Rarely do we carve out the time to cover all the “national park tourists acting like idiots” stories. If we did, we’d never get a chance to write about anything else. But this video of two drunk guys harassing a young moose, filmed by Jake Hopfensperger on March 29 outside a bar in Big Sky, Montana, rises above the mundanity of your everyday dumbass vs. wildlife footage. Maybe it’s the fact that the boys are clearly intoxicated that makes it so entertaining, or maybe it’s their completely unfounded self-confidence.
Either way, anyone even remotely familiar with moose behavior knows they should have heeded Hopfensperger’s warnings, which was mixed with a good amount of profanity.
The Build-Up
The video opens with the two boys, hands jammed in pockets, giggling and standing about 12 feet from the rear end of the young moose. The moose seems to be assessing a route over a large snowdrift. You can tell Hopfensperger’s been shouting at them before the footage started rolling because the first coherent thing that comes from one of the guys’ mouths is “Is it your moose?”
Hopfensperger starts tossing F-bombs out, trying to persuade the guys to leave the moose alone.
“It’s not my moose, but it’s a goddamn wild animal. Get the fuck away from it,” he shouts.
“Let it be wild,” another guy behind the camera chimes in.
Hopfensperger keeps going in on them. But the two guys have all the self-assuredness of, well, two drunken fools. They keep inching closer, chuckling, and shouting incoherent, muffled nonsense.
“See what happens,” Hopfensperger shouts. “See what the fuck happens.”
The Attack
Then the guys start faking like they’re going to touch the moose. While they’re staring back at Hopfensperger, the moose turns and eyes them.
“You wish it would hit me right now!” one of the guys shout. Hopfensperger and his friend admit that yeah, they do wish that. At this point, we all do, too.
One of the dudes taps the moose on the rump and turns to run, but slips in the process. The moose pivots on its hind legs, lowers its head with pinned ears, and starts stomping the fallen guy, who continues flailing on the ground.
“Yeah, get him! Get him!” Hopfensperger shouts, encouraging the stomping.
The Aftermath
Like a PG-13 movie, the whole scene disappears behind a parked car. We don’t really know how it ends. What we do know is that, according to Hopfensperger, the moose was unharmed. We also know that Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks is investigating the incident.
“This is a good example of what can happen when you’re too close to wildlife. Moose can be very defensive of their space … [an encounter like this] really causes stressful events for these animals,” MFWP’s Morgan Jacobsen tells MTN News. “We’ll do an investigation. There are laws in Montana that prohibit harassing wildlife.”
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In the caption to go with the video, Hopfensperger admits he’s not proud of cheering for the moose when it attacked the guys. But judging by the comments, he doesn’t seem to have offended anyone. One commenter lets him off the hook for his revenge-hungry encouragement:
“The only disappointment of this video is that you didn’t keep filming on the other side of the car.”