5-time Iditarod champion Dallas Seavey kills and guts a moose that got entangled with his dog team

A veteran musher had to kill a moose after it injured his dog shortly after the start of this year’s Iditarod, race officials said Monday.

A veteran musher had to kill a moose after it injured his dog shortly after the start of this year’s Iditarod, race officials said Monday.

Dallas Seavey informed the officials with the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race early Monday morning that he was forced to shoot the moose with a handgun in self-defence.

This came “after the moose became entangled with the dogs and the musher,” a statement from the race said.

Seavey, who is tied for the most Iditarod wins ever at five, said he urged officials to get the moose off the trail.

“It fell on my sled, it was sprawled on the trail,” Seavey told an Iditarod Insider television crew. “I gutted it the best I could, but it was ugly.”

Seavey, who turned 37 years old on Monday, is not the first musher to have to kill a moose during an Iditarod. In 1985, the late Susan Butcher was leading the race when she used her axe and a parka to fend off a moose, but it killed two of her dogs and injured 13 others. Another musher came along and killed the moose.

Butcher had to quit that race but went on to win four Iditarods. She died from leukemia in 2006 at the age of 51.