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DEH CHO
The mystery of an unusual animal carcass spotted on the banks of the Mackenzie River has been solved.

A mysterious carcass found on the banks of the Mackenzie River north of Wrigley has been identified as a young male bison, likely from the Nahanni population. - photo courtesy of Raymond Horassi

Raymond Horassi was heading up the Mackenzie River with Herb Norwegian and his son on June 14 when, from a distance, they spotted what they thought was the carcass of a moose on the east bank of the Mackenzie River, north of Wrigley. On the way back on June 15, they boated closer to take a look.

"We realized it wasn't a moose," said Horassi, a Fort Simpson resident.

"We didn't know what it was."

Based on its hairless condition and its skin, the men decided it looked more like a water buffalo than anything else, but they knew that wasn't a realistic option. There was evidence of where birds had been trying to eat it, but they couldn't get through the skin, said Horassi.

Back in Fort Simpson, Horassi and Norwegian provided pictures and information about the mysterious animal to the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. Based on the pictures and the experience of a bison ecologist, the animal appears to be a young male bison, possibly two to almost three years old, said Nic Larter, the manager of wildlife research and monitoring for the department in the Deh Cho.

"It's not very common," Larter said about bison carcasses showing up this far outside of the animals' range.

One carcass was found two years ago near Jean Marie River and one or two may have made it past Wrigley before, he said.

Based on river currents and the animals' behaviour, Larter suspects the bison in question came from the Nahanni population, which lives primarily along the Liard River valley.

"They swim all the time," he said.

The population is constantly moving back and forth across rivers in both the summer and the winter. Some animals from that population were killed last summer during the flood when the water came up quickly, he said.

The bison may have been one of those animals and it has slowly washed downstream since then, or it may have died last fall or gone through the ice in the winter, he said. As a result of being submerged, the carcass lost all of its hair and the combination of the water and recent sun has tanned the hide, making it look almost mummified.

"It looks like a big tanned hide," said Larter.

Larter said the bison wasn't one of the animals killed by the anthrax outbreak near Fort Providence last year. If it had died of anthrax, the bison wouldn't have gotten into the river and had the chance to lose all of its hair, he said.

Conditions in Mills Lake also make it unlikely for any carcasses to get farther up the Mackenzie River, he said.

The bison's condition has afforded it some protection. Ravens haven't been able to scavenge the body and there is even evidence a bear tried to drag it away, but gave up because there was no easy way into the carcass.

"You probably can't get into that bison without a chainsaw," he said.

The department doesn't plan to sample the carcass because it's been dead an extensive length of time, said Larter.

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