VIDEO: Snowmobilers close encounter with N.B. moose goes viral

It’s not every day you see close-up moose encounters.

Moncton resident Andrew Nelson was out for a night snowmobile ride with a friend on the Caledonia trail when a young moose approached them.

They managed to catch it all on video, and it has been shared millions of times.

“What you don’t see in the video is the moose charged at us, and then we were not sure what to do. We didn’t want to spook it or scare it or chase it down the trail or anything. So we just stood there as still as we could,” Nelson told our newsroom.

He said it was a very young moose, around 150 to 300 pounds.

“We didn’t know if it was going to charge again or jump up on us. I’ve seen other people’s videos where they screamed and hollered and different things, but we just decided to be still and quiet, and in this circumstance, it turned out the right way,” Nelson added.

The moose in the video appears to be quite calm, but Nelson says it doesn’t always end that way for some snowmobilers.

“We’ve seen four or five this year. They seem to be coming out more now that spring is on its way, and you never want to see a moose when you’re on a snowmobile because it can end rather negatively,” Nelson explained.

People seem to be pretty intrigued by the up-close encounter. Nelson says he has been getting calls from as far away as Finland, Sweden and Norway, from people interested in hearing more about the video.