Watch: Maine wardens, shed hunters rescue moose trapped neck-deep in mud

Two shed hunters and two game wardens rescued a female moose trapped in a deep muddy spring in Maine last week. Dustin Reynolds and Ryan Murphy, both of Harrington, were looking for deer antlers in a Columbia swamp when they found the moose neck-deep in mud, according to a Facebook post by the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife. Reynolds’ dog alerted them to the stuck animal about 2,000 feet from the road.

https://www.facebook.com/mefishwildlife/videos/10156061319533609/

“The moose had fallen into a spring hole, and had sunk right up to her shoulders, and she couldn’t get out,” said Maine Game Warden Bayley Grant in the post. The spring was six feet across and nearly 10 feet deep.

The hunters called Grant after discovering the moose. He brought along a hand-operated winch, a tow strap, 20 feet of nylon rope, and fellow Game Warden Scott Osgood. The wardens first used a large stick to free the moose’s front legs out of the muck.

A mobile video attached to the Facebook post shows the rescuers slowly pulling the bellowing moose out of the mud with a winch. With the moose fully surfaced, they saw that the moose’s hind legs were stuck on some roots.

“That’s what got her in the first place,” says a voice in the video.

They hacked away at the roots with an ax, and, once the wardens cut the rope, the moose was finally free and quickly took off into the forest. Grant said the animal likely wasn’t stuck for more than eight hours.

“It may be the first time in my career that the moose lived,” Grant said. “Too often they are weakened by brainworm, or have a broken leg, and they don’t survive. This one did.

“It’s a moose story with a happy ending.”