Is Alaska's Bizarre Law About Moose And Airplanes Actually Real?

Ah, Alaska: gorgeously rugged terrain spanning unblemished and pristine, twice the landmass as the next largest U.S. state (about 570,000 square miles vs. Texas' 269,000 square miles), but the lowest population out of any state (734,000, or 1.3 persons per square mile), and those month-long Arctic cruises that flood Alaskan towns like the 1,200-person Skagway with 1.2 million visitors per year. But best of all? We've got lots and lots of moose — 175,000 to 200,000, in fact. There's so much trouble with moose that Alaska apparently has loads of strange laws related to moose. Apparently, mind.

Only in Your State, for example, talks about Alaska's weirdest laws, including the one that prohibits feeding moose alcohol. An article on Alcohol Problems and Solutions says this law pertains to Fairbanks but has long been off the books. Sites like Noelle Neff talk about how it's illegal to whisper in someone's ear in Alaska while hunting moose, saying, "This isn't just a local myth; it's a bona fide statute under Alaska Statute 11.46.484." The statute mentions nothing of the kind. The Alaska Life, meanwhile, says that moose aren't allowed to mate on the street in Fairbanks, although how this would be enforced is anyone's guess.

And then there's the whopper that keeps getting sited again and again: no pushing moose out of airplanes. Sorry to bust up the fun, but this law doesn't exist. It's a myth that's gotten circulated and retold by site after site, but still might have roots in something real.

At this point, the "no pushing moose out of an airplane in Alaska" law has gotten cited on a quadrillion sites like Only in Your State, The Alaska Life, The Alaska Frontier, Forest Grove Elementary School, The Blackman Voice, One Legal, Legal Intent, and many more. None of these articles provide a smidgen of citation except Noelle Neff, who cites Alaska Statute 02.20.080. That statute doesn't exist. A thread on Reddit talks about the supposed law, too, but mostly for comical purposes. After all, it sounds ludicrous. And plenty of states do have ludicrous laws that are true, like Connecticut's weird law about pickles needing to bounce when dropped in order to be deemed fresh. But the no moose pushed from a plane law? It doesn't exist. 

We can check exactly what laws The Alaska State Legislature has on the books related to moose by doing a simple search. Many of Alaska's moose-related laws are conservationist in nature, like AS 16.05.052 preventing the wanton destruction of moose even if they prove a nuisance to human settlements. AS 16.05.780 prohibits people from hunting moose without antlers unless preapproved by "a majority of active local advisory committees" of a particular "game management unit." AS 41.23.010 established the Nelchina Public Use Area (a 2.5-million-acre expanse of land) to protect the habitats of animals like swans, sheep, bears, and moose. AS 16.05.925 lists a $1,000 fine for unlawfully killing a moose. All of these laws are far more down-to-earth than a law about dropping moose from airplanes.

If we're feeling uncharitable, we'd chalk up the incorrectly cited "no pushing moose from planes in Alaska" law to simple laziness. We could say it comes from a misreading of text regarding a real Alaskan event that happened for decades: the Talkeetna Moose Dropping Festival.

Some folks might see the "moose dropping" in that title and envision moose dropping ... like from planes. But as the Anchorage Daily News wrote back in 2009, the Talkeetna Moose Dropping Festival was a festival involving dropping moose droppings, i.e., poop ... like from planes. That year marked the 37th year of the festival in question, meant to raise funds for the Talkeetna Historical Society. 

One Black Bear says that the festival involved painting numbers on moose poop and dropping them from a helicopter. One Black Bear also says that PETA got involved and shut down the whole thing because someone wanted to ramp things up by pushing an actual moose from a helicopter. Given the unreliability of sources related to this topic, it'd be best to take that last statement with a grain of salt.

Looking back to Anchorage Daily News, Alaska State Trooper spokeswoman Megan Peters said that the good folks of Talkeenta (population: 850) "became unglued" during the 2009 festival. They went off the rails drinking, getting rowdy in public, stripping down, stealing things, harassing campers, and so forth. One citizen literally jumped off the rails and straight into the Susitna River and died. It's possible that someone shut down future festivals, which somehow got misread over time as "no moose dropping in Alaska."