cool.”

How often do mushers encounter elk?

“I don’t know if it’s common, but I wouldn’t say it’s unusual,” said Sarah Keefer, who helped last year’s Iditarod champion Ryan Redington train his racing dogs and is a musher herself. Typically, mushers are able to resolve such encounters without firing weapons, she said. But like an aggressive one moosewhich can weigh up to 725 kg (1,600 pounds), mushers must defend themselves.

In 2022, rookie musher Bridgett Watkins and her sled team were attacked by a bull elk while training, days before the race started. She emptied her gun and shot the animal’s chest, but that wasn’t enough to kill the moose, who stomped her dogs for 50 minutes. “The helplessness I felt was terrible,” she told Alaska Public Media. She eventually asked a friend for help, who arrived in a snowmobile and killed the moose with a rifle. Four of her dogs were seriously injured, but all survived, and Watkins took part in the race.

In the 1985 Iditarod, musher Susan Butcher was in the lead when she encountered a moose that she fended off with an ax and a parka. Two of her dogs died during the encounter and 13 were injured.

What is the correct way to gut a moose?

The Rule 34 of Iditarod states that “in the event that an edible big game animal (i.e. elk, caribou, buffalo) is killed in defense of life or property, the musher must gut the animal and report the incident to a race official at the next checkpoint” . When subsequent teams arrive on site, they must assist with the stripping. “No teams are allowed to pass until the animal has been gutted and the musher has killed the animal.” After the animal is field-dressed, the musher must “report the incident to a race official at the next checkpoint.”

The rule aligns with statewide hunting rules, which require hunters to salvage all edible meat from animals they kill, reflecting “the high value Alaskans place on game meat, ethical hunting and respectful treatment of game animals ” according to the Department of Fish and Game. .

Seavey told it Iditarod Insider at a checkpoint after his encounter with moose: “I stripped it as best I could, but it was ugly.” The hacking job apparently did not go down well with a three-person panel of race officials, who found that “the animal had not been sufficiently gutted by the musher.” In a press release, the Iditarod Trail Committee helpfully defined “gutting” as “the removal of the intestines and other internal organs of (a fish or other animal) before cooking it.”

Still, the elk was retrieved, the meat processed and distributed in Swetkana, a village of about 60 residents along the Iditarod trail.

What does Seavey’s punishment mean for his chances of winning this year?

Seavey was given a two-hour penalty, which will be added to the mandatory 24-hour rest he and his team take in Cripple, Alaska, about 420 miles into the race. At this stage, when the fastest mushers are about halfway through their 1,000-mile journey, it’s hard to say who will finish first – and with what lead time.

Is the race always this dramatic?

The race was on Founded in 1973 to revive a dog sledding culture that began to die out with the advent of snowmobiles and airplanes. For generations, Alaska Natives had relied on dog sleds to transport supplies across vast areas of the snowy, frozen landscape, and the breed’s founders hoped to save the mushing dog breeds that had been bred to withstand extreme temperatures and long-distance running.

“This idea was to preserve the sport and raise dogs that will continue the lifestyle and culture that has existed in Alaska for thousands of years,” said Keefer, who hopes to participate in the race himself in the coming years. “It’s about preserving this tradition and culture.”

The race route cross through the lands of the Athabascan, Iñupiaq, and Yup’ik peoples, who have hunted and traveled the trail for generations. Colonists later used it to supply gold mining towns and transport ore to the bay. It has never been a sport for the faint of heart.

While Keefer says conditions have been fairly smooth this year, the race is increasingly marred by unpredictable weather as global warming brings unusual conditions to the Arctic. Races have been shortened or rerouted in years when there has not been enough snow to start the race.

The 2017 Iditarod was marred by a doping scandal. Seavey’s dogs tested positive for a banned substance, the opioid painkiller tramadol, after he finished in second place. Seavey denied feeding his dogs the substance, saying their food may have been sabotaged and officials could not prove he acted deliberately. He retained his title in second place.