ST. DAVID, Maine — A 17-year-old shot and killed a moose that attacked him, his father, and their sled dogs during a snowstorm in Maine.
Caleb Hayes and his father, Jonathan, were returning from a training run with Caleb’s eight-dog sled team when they found a cow moose on a rampage on their property, The Bangor Daily News reported. The moose was stomping dog houses in the dog yard, but the dogs all escaped unhurt, The Associated Press reported.
The dog sled team then began pulling Caleb toward the moose, but the teenager refused to let go of the harness that connected him to the dogs, The Associated Press reported.
“I didn’t know moose growled until I was cowering on one side of my sled and she was standing on the other with her ears back,” Jonathan Hayes told The Bangor Daily News. “But honestly, I also saw fear in her eyes. We both felt sorry for her the entire time.”
The teenager was able to get away, and his father told him to take the snowmobile to get a gun from their neighbor, but instead the teen returned with a muzzleloader, The Associated Press reported. After a second try, Caleb returned with a rifle, and after two shots was able to take the animal down, The AP reported.
Caleb told The Bangor Daily News that during the entire ordeal he was thinking “to stay calm and to think straight, do not freak out and to get what was asked of me done.”
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