Antlers strapped to a wing and too much moose meat on board caused a small plane crash that killed the husband of then Alaska Democratic congresswoman Mary Peltola in 2023, according to a US national transportation safety board (NTSB) report that was recently released.
Though the report doesn’t name him, Eugene “Buzzy” Peltola Jr was the pilot and lone person on the Piper PA-18 plane involved in the deadly wreck, which occurred near St Mary’s, Alaska, on 12 September 2023, officials had previously said.
Peltola Jr, 57, had taken some hunters to a remote wilderness area where they killed a moose, said the NTSB report published on Tuesday. When the crash that ended his life happened, the report said, he was flying alone while carrying enough moose meat to push the plane past “its maximum certified gross weight” by nearly 120lbs.
The doomed pilot had also installed “an unapproved external load” – in his case, antlers tied to the right wing strut – at the time the plane went down.
Peltola Jr ultimately ended “degraded takeoff performance and flight characteristics”, leading to his losing control of the plane, shortly before the fatal wreck, NTSB investigators said.
As the NTSB recounted, it was his second trip flying moose meat that day. Peltola and the hunters had loaded an initial batch of meat on the plane that afternoon, and he had uneventfully ferried it to a local airport.
He flew back to the hunters about four hours later for what was supposed to be a second and final load of moose meat. The group strapped into the rear passenger seat as well as packed it into the airplane’s belly pod, “which did not have tie-down provision”, the 16-page NTSB report noted.
Peltola Jr then tied moose antlers to the right wing strut, the report said, leaving them “cupped upward and perpendicular to the direction of flight”.
The report said the pilot had weighed the cargo with scales, and it turned out the plane was 117lb – roughly 6% – over its maximum takeoff weight. Investigators wrote that the hunters watched Peltola Jr as he evidently struggled to take off and were relieved at first to see his plane become airborne, watching it vanish from view behind a ridge.
But the plane did not reappear from behind the ridge and “had crashed just beyond their view in the opposite direction of takeoff”, the NTSB report recounted.
Two hunters provided first aid to Peltola Jr, who the NTSB said initially survived the crash. However, he died from his injuries within hours, according to the agency.
Peltola Jr was the former Alaska regional director for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. He had also spent more than three decades working for the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and he served as vice-mayor and council member for the city of Bethel, Alaska.
Shortly after her husband’s death, Mary Peltola’s chief of staff at the time, Anton McParland, said in a media statement that Eugene was “completely devoted” to his family. “And he simply adored Mary,” McParland’s statement said.
Peltola became the first Alaska Native in Congress when she won her US House seat in a special election and then retained it in the 2022 midterm elections, twice beating the former governor and Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin.
She lost her November 2024 re-election bid to her Republican opponent Nick Begich III and is now the senior director of Alaska affairs at the Holland & Hart law firm.
