From the lighter side of the saddle ...

Moose Triggers Multi-vehicle Incident In Northern Minnesota

Two teens were in a compact car headed north on Highway 53 near Virginia when a moose wandered onto the road and they hit it. Two other vehicles were also involved.

VIRGINIA, Minn. — A wayward moose caused a crash that eventually involved three vehicles and five people in Northern Minnesota Saturday. 

The State Patrol website says two teenagers were driving north on Highway 53 near Virginia shortly before 9 p.M. When a moose entered the roadway and they hit the animal with their Kia Forte, a compact vehicle. Investigators say the Kia suffered heavy damage, injuring a 16-year-old passenger who was taken to St. Mary's-Essentia Hospital in Duluth. Her injuries are described as non-life threatening. 

The 16-year-old male driver of the Kia was uninjured. 

After the initial impact, a 17-year-old motorist following the Kia also struck the moose but both he and another teen were uninjured. A third vehicle, an SUV driven by a 43-year-old from Aurora, tried to avoid the incident and ended up careening into the ditch. That person suffered no injuries. 

There is no official word on whether the moose survived the incident. 

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Two Moose Likely Roaming In Region

NEW ULM — Minnesota Department of Natural Resources' regional staff suspect there's more than one moose on the move in the region this week.

"We've been discussing everything we've put together, and we strongly suspect there are two," said Dan Ruiter, the Department of Natural Resources information officer for the state's southern region.

"We are hoping they are just young males looking for new territory ... That they aren't sick," he said.

Officer Matthew Gangelhoff said it's been several days since the Lake Crystal Police Department has received reports of a moose on the outskirts of town. The young bull that recently spent a few days across the road from POET bioprocessing company apparently is now heading toward the Minnesota-South Dakota border. He was last seen near POET's grounds around Oct. 11-12.

Unconfirmed sightings have tracked him near Nicollet and Courtland. On Thursday, an animal fitting that bull's description was photographed running across a harvested field in rural New Ulm.

"A moose was spotted near my hometown, Lake Wilson, on Saturday," Ruiter said. "It looks like he's heading straight west along Highway 30."

Odds are slim the reports are for the same animal because the calls came in from within a 100-mile radius.

Ruiter said when local Minnesotans spot a moose, they can call in a report at: 507-386-3920.

If either moose's westward journey includes a climb through and over the Buffalo Ridge's steep terrain into South Dakota, he will find himself in the territory of an expert in the deer family species, Alces alces.

William Severud is an assistant professor in South Dakota State University's Department of Natural Resources Management in Brookings. A Twin Cities native, Severud saw his first moose years ago at Voyageur National Park.

The young bull's visit to Lake Crystal was one of a handful of unexpected sightings of male moose throughout the southern and western regions of the state this fall, Severud said.

He guessed they have been searching for mates.

"This is the time of year when young males are in rut," he said.

Severud said it's also a possibility they are victims of brainworms. The animal reported near Lake Crystal as well as in Iowa and Nebraska appears to be "quite lost." An inability to navigate is one indication that an animal's brain is infested with a parasite.

Although a moose may look healthy and is able to move around and to eat, eventually a victim's nervous system will shut down, Severud said. "As things progress, infected moose become paralyzed."

If a moose dies along its errant trail, a scientist's hope is that whoever finds its body files a report with authorities.

"Then its brain and blood can be tested," Severud said.

If the region's "moose on the loose" make it to SDSU alive, they would not be the first of the species to visit Brookings.

"Two years ago, a moose was on campus running around on the football field. Lots of people made videos of him," Severud said.

Watch: Guide Frees Moose Calf Trapped In Fence With Angry Cow Nearby

Once Beronio worked the calf free, he helped massage bloodflow back into the leg that had been stuck.

On Friday evening, Utah hunting guide Dave Beronio posted footage of himself rescuing a moose calf from a wire entanglement in the Uinta Mountains on Oct. 2. With both his client and the calf's unhappy mother looking on, Beronio worked quickly to free the calf from what would have otherwise been certain death.

"We were going out to an area where we were going to glass for elk, and I see a cow moose with a very small bull. So I stop the truck to give the client a chance to see a moose up close," Beronio, 48, tells Outdoor Life. "When we stopped, they were only 30 yards away from the truck. And the mom was watching us, but she wouldn't move. When I looked over the hood, I saw the body of the calf laying under this fence. He had been in my blind spot. And I realized that was why mom was standing right there and not moving."

At first, Beronio thought the calf was dead. Only when he rubbed the calf's face did he discover the young male was still alive, although he likely wouldn't be for much longer if Beronio didn't intervene. The calf had caught a front hoof in the wire fence and twisted himself into an awkward, immobile position. His head was downhill, his left front leg was twisted up in the air, and his rear hind leg was caught between the left front leg and his barrel. If starvation or restricted blood flow didn't claim him first, nearby predators would have.

At first, Beronio thought the moose calf was dead.

To make matters trickier, Beronio had to watch over his back while he worked. The angry cow stalked back and forth, responding to her calf's distress calls.

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Beronio, who has been guiding for 17 years, usually keeps wire cutters in his truck. But he had taken a different vehicle out on this particular day and was forced to get creative. First, he tried to wedge a hatchet between the two pieces of wire to create some space for the calf to wiggle out its large hoof. But when that didn't work, the calf let out more bone-chilling distress calls to the nearby cow, who approached Beronio ready to charge.

"Mom had jumped the fence and, at one point, she came running down the road at me and stopped," Beronio says. "I chased her off two or three times and went right at her, trying to spook her off, but then one time she put her ears down and came in a little too close. I know they can catch some speed pretty quick and they can do some damage and kill people, so I was trying to take that into consideration. I told my client to get behind the door of the vehicle, just to be in a safe place."

Eventually, Beronio was able to drive a rock between the wires to create the space necessary to extract the calf's hoof from the tangle. He slowly worked the hoof out of the wire's tight grasp, looking over his shoulder at the cow the whole time. Once he worked the hoof free, he dragged the calf out from under the fence and immediately started trying to work blood flow back into the calf's body. By this point, the cow had calmed down and waited for her calf to stand up again.

Beronio massaged the calf's front quarter for roughly 10 minutes before it eventually stood up.

On shaky legs, the calf eventually made it to his hooves. The front left leg looked more shaky than the others, but after a few minutes, he reunited with the cow and started suckling before the two walked over the rise together.

"I really try to immerse the client in the little intricate details," Beronio says. "It's not just the hunt, it's everything going on around us. If you pay attention, you can really appreciate the wild places that we're in. We shot his elk a few days later, but he said his whole trip was made by watching what happened."

Watch Next: Texas Man Tries to Free a Deer Stuck in His Fence with a Pool Skimmer, Folding Chair

This wasn't Beronio's first run-in with young wildlife trapped in fences. He had to snip some wire in October 2020 to free an elk calf that he and a different client had watched get trapped as a herd barreled across the road. This calf was only trapped for a few minutes and sprang right back up after getting freed to rejoin the herd, unlike the moose calf who required a 10-minute massage before it could stand again.

"I guide a lot of clients, I hunt a lot myself, I'm part of a lot of kills. But in the back of my mind, I was like 'I wonder what this little animal is thinking. I wonder if it's going to remember this,'" Beronio says. "Getting up close to an animal you've killed is one thing. But when an animal is breathing on you, and looking into your eyes, and blinking, that's something else."

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