1,000-pound moose tangled in rope helped by wildlife officers, Colorado video shows

A moose with rope tangled in its antlers got help from Colorado wildlife officers who tracked the 1,000-pound animal, video shows.

The bull moose with blue rope wrapped around its antlers and neck was spotted in the Brainard Lake Recreation Area west of Boulder, according to Colorado Parks and Wildlife. The wildlife officers went to the area multiple times in hopes of finding the moose and helping it go free.

“It is a wild animal and still very mobile, so it can be challenging to catch up with it, then get close enough to tranquilize it,” the wildlife agency tweeted. “A few stars do need to align, but we will keep trying to track it down and free it of the entanglement.”

Area Wildlife Manager Jason Deutsch was tracking the moose.

“We have a lot of country to cover,” he said in a video update of the search on Friday. “This is the terrain it was last spotted in, but we have very tall willows and a couple miles of creek bottom here to cover where this moose might be.”

Later that day, the wildlife officers caught up with the moose. They found cuts from the rope on the moose’s chin and ears, but the rest of its body was in good condition, officials said.

Nighttime video shows the moose wandering through thick willows after the wildlife officers freed it from the rope.

A Colorado Parks and Wildlife spokesman said it’s unclear how the moose became tangled but doubts a person is to blame because “it would likely be the last thing they ever did,” KMGH reported.