A three-person panel convened by Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race race marshal Warren Palfrey on Wednesday to review Dallas Seavey’s fatal encounter with a moose earlier in the week determined that “the animal was not sufficiently gutted by the musher.”
For the infraction, the Iditarod Trail Committee said Wednesday, Seavey is receiving a two-hour time penalty, which will be added on to the 24-hour mandatory rest Seavey appears likely to take at the checkpoint of Cripple, 425 miles into the race.
Seavey reported that he’d
shot the moose outside of Skwentna early Monday after it began attacking his dogs, one of which had to be flown to Anchorage for emergency surgery after the incident. Upon arriving at the next checkpoint at Finger Lake, he told
Iditarod Insider, “I gutted it as best I could, but it was ugly.”
The Iditarod has explicit rules about dispatching large, edible wildlife in the course of the race, and deemed Seavey’s compliance to have been substandard.
According to the panel’s investigation, “approximately 10 minutes was spent at the site of the encounter.” He then mushed on for about 11 miles before stopping his team along the trail for a three-hour rest.
The carcass, meanwhile, remained in the trail, largely obscured because of a sharp turn, and multiple mushers said their teams had traveled over it.
The Iditarod Trail Committee didn’t provide specifics about what exactly was inadequate in Seavey’s hasty field dressing. It did note, “By definition, gutting: taking out the intestines and other internal organs of (a fish or other animal) before cooking it.”