Startling images of blood-soaked snow have ignited a slew of terrifying theories over what could have left such a grisly scene amid a stunning setting.
Luca Mehl stumbled across the gory mess with no carcass in sight during a day of ice skating on Crescent Lake in Alaska‘s Kenai Peninsula.
He was taken aback by the bright red snow, moving to take a series of images as he investigated what possibly could have come before him.
In a post on Facebook, he put the question out to the internet to explore possibilities, igniting a fascinating debate.
‘Hunters and outdoors folks,’ he wrote on December 21. ‘I spotted this kill site while ice skating on the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska. Fairly small site with no bones or intestines.
Mehl also found tufts of white fur he believed to be from a Dall Sheep and ‘large brown scat (wild animal droppings) that looks to be mostly grasses.’
‘I didn’t see any sign of dragging or transport. It’s a big wide open lake (frozen) and I expect I’d be able to track a drag trail or see debris nearby,’ he added.
More than 50 people shared their thoughts, with some suggesting the feces were from the dead animal’s intestines and might be all that’s left of it.
Others thought the animal carcass might have been frozen under the lake.
Pictured: The bloody scene that Luc Mehl discovered days ago when he was ice skating on Crescent Lake
The kill site is pictured from another angle. Mehl posted these photos to Facebook hoping to get outside opinions from others
‘I’d say the brown stuff is the contents of the rumen, not scat. What was the terrain like above the site. Could a dall sheep or mountain goat have fallen there?’ Jordan Manley wrote.
Rumen is a digestive organ found in cattle, sheep, and goats. This makes it possible that the carcass that was once in this location could have been from a dall sheep or a mountain goat, both of which are native to Alaska.
Most viewers seemed to agree it was either a sheep or a mountain goat that had died, though there was disagreement on what, or who, killed it.
‘My guess is poachers due to odd location,’ Sean Doody wrote. ‘But possibly predation by wolves.’
‘A bear would have been better able to take the carcass away than wolves,’ Roman Dial argued.
‘Father-in-law is a trapper and hunter and conservationist. He says brown bear and mountain goat (from the gut pile). The hair is too long for a sheep. And everything else has been eating on it,’ theorized Elisabeth Balster Dabney.
One person offered a hypothesis that didn’t even require something or someone killing the animal.
‘If a hoofed animal ends up in an icy lake, they usually cannot get up or out without help. Might have ended up on the icy lake and couldn’t get up, slipping in ice,’ they wrote, adding that its corpse could have been feasted on by birds for an extended period of time.
The scat that was found by Mehl, though other thought these brown deposits may have been the stomach contents of the animal that was killed
This patch of hair is what led Mehl to believe that the dead animal was a Dall Sheep
This phenomenon has been observed with whitetail deer, which sometimes need to be rescued from frozen lakes they get stuck in. Their hooves provide no traction and after a while, they exhaust themselves trying to get free.
Another shared a version of this theory, writing: ‘My guess is that eagles have killed or scavenged a fallen sheep that could not get up. I have found several remains of deer on the ice. Skeletons were far from complete. Eagles may have taken parts away.’
One person even claimed they had seen eagles cause mountain goats to fall. This is yet another natural phenomenon that has been observed an even caught on video.
One video posted to YouTube 16 years ago showed a giant eagle brawling with a mountain goat on the ledge, before it grabbed a hold of one of its legs with a talon.
The eagle then yanked the goat off the cliff, causing it to fall hundreds of feet to its death. The eagle flew off unscathed.
Multiple other people thought the blood Mehl found was left because a rockslide incapacitated or killed the animal.
Perhaps the most mythical theory presented was that a mountain lion was responsible for dragging the carcass.
Mehl said this wasn’t possible, but there are in fact rare sightings of lions in Alaska, according to the state’s Department of Fish and Game. So rare, that locals think of them like Bigfoot.
Pictured: A female mountain lion stands in a grassy environment
‘Mountain lions sighting are reported every year in Alaska, but the cats are so rare in the state that accounts often take on the mythical quality of Bigfoot sightings,’ per a Department of Fish and Game blog post.
‘Reports have come from as far north and west as the Kenai Peninsula and the Palmer area.’
Mehl didn’t agree with people who thought the animal was dragged there either by poachers or a predator.
‘I didn’t see any sign of dragging or transport. It’s a big wide open lake (frozen) and I expect I’d be able to track a drag trail or see debris nearby,’ Mehl wrote.
Mehl also got in touch with McClatchy News and put credibility behind the idea that an animal might have gotten stuck in the ice and died slowly as scavengers fed on its flesh.
‘Earlier this winter, same lake, we saw a loon that was stranded on the ice,’ Mehl wrote in an email to the outlet.
‘No open water for it to fly from. And it looked injured, probably from having partially frozen into the ice the night before. It was doomed.’
