In western Alaska, a man from Unalakleet came across these two unfortunate moose frozen into the river. Their antlers are locked together: they were fighting when they died.

Perhaps they drowned and were frozen later; perhaps they were so distracted by their battle that they didn’t notice the cold creeping up on them. Either way, when the river froze, they were still locked together.

“It appears that one of the brow tines (on the antler) penetrated and may have ended this (battle) fast, leaving the ‘winner’ with a 1000 lb headdress and probably pulled his head into the water where he drowned,” Jeff Erickson, who helped recover the moose, told Craig Medred, an independent journalist in Alaska.

By the time a group of men came to try to de-ice the moose, snow had covered their bodies and only their antlers were sticking out. They were able to recover the heads of the two moose (warning: there’s some blood involved), which may be turned into a mount.