Get off the tracks when the train is coming. Moose are fully capable of ruining your day and maybe even the rest of your life. Standing anywhere from 6-8 feet high at the shoulder, weighing well into the 1,000 plus pound category, having four rock hard hooves, not to mention the bulls grow enormous paddle-like antlers, it shocks me that humans still try and mess with these beasts.
But time and time again, we’ve seen people think they’re some large domesticated pet, and get put in their place when they get too close. This dweeb with a cellphone is the perfect example. I don’t know what goes through some people’s minds, I mean did you see the size of that bull?
Well, sometimes people get close to these guys through no fault of their own, which doesn’t make it any safer, as we see in this video from Idaho. According to EastIdahoNews, a man named Jeremiah Bigelow was riding snowmobiles with 4 other people when they noticed a large moose on their trail. They tried to stop and give the animal some space, but somehow one of the people, Jeremiah’s brother, got separated from the group.
His brother had tried to distract the moose, who at first charged Jeremiah, but pulled up before ramming him. Jeremiah gave us a rundown of the incident in the caption of his Facebook post.
“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.”
It was at that point that he took out his phone and started recording. It was also at that point that his brother turned from a distraction to a target.
The moose took off in a sprint directly at his brother, who had been standing on top of his sled waving his arms. He tried to put it in gear and take off, but there was no time and he was forced to bail at the last second to avoid being trampled underneath the powerful animal.
“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.”
Fortunately, that was all the excitement for the day and neither the moose nor any people were injured or worse.
This is just another reminder that even with all of our fancy tools and toys, humans can’t compete with the beasts of nature.
