ANCHORAGE — Two men from Ohio interrupted a life-or-death struggle between a moose and a wolf on a Kenai Peninsula trail this week, but it wasn't until after the wolf gave up the struggle and fled that things took a dangerous turn for the men, according to Alaska Wildlife Troopers.
That's when the cow moose charged the men, forcing one up a tree and the other behind a downed tree to avoid the injured animal. There they waited for four hours, the moose holding its ground the entire time, before help arrived and killed the animal, according to troopers.
Events began Thursday afternoon, when 31-year-old Sean Evans of Toronto, Ohio, and his cousin, Josh Clark, 30, of Scio, Ohio, were snowshoeing out to a cabin at Crescent Lake to spend some time snowboarding. The men came around a bend in the trail and were dipping underneath a fallen tree when they saw a spectacle crashing through the brush toward them from a hill about 20 feet away, said Clark, reached by cell phone Friday.
"The wolf had torn off some skin from the moose's neck and was hanging on its neck. The moose was making awful noises. We kind of looked at each other for three seconds and decided to start moving," Clark said. "The moose was trying to get rid of the wolf, and they started coming down the hill really fast at us. And so we split, we got out of the way, and they started fighting right where we had been standing."
The men told troopers they heard other wolves howling in the woods, though they saw only the one.
They dropped their packs and Clark hustled up a nearby birch tree, while Evans got behind the fallen tree, Clark said. The wolf apparently lost its appetite at the sight of the men and ran off. But the moose, which had injuries to its back legs and its neck, wouldn't leave even after they yelled and threw things at it, he said.
Clark said they weren't armed but wished they had been.
Read the full story at adn.com
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