Sasquatch Chronicles Blog

Jun 2

Horse killed by unknown ‘large animal’

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT
Yesterday in the area of Burnsline Rd and Black River Rd there was a full grown horse that was attacked and killed by a large animal. The animal still has not been positively identified. Please be vigilant and watch your animals and children outside.

A 1,200 pound adult horse is dead, and the “large” animal that bit and killed it hasn’t been identified, causing the Sanilac County Sheriff’s Office to issue a warning Monday on Facebook.

The horse was fatally wounded at about noon Sunday at its pasture in a rural area about 80 miles northeast of metro Detroit.

“The owners were in their house, heard commotion, went outside and the horse was bleeding badly from the rear hoof,” said Sanilac County animal control officer Jim Matson. “No other animal was seen.”

He said mid-day is “kind of an unusual time” for predators to strike, and they’re not sure what caused the injury. The sheriff’s office posted a message about the incident to its Facebook page on Monday, sparking varied speculation from commenters.

“Please be vigilant and watch your animals and children,” the agency said in the post.

But Matson said they haven’t yet ruled out whether the horse may have injured itself, although a walk in the pasture didn’t reveal any dangerous obstacles.

The horse was bitten on a lower part of a rear leg, apparently causing it to bleed out, sheriff’s office Sgt. Darrin Siemen said. He said it couldn’t have been a small animal that did the biting, but it could have been a coyote. The incident was on private property near the Galbraith Line and Black River Roads, about 5 miles west of Lake Huron and south of Croswell.

Matson said coyotes are known to be in the area. But rumors of cougars appear unlikely to be true.

“I’ve been doing this for 25 years, and there never was known of a cougar in the wild up here, to my knowledge,” he said.

 

Source: http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2015/06/01/horse-attacked-animal-sanilac/28332665/

33 Responses to “Horse killed by unknown ‘large animal’”

  1. Janet B

    Oh please…a coyote bite is going to make a 1,200 pound horse bleed out? The odds are against that.

    As I understand it, a cougar would be more inclined to rake the rear quarters of the horse…or possibly go for the
    throat. Suppose a young, inexperienced cougar might try for a rear leg.

    Would like to know if there were any tracks found.

    Jan

  2. Steve W

    Quite unlikely it was our friend the sasquatch. They’d be more likely to overpower and break a neck than get down on all fours and be an ankle biter, especially when the rear legs where a kick from a 1200 pound horse could inflict severe injury.

  3. Matt f

    Who’s to say it really was an ankle bite other than the report.How do you bleed out from that kinda injury,especially if owners heard commotion and were on seen shortly after to slow bleeding.I aint no rocket scientist but maybe someone with horse knowledge could put insight into ankle bleedout.Im thinking equivalent on human as dog bite to our feet or ankle.

  4. Janet B

    Hi Matt…it would have to be a damned severe bite…maybe removing a goodly sized chunk of flesh…but even with that…since the owners were on to it so quickly, the horse…unless the bite was a whole lot worse than they are letting on….should have been salvageable.

    If the bite was low enough on the leg to have caused fracture of the rear cannon bone…or pastern, say coming near to tearing the
    hoof off, then yeah, I could see a quick bleed out…the pastern area in a horse has lots of blood vessels..and if one or more were ripped open I suppose a horse could bleed out fairly quickly. That being said, it would take a goodly sized animal to do that kind of damage to a big horse like that…I just can’t see a coyote doing it, unless it was a really unusual situation.

    Horses not always being the brightest bulb in the box sometimes can get themselves into really dreadful situations…I’ve heard of thoroughbreds every once in a great while, getting a hoof caught under or in fences…and scaring themselves silly over it, fighting to get away, and almost pulling a hoof off in the process…if that happened, then it could have bled out quickly.

    I have to agree with Steve W….not too many predators that would be willing to get that close to the hindquarters of a big horse.

    The whole thing smells…especially the idea of a coyote. IMHO.

    Jan

    • MilitantDanny

      Hey Jan, I posted down at the bottom of this and then got to thinking and figured I’d ask a horse enthusiast directly, what about a snake bite? It’s a long shot, but would a rattlesnake bite in the vessel-laden areas cause enough hemorrhaging with the aid of the hemotoxins in the venom? I don’t know how horses react to snakes, but combine it with an allergy beyond normal to the venom….? Possible?

      That’s all I can come up with given the limited information.

  8. Dave T

    This is no Squatch attack. They kill by breaking bones or bludgeoning their victims. Most of the time when they kill a quadruped, they break or dislocate a leg to disable their prey or they just break their neck. So rule out a squatch. Coyotes only become dangerous when you get a pack but a 1200 lb horse is just out of their range. They’d really stand the chance of getting stomped to death by a horse. If a cougar did it, there should be claw marks along with the bite. Maybe there is and they didn’t say. I don’t know why they rule a cougar out, they tracked one from the Midwest and ended up finding the thing in Connecticut. If you want to blame a cryptid, this might be a Dogman attack.

  12. Stacy F

    This is in the heart of the thumb of Michigan, and I reeeeeally don’t think there are any Sas out there anymore. Whether the officials want to admit it or not, we DO have cougars in the lower peninsula, even that far south, and that’d be my first guess.

  13. Wendy M

    If and I say IF a predator we’re to try going after an animal this large, it will not go for the hind quarters. It would jump up onto the back to attack and go after the back of the neck. Not even a pack of coyotes or other “large animals” would go after the “power” end of a full sized horse, unless they are desperate for a meal! Even if the horse is already down, predators will still not start from the back to make the kill.
    It would be great to see some pictures of the area that the horse was in to see the type of fencing and or structures that could of inflicted the injury. Janet B is right, a horse can get into some pretty strange situations! Plus a healthy 1200 pound horse would not be an easy meal.

  14. MilitantDanny

    I was going to suggest envenomation via snake bite in the right area that the venom itself causes increased hemorrhaging (like some of the nasties in the Middle East) but with a little research Michigan only has one species of venomous snake and it’s the least potent rattlesnake in the United States with short fangs. Soooo, I’d say thats a dead end.

  15. Terry W W

    Maybe that stuffed tiger that they found in the backyard of a home in Detroit got out and attacked the horse. Lol! Seriously, could it have been a wolf or a bear?

  16. Derek G

    Definitely not a Sasquatch…. at noon in the horse’s pasture…… a bite at the ankle level….? It is really odd… I can’t imagine a horse would let itself get nipped in the hoof by a coyote or anything else without a major fight. The only way an animal is going to get a bite out of a horse is if it is very fast and stealthy if the horse were running or having cornered the horse with no option to run. I remember my border collie trying to round up the horses at my grandparent’s farm. It was the sneakiest dog around and those horses knew exactly where it was on that farm at any given moment. Although the collie was able to “round them up” toward the barn those horses were so fast and with enough room to run that i never saw the dog get close enough to be able to actually bite the hoof of one of them. Who knows what it could have been? and at midday? We have coyotes all over the place on the farm and cougar but they usually hunt at night. Of course you can see them during the day very rarely but to go after a large horse at midday is quite an extreme.

  17. mescha m

    I’m thinking wolf…don’t know if they have them in that area. We had a cougar take down a horse in a semi rural area of our county last month. The fact that inflicted a wound to its hindquarters is odd, that’s the business end, with a pretty strong kick…I would expect a predator to take them down in the neck. And this is not likely a squatch attack…squatch like to braid their manes and tales ( unless the horse complained about the hairdo-haha )

  18. Janet B

    Sure hope they do a post on the horse, and then inform the public of the results..particularly what the, “bite marks”, were
    determined to come from.

    I wonder about bear…but black bears, which I think would be the only type in the area are generally pretty noisy as they
    bumble along. And it’s hard to think of a bear being dumb enough to tackle that rear end. Don’t think wolf in this case,
    Mescha….again, can’t imagine a loner trying to tackle that big of a horse.

    The horse is reported as a healthy, 5 year old gelding. An artery in the leg was severed in the attack, and it took
    an hour and a half to get the horse to the vet, where it was put down.

    The owners also say they do not believe it was an injury caused by fencing/equipment, etc.

    Whatever it was that attacked the horse, sure must have been hungry.

    Jan

    • Tristene M

      I know Brownies and polar bears and even blackies will attack moose and caribou from the rear. I have no clue what did it to this horse though. A coyote? One heck of a lucky bite. A wolf, most likely not. Cats would leave raking marks .. I’m stumped. Maybe it tripped in a hole and broke the hoof area which cut the artery. However they said a bite so that’s a no go. hmmm O_o

  19. Tyler D

    Well the bite could have severed or punctured a major artery or something. But if that’s the case I would think it would have to be animal with a strong enough jaws to pierce through a muscular hide of a 1,200 pound horse to do so. But also I don’t really think this is a sasquatch kill. They break legs, they break necks or rip it to pieces. I think the culprit would have to be a fairly large predator

  20. Paul M

    Most likely a self inflicted injury…. or maybe a dogman… seems them dam things run amuck in Michigan. .. Hope the news keeps us posted…

    • Tyler D

      That’s what I considered it could possibly be. It could be a dogman, it’s definitely in the right territory for it. But then again it could be various different predators. Was it mauled like something was trying to eat it?? If there was a bit more information we could possibly narrow it down

  21. Joyce E

    Horses have fairly large artery running down each leg to the hoof. And a large vein running the blood back to the heart on each leg. I can see how a significant injury to one or both of these structures supplying blood to the hoof would cause the horse to bleed out. However not seeing the type of damage to the leg, it would be hard to say if it was animal inflicted or the horse got into something. If the injury was animal inflicted, it sounds canine (dog, coyote, wolf etc.). Since that’s how working stock dogs move livestock, nipping at the back legs. Whether it was cryptic, more likely a dogman …..that’s anyone’s guess. Just my opinion…….

    • Tyler D

      That’s what I thought. It possibly severed an artery but it would have to be a predator with a strong jaw to puncture through its thick hide to do that. If there was a bit more info we could possibly narrow it down

  22. Mikel F

    I live 10 minute from this… and work in Croswell… (the town this happened) I guess it was a big bite out of the back leg, and it bled out. Not sure exactly what did the biting… but the theory supposedly is DOG. My first thought was “SASQUATCH!!” but it seems like it’s just going to turn out to be a large dog or something.

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