Warning: Pretty graphic footage.
Klara, the Swedish elkhound/Jämthund, managed to survive the attack, but she was pretty severely injured.
The way moose (“elk” in every other part of the world but North America) are hunting parts of Scandinavia is that a barking elkhound encounters the quarry and then it spends as much time yapping at the moose to keep it from running off. This give hunters an opportunity to locate the moose and then kill it.
There are often brags about these dogs barking at moose for days on end, but with the growing population of wolves in Sweden, all this barking does arouse their territorial instincts. The fact that these barking elkhounds are often some distance from human hunters furthers the risk.
This is precisely the problem that bear hunters are encountering in the Great Lakes States, where there is long tradition of letting hounds run black blears. Baying hounds arouse territorial wolves and even the stoutest bear hounds have been massacred in these encounters.
So with wolves expanding their range, it’s very likely that conflicts with owners of hunting dogs are going to increase.
Which makes conservation issues that much more complicated.
Was this style of hunting bred for after wolves were largely exterminated from this areas, then? Or in the past did the hunters not stay as far behind?
It was developed while wolves were still around, but what happened was people forgot about the risks until they came back. This is actually perhaps the oldest way of hunting very large game with a dog.
Dave did some analysis: http://www.prickeared.com/blog/2015/10/23/wolvesattackswedishuntingdog/
Did they use more dogs in the past? Seems to me that dog did pretty well as it was outnumbered. 3 or 4 of them would have chased the wolves off.
I think the dog was wearing a special jacket that helped protect her. I guess keeping the dogs closer when hunting would reduce there effectiveness!
I believe large predators tendency to prey on dogs is one of the biggest risks to their comeback. You can compensate someone for a cow with money but the emotional attachment to dogs can’t be compensated for!