Iditarod officials on Wednesday imposed a two-hour time penalty on musher Dallas Seavey for not properly gutting a moose he killed during the race earlier this week. Race Marshal Warren Palfrey convened a three-person panel of race officials to investigate the circumstances surrounding the death of the moose, which became tangled up with Seavey and his dog team early Monday, about 12 hours after the race officially started, per the AP. One dog was injured in the encounter and flown back to Anchorage for care. If a musher kills a big game animal like a moose, caribou, or buffalo in defense of life or property during the race, rules require they gut the animal and report it to officials at the next checkpoint.
Seavey, a five-time Iditarod champion, encountered the moose shortly after leaving the Skwentna checkpoint. He shot and killed it at 1:32am local time Monday. According to the panel, Seavey spent about 10 minutes at the kill site, then mushed his dog team about 11 miles before camping on a three-hour layover. The team then departed at 5:55am for the next checkpoint, arriving in Finger Lake at 8am, where Seavey reported the kill. "It fell on my sled; it was sprawled on the trail," Seavey told a television crew at Finger Lake, where he urged race officials to get the moose off the trail. "I gutted it the best I could, but it was ugly," he said. An Iditarod statement said "the animal was not sufficiently gutted by the musher."
The Iditarod can impose time penalties if a majority of the three-person panel agrees a rule was broken and that a competitive advantage was gained. Penalties can range up to a maximum of eight hours per infraction, and time penalties can be added to mandatory layovers each musher must take during the race or to a musher's final time after they reach Nome. Officials say the two-hour penalty will be added to Seavey's mandatory 24-hour layover. The moose, meanwhile, was retrieved and its meat salvaged and processed. Iditarod associates in Skwentna were distributing the food. Seavey had been leading the Iditarod on Wednesday, the first musher to leave the checkpoint in the mining ghost town of Ophir, about 350 miles into the race.
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