A rookie musher racing through the Alaska wilderness suddenly comes face-to-face with a charging bison during the legendary Iditarod race, and when her pistol jams she’s left with almost no way to protect her dog team — but the desperate words she suddenly remembers from her grandmother are the detail people can’t stop talking about.

‘That was my last resort’: Iditarod rookie recounts frantic bison encounter on trail

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – When the pistol in 48-year-old Fairbanks rookie Jody Potts-Joseph’s hands refused to fire at the wild bison her dog team encountered on the Iditarod trail, she remembered the story her grandmother told her years ago.

It was those words that helped drive away the large animal from the spot on the trail where the dog team ran up on it.

Potts-Joseph, who is from Fairbanks but runs her kennel out of Eagle Village near the Canadian border, left the Rohn checkpoint at 3:35 p.m. Tuesday running near the back of the field.

She told Iditarod Insider that her team was about three miles out when they came around a corner and saw the bison, which began to react aggressively to the dog team.

“I got into a standoff and all I had is — my Glock wouldn’t fire,” she recounted in a cell phone video she took minutes after the encounter. “It was charging me … and it kept charging but it wouldn’t actually touch my dogs, but it was head down, pawing, and it would charge and then would stop. It did that three or four times.

With her pistol clicking but not firing, Potts-Joseph said she had to make a quick choice.

“I quickly got my Glock out but it was jammed, it wouldn’t fire.”

Potts-Joseph said she hid behind some trees and started throwing sticks at the animal.

It was then that she remembered a story her grandmother told years ago when they encountered a bear in the Alaska wilderness. Her grandmother began speaking her Native tongue, talking to the bear in the words from the Hän Gwich’in people.

“[It] means, ‘Go away, have mercy on us, leave us alone,’” Potts-Joseph explained. “And that bear just calmed down and turned around and walked off.”

Tuesday afternoon on the trail, Potts-Joseph repeated those same words.

Iditarod teams contend with whipping wind, watery overflow and wild bison in race's first third - KNOM Radio Mission A

“That was my last resort,” she said. “I said that, and the buffalo turned around and ran up that hill.

“That’s what they say, that animals can understand our Native language, and we didn’t get hurt.”

In total, the encounter only slowed Potts-Joseph for less than an hour, according to GPS tracking data, which shows her team stopping on the trail around 3:50 p.m. Tuesday.

As of Thursday, Potts-Joseph was running 33rd and last place while resting her team in McGrath, but no dogs were hurt in the experience.

Potts-Joseph is also the mother of Quannah Chasinghorse, an Alaska Native model and influencer who has over half a million followers on her Instagram page.

Chasinghorse posted a video on her Instagram on Wednesday celebrating her mother’s entry in the race, saying Potts-Joseph is the first musher of Hän Gwich’in heritage to start the race.

Related Posts

A climber suddenly slips during a steep ascent in the Tatra Mountains and begins tumbling uncontrollably down the snowy slope as horrified onlookers watch — but the shocking detail about how he survived the violent fall is the part leaving viewers stunned.

A grieving mother discovers her 12-year-old daughter’s hidden diary after the tragedy, and the pages describing fear in the days before the incident are now raising chilling questions — but the single sentence written on one page is the detail people say they can’t stop thinking about.