Outliers: You should have seen the one that got away

Dr. Karen Sciascia came back from her Montana fishing trip with a whopper of a fishing tale: how she helped rescue a 25-pound moose calf that was being swept away.

Seems Sciascia, a gynecologist who hails from Red Hill, Pa., was on the Big Hole River in southwestern Montana recently when she and a guide spotted a cow moose with a calf trying to cross the river.

“We were watching this adult female struggling back and forth, and we didn't see a baby until we got close,” Sciascia told the Missoulian newspaper. “Mom kept pushing—the current was pretty swift. The mother bolted and took off across the river. She was trying to get across the main portion of the channel, and even she struggled.”

When the calf stepped off the gravel bar into the water to follow its mother, it was swept downstream. “It was small, and the river was swift,” Sciascia said. “We lost sight of the baby. It was hurtling downstream and was being pushed by the river. It was too small to ever fight the current.”

Sciascia and guide Seth McLean with Four Rivers Fishing Co. in Twin Bridges followed downriver, finally spotting the tiny moose's nose just above the water. “We got up alongside it, and I just grabbed the little bugger. I scooped it up from the river under its front legs,” Sciascia said.

McLean rowed the raft upstream and snapped a photo before they dropped off the calf at the side of the river. The mother had disappeared into the woods but returned to the river after hearing the crying of her young calf. “The mother was heading toward it. She had come out of the woods and was heading toward her baby.”

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