Canadian Man Takes Down Attacking Moose With .22 Rifle

On January 22, Shawn was going about his morning after having spent the night at his mother’s house when he heard her screams coming from outside. Angie had ventured out to warm up her vehicle and encountered a moose tucked against the house’s dryer vent for reprieve from the numbing -40 wind chill.

Shawn sprinted outside and found the moose standing overtop his screaming mother. From a picture on Facebook (warning: it’s graphic), the animal appears to be a medium-sized bull whose antlers had already shed. He began yelling at the moose, but the animal turned and faced him, pinning its ears back in warning. Still, the moose didn’t back down, so Shawn opted to engage it in hand-to-hoof combat. “My first instinct —that I didn’t think too well on—I walked out and punched it right in the face,” he told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

The punch split the animal’s lip, according to Shawn, but it then turned and lunged at him. Shawn grabbed a shovel and swung, landing three good blows. He then retreated through the open door back into the house. The moose followed, shoving its way through the doorframe.

The animal was stuck for a moment, and Shawn took advantage by putting it in a headlock. “He ripped out of my hands, and he turned, he pinned his ears back, and he went to go back at my mom again, so I had to run two or three steps outside and grab him by the face,” Tuffnell told a reporter with local radio station 620 CKRM. “I had him by the nostrils and the lips, and pulled him back in the house.” Shawn used his bodyweight to pin the animal against the door.

Meanwhile, his mother’s boyfriend, Dave, had been tracking down a .22 rifle in the house, and brought it to Shawn at that exact moment.

In a Facebook post, Shawn recalls what happened next: “The first shot was in the doorway. I got the right eye then I had to go outside with him to get the other eye. First clip he was blind and I was starting to try and break the thick skull and get a bullet in the brain. Dave reloaded that clip faster than I have ever seen anyone load before! I shot the next 8-10 shots through the eye trying to get the right angle. Then I reloaded about 6 bullets (third clip of .22 bullets) and he turned his head to the left and I got a few bullets in the right spot and dropped him! He almost landed on mom. Thankfully he did not!”

In all, Shawn estimates he unloaded 15 rounds into the moose.

Later, a necropsy by the Canadian Wildlife Health Cooperative confirmed that at least one bullet had penetrated the animal’s skull, into the brain. It also found that the animal had already depleted its winter fat reserves.

Considering all the facts, Shawn doesn’t think the moose attacked out of anger. Rather, he believes the ungulate was starving, weak, and acting in self-defense. “He was in survival mode,” Shawn said.

In terms of injuries, Shawn walked away with a cracked rib and a bruised lump on his head, while his mother sustained a leg wound from being stepped on by the moose. Not a bad result, all said and done, for going fisticuffs with an 800-pound animal. With any luck, it was a one-and-done fight for the Tuffnell family.