Well, that moose probably heard them coming from over a mile away. But then, I guess I’ve never come across a snowmobile rigged for silent running. Down periscope.
When he first saw the critter he should have behaved as the intruder he was, and shown some patience. He was carrying a gun, indicating he was prepared for ‘local resistance’; quite possibly aware of the danger of getting anywhere near a moose, and one possibly defending nearby offspring.
I spent most of my life raising livestock. I hate to see meat wasted. Hunting for food is one thing. Killing one because a guy has to get his internal combustion engine kicks by hauling his butt around in moose territory.......well, ...rant off.
We are at the top of the food chain, not the moose. Humans own the woods and the animals in it.
The moose was a young bull. The chance of “offspring” being near is just about nil.
I suspect that the snowmobilers triggered a “predator response”. The moose probably reacted to them as it would to wolves.
Of course, it is possible to imagine scenarios where the bull was not killed. It is as easy to imagine scenarios where the snowmobiler was killed.
Are moose valuable food animals? Yes, I dislike seeing waste. We do not know what happened to the moose meat. Maybe it was salvaged for human consumption. If not, the ravens and wolves fed well.
Moose are not endangered. They are not rare. They are not people.
Looks like the snowmobiler may have been the one protecting offspring. From another forum:
“I’m not a snowmobile expert, but judging by the looks of the trail as seen on the video, I know that I would have made about 5 or 10 feet backwards and that would have been it...stuck. I fully agree that waiting would have been ideal, but I think that gunning the engine a touch and consequently lurching forward a bit could reasonably be expected to convince the moose to move on. In this case it didn’t work, and he had a problem. Later in the video it becomes visible that there was a second sled behind him. Who knows how close behind, and if that affected his decision? Also, a comment made on another forum indicated that the gent in question had his young son on the machine with him, changing the picture a bit.:
http://forums.accuratereloading.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/8521043/m/8211067791?r=7871097791#7871097791