The wind chill in Bienfait, Sask., made it feel like –40 when Angie Tuffnell stepped outside to start her car. It was like just any other day, until it wasn’t.
“I heard her yelling,” said her son, Shawn Tuffnell. “I went running down the stairs … what I seen was a moose standing over top of her.”
A starving and cold moose was huddled against the house, tucked next to the warmth of a dryer vent. It didn’t take long before it attacked Angie.
A chaotic struggle ensued as Shawn decided to confront the animal head on, literally.
“My first instinct — that I didn’t think too well on — I walked out and punched it right in the face,” Shawn told CBC’s The 306.
The blow split the animal’s lip, but it didn’t back it off. The moose lunged, narrowly missing Shawn’s face. He grabbed a shovel, striking the animal three times, but the moose kept coming.
As he retreated into the house, the moose followed, pushing its front shoulders through the doorframe.
“He was right in the house floor … trying to get me,” Shawn said.
When the animal turned back toward his mother, who was still pinned on the frozen ground, Shawn grabbed it by the ears and nostrils. He wrestled the animal into a headlock, pinning its jaw against his stomach to avoid being bitten, using the doorframe as a shield against its hooves.
“I didn’t care what it was doing to me,” he said. “All I could think was just getting him blind so he couldn’t see her anymore.”
The ordeal ended only after his mother’s boyfriend finally brought a .22-calibre rifle. Shawn took the gun and fired multiple shots to take down the animal.
He first shot the moose in the eye to stop it from targeting his mother. Then he reloaded.
“I think give or take 15 bullets. I finally dropped him,” Shawn said.
A post-mortem exam by the Canadian Wildlife Health Cooperative later confirmed that the moose died from “multiple gunshot wounds to the head,” including one that finally penetrated the brain.
The exam confirmed Shawn’s suspicion that the moose was weak. The report found the animal had “no remaining fat stores.”
It wasn’t sick with rabies or chronic wasting disease; it was simply starving and seeking heat.
“He was hungry and starving,” Shawn said. “He was in survival mode.”
Ryan Brook, a moose expert and professor at the University of Saskatchewan, says while the attack is shocking, the behavior makes sense. In extreme cold, moose seek any thermal cover they can find.
“Moose are northern-adapted, but –50 is extreme for anything,” Brook said. “They are unpredictable. They can go from appearing calm to charging in a second.”
The Ministry of Community Safety said in a statement that the public should keep their distance from wildlife, but Brook notes that “distance” is becoming harder to find. Over the last 50 years, moose have expanded across Saskatchewan’s farmland.
“Every person in Saskatchewan is in moose habitat,” Brook said.
As for the Tuffnells, the encounter has left physical and emotional scars.
Angie is recovering from a deep leg wound where the moose stepped on her calf. Shawn escaped with a cracked rib and a large “goose egg” on his head that he didn’t even notice until the adrenaline wore off hours later.
“I’m not happy about killing the moose,” he said.
“But we’re all alive … It seemed like it had to be done.”
