‘I ran for my life.’ Moose tramples sled dogs on Alaska training run, woman says

On a 52-mile training run Feb. 3 with her sled dogs, Bridgett Watkins noticed a bull moose several hundred yards away.

That’s not unusual in Alaska, and normally moose give humans and dogs a wide berth, she told Outdoor Life. Not this time, though.

The moose kept reappearing through the trees, then finally showed up down the trail, she told the publication. Watkins stopped her team and got out the pistol she carries in the wild.

“As he charged me I emptied my gun into him and he never stopped,” Watkins wrote on Facebook. “I ran for my life and prayed I was fast enough to not be killed in that moment.”

Watkins took shelter behind a snowmobile driven by a friend who had accompanied her on the run, she wrote. Bleeding but undeterred, the moose trampled her dogs.

Then it charged the two humans again.

“We’re standing there and I said, ‘I’m out of bullets, I’m out of bullets, I have no more bullets’ … and I’m like, this is it,” she told Outdoor Life, noting that she owns larger firearms but didn’t expect trouble on a training run. “I can count the whiskers on his nose.”

The barking of her dogs distracted the moose, and it turned aside to attack them “repeatedly, for nearly (an) hour it continued,” Watkins wrote on Facebook.

“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.”

Finally she was able to contact another friend, who came to their rescue and killed the moose.

“Honestly, I think (the moose) just saw them as a pack of wolves that he was trying to kill,” Watkins told Outdoor Life. “Which I understand. In an animal’s mind, that’s what they were.”

Several of the dogs were seriously injured, including one whose survival was initially in doubt, but all are recovering, Watkins wrote in a later Facebook post.

“I am not throwing in the towel, I will not let this break me,” Watkins wrote in the update, saying she plans to continue training and racing sled dogs.

This story was originally published February 8, 2022 at 2:35 PM with the headline "‘I ran for my life.’ Moose tramples sled dogs on Alaska training run, woman says."