If you needed anymore proof that moose are fully capable of running you over, then here you go.
It all went down last Wednesday in Palisades, Idaho, when a massive moose charged directly towards the front rider of a group of five out snowmobiling.
You can see in the blood pumping video the moose ease its way towards the front rider, and sure enough, beelines right for the snowmobile. Luckily, the rider was able to jump out of the way in the nick of time, but was only inches away from severe injury.
One of the riders, 44-year-old Ririe resident Jeremiah Bigelow, was the one who filmed the wild scene right after the moose charged him first, according to EastIdahoNews.com.
He shared the video to Instagram, and gave a rundown of the story in the caption, and how it was his brother who is seen getting charged at:
“So… this humbled us. We were riding and my brother got ahead of us. A moose came onto the trail and got in between us. I had my son and two other friends with us. We stopped. Moments before I started filming, the noise charged us but stopped 20’ from us. That scared me. Moose are huge.
I had put my snow machine in reverse (that’s the beeping noise) but I could not back up because my boy was right behind me on an older sled that did not have reverse. My brother saw what had happened and was trying to draw the moose’ attention away from us. Well… he did.”
Once the brother got the attention of the moose, it seemed like they may be out of harm’s way… guess again:
“It looked like the moose was going to step off the trail into the woods for a minute, but it changed its mind and did a sudden charge. My brother thought he could hit the throttle and get out of there but the engine died when he did.
Had my brother not jumped when he did, he would have been crushed under the full weight if the moose against the handle bars.
I raced ahead in case he attacked again, but the moose decided it was done and ran off as I approached.”
Ultimately, the crew learned a valuable lesson:
“Lesson learned… brother should have continued on and given it more space. We should have gotten our sleds turned around as well. Bad scenario with an okay outcome.
Moose was unharmed and I saw it later walking just fine. Scary.”
Holy moly… coming in WAY hot.
The average weight of a male moose (like the one in the video) ranges anywhere between 840 to 1,500 pounds, and can do some serious damage if they charge and trample you.
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game says that moose buff typically charge pretty frequently, although they normally don’t charge snowmobilers.
However, this was one of those rare cases where one did.
