PALMER — A man was injured in an encounter with a moose at his home in Houston late Wednesday, Alaska State Troopers say.
The man was trampled by the animal after his dogs started barking and he went outside to check on them just before midnight, troopers said Thursday. He didn’t realize the moose was nearby because it was dark, they said.
The man needed immediate medical attention, troopers said. Medics responding to a 911 call from his wife took the man to a hospital where he was treated and released, they said.
Troopers on Thursday morning came to the man’s home, near King Arthur Drive, to investigate and notified the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. No moose were sighted after a patrol of the area, troopers spokesman Tim DeSpain said Thursday. Troopers and state biologists think the encounter was probably an isolated event, DeSpain said.
The man, who was in his 30s, ran across the moose in the yard of the home, DeSpain said.
Authorities say they’ve received numerous reports of aggressive moose in Anchorage and Southcentral Alaska due to deep snow and a lack of easily accessible food that’s stressing the animals, making them less tolerant of people, and pushing them into cleared areas.
Two Mat-Su residents, one a girl in Butte and the other a man in Willow, were injured in separate encounters with aggressive moose last month. Both animals were shot and killed after those incidents. A man walking his dog on the Kenai Peninsula was injured in late December when a moose charged him on a popular Soldotna trail system.
Earlier this week as the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race got underway, five-time champion Dallas Seavey reported that he shot and killed a moose several miles outside the checkpoint in Skwentna early Monday after it started attacking his dogs. Seavey was later penalized for “not sufficiently gutting” the animal.