Family escapes injury after striking massive moose in Manning Provincial Park

CAWSTON – A Cawston family is lucky to have escaped without injury after colliding with a moose on the weekend.

Kevin Klippenstein says he was travelling back from the Lower Mainland on Highway 3 Saturday, Jan. 20, around 6 p.m. with his wife Annamarie and their two kids when they had a too-close encounter with a moose near the community of Eastgate in Manning Provincial Park.

“I saw this car heading towards me, suddenly pull over to the side of the road on my side. I slowed down, wondering why he was pulling over, when a moose suddenly came charging after me, right down the centre of the highway. I tried to avoid hitting it, but it caught the passenger side of the front of the truck,” Klippenstein says.

The driver of the other vehicle circled around and came back to the Klippenstein's 2015, one ton GMC Sierra pickup.

“He says to me, ‘He got you too?’” Klippenstein says, noting the man’s front windshield was shattered and passenger side destroyed.

“I guess the moose was ticked after hitting the other vehicle, and decided to attack me,” he says, adding the animal was massive, requiring a front end loader to remove it from the highway right of way.

No injuries were reported in either collision, but Klippenstein says his kids were a bit traumatized by the incident

He says he was towing a trailer and had reduced his speed considerably just prior to running into the moose.

Klippenstein says everyone he’s talked to, including emergency personnel, insurance brokers and others have expressed surprise no one was hurt in the incident.

He credits the hood on the truck, which popped open and locked in that position, with deflecting the moose from smashing the windshield and ending up in the passenger compartment.

Neither animal nor machine survived the encounter. The moose died and Klippenstein’s truck was written off.

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