Musher Given Time Penalty For Not Properly Gutting Moose He Killed To Defend His Dogs During Iditarod
A musher was forced to kill a moose to defend himself and his dogs during the early stages of the well-known Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in Alaska. He's since been handed a lengthy time penalty, not for killing the moose, but what he apparently failed to do after the fact.
Dallas Seavey, who is tied for most Iditarod wins of all time with five, notified race officials on Monday that he was forced to kill a moose after it attacked and injured one of his dogs around 1:43 AM just outside of Skwentna, Alaska.
Seavey "was forced to dispatch a moose in self-defense after the moose became entangled with the dogs and the musher on the trail," officials said in a statement. "Seavey and his team were 14 miles outside of the Skwentna checkpoint on their way to the Finger Lake checkpoint."
Seavey later explained that the moose fell on his sled and after shooting it he "gutted it the best I could, but it was ugly."
(Photo by Lance King/Getty Images)
It turns out that race marshal Warren Palfrey and his three-person panel of officials found the gutting to be so ugly that it's worth handing Seavey a two-hour time penalty.
The panel determined that Seavey spent around 10 minutes at the kill site before pushing his dog team about 11 miles and taking a three-hour layover.
Gutting, by definition, means taking out the intestines and other internal organs. Rules require mushers to gut any big game animals they kill and report the situation at the next checkpoint.
A statement from the Iditarod said it had "been determined that the animal was not sufficiently gutted by the musher."
Seavey's two-hour penalty will be added to his mandatory 24-hour layover. He was leading the race as of Wednesday and left the latest checkpoint in Ophir after a brief 15-minute stop.
The Iditarod dates back to 1973 with mushers traveling from Anchorage to Nome over the course of anywhere from 8-15 days. Wind chill temperatures can drop all the way to -100 F.