Fatal Musk ox attack in Alaska

Dogs are horrible antagonizers to larger, dangerous animals. Two of our most recent bear attacks in my region, in my memory, were from dogs getting black bears in fight mode. Dogs book it, human gets mauled. Might sometimes be best to just leave dogs to their own bad decisions than intervene without skill or weapons on one’s part.

I was out biking in the North Cascades once and this guy’s dog took off for 10 minutes. Came herding back a pissed-off bear right at his owner! Funny, until it isn’t. :)

Apparently this happens all the time, as the dog was somehow bred to chase bears (or big animals in general) and herd them back to be hunted by the human. Not a good combo when human is old guy without any weapons.

Wish he would have kept his dogs on leash for that very reason. Quite irresponsible.

thanks David

you just made me spit coffee out my nose :)

Alaska seems like a dangerous place. ;-)  I’m not even slightly familiar with musk oxen, but as we all know, any animal can be dangerous under certain conditions. A local woman was seriously injured a few years ago when she came between a cow and her calf and was charged by the cow.

In Colorado, fatal animal attacks of any type are so uncommon that I don’t think the statistics are really meaningful. Occasionally someone will be killed by a mountain lion, black bear, moose, rattlesnake, spider, or dog, but I think the rates are well below one person per year for any particular animal. Even serious attacks are extremely rare on a per capita basis. One can worry about these things and try to prepare, but I feel that the probabilities are so small that I prefer to worry about other things.

Interesting. The lack of fatal polar bear attacks surprises me.

Do you know the moose stats? I’m sure lots more folks get killed by moose, but most of those are due to car strikes and not by getting your head kicked off in the backcountry.

Philip: Numbers from Maine.  In a 15-year period, 7,062 moose-vehicle collisions led to car occupant deaths 26 times.  7,062/26 = 270:1.  Versus deer-vehicle in the same period of 50,281/10 = 5,000:1.  So your life expectance is longer hitting deer 18 times than one moose.

Alaska

Canada saw 236 deaths from moose accidents, 123 from deer, and 6 from elk across those 15 years.

On the Kenai Peninsula, a good year is 220 moose kills on the highway, while a bad year (bigger snowfalls push them onto the roadways) is 400+.  Suggesting around 1 human fatality a year (using that ratio from Maine) which sounds about right.  The Kenai is about 10% of the state’s population, but we have more than our share of the state’s moose and of in-state and out-of-state tourists.  Statewide, there’s an average of 500 moose collisions, so we’re half of them.  Suggesting 2-3 human deaths from moose collisions each year, statewide.  Which matches numbers from the state: 500 collisions a year, 20% with some human injury, 0.5% human fatality.

” I prefer to worry about other things”

Yeah, in all the gun debates (is a .357 ever enough, a .44? or do you need 12-gauge slug, .300 Win Mag and larger?) around bear protection, I point out that (pepper spray is far more effective and) that there are 50x the drunk driving deaths as bear deaths annually, so forget the hand cannon and just bring a breathalyzer.

You could certainly make the case for humans being the most dangerous animal of all, anywhere. Alaska is sadly number one for rape and always in the top 10 for domestic violence. I worry about people the most, anywhere I go. I always chuckle when Americans who haven’t traveled outside the U.S. worry about Paris or London, or really most places they worry about. Our own cities are terrifying, some of them anyway.

We have musk ox here in Fairbanks, but separated from anyone by two fences. Occasionally someone thinks it smart to climb two fences to get closer. So far, they’ve gotten lucky.

The lack of fatal polar bear attacks surprises me too. I’ve heard from people who have worked and traveled near them that they are very persistent hunters.

Not surprised by the damage from moose collisions. They are so massive and tall. When driving at night in moose territory I was always much more concerned about them than about deer.

As dangerous as polar bears can be, the very few places where they overlap with humans, people take serious precautions (adults with shotguns during trick-or-treating).

I had a coworker who closed her eyes at the last moment, so can’t be sure, but by the light damage / scuffs to BOTH sides and roof of her Dodge Neon, apparently went under the belly and between the legs of a moose.  It’s certainly possible, although a tight fit.  I’ve looked across my driveway under the belly of a cow moose and over the roof of my Camry.

Squirrel in the road and you don’t have time to slow or assess all your options?  Hit it.  Dog?  Hit it.  Deer?  Maybe hit it.  Moose?  Vehicle in the roadway?  Put it in the ditch.  Snow berms make excellent crash pads.

We had a series of babysitters who managed to upgrade a perfectly nice 3-year-old Corolla to a brand new one by smacking into something.   Once it was a moose, at night while doing 55 mph on the highway.  I consoled her that she’d fed four poor families that winter (there’s a program to distribute the meat from such road kills).  The Corolla was within an inch of being a Corolla because its aerodynamic shape (versus the blunt front of a pick up or van) pushed the moose up and to the side over 5 feet.  A little different angle and then, yeah, “bigger is better”, but of people I’ve know with really close calls, a Neon and a Corolla had better outcomes than a F-250 would have.  The two times I’ve hit a moose I only lost a mirror (I missed the first moose by so much I almost entirely missed the SECOND moose) and a scuff on the front bumper (I’d slowed to 8 mph while he’d accelerated to 7 mph).