OTISFIELD – A Norway man and his 6-year-old son escaped with minor scratches after their car struck an 800-pound bull moose on Route 117 on Wednesday night.

“The impact was so hard that one of the antlers broke off and went about 30 feet down the road,” Oxford County Deputy Josh Wyman said. The moose died instantly, the officer said the driver, Steven Beardsworth, told him.

“It was huge. It was absolutely huge,” Wyman said. “The moose pretty much tore the car apart. It went up over the car,” he said, breaking the windshield, crushing the roof and breaking the rear window of the Dodge Stratus.

“It was pretty bad,” the investigator added.

He said that when he asked Beardsworth about his son’s reaction, he responded, “‘Oh, I can’t wait to tell my friends about it.'”

“You are lucky,” Wyman said he told the pair.

The boy, also named Steven Beardsworth, had a scratch on his knee and the father a scratch on his arm. Neither had to go to the hospital. Wyman said moose are moving now due to insects and calving.

“They’re so tall the headlights go under the body of the moose and they’re so dark they’re hard to see,” he said.

Earlier Wednesday evening, he said, another car-moose collision occurred on Route 117 in Norway. No one was hurt and the moose wandered in back of Boomer’s and swam across Norway Lake, he said.

On Tuesday night, Sheila Lilly, 49, of Bethel hit two moose on Route 5 in Albany Township, Cpl. Dane Tripp said.

“One moose came out in front of her, and the second one came out and she hit it,” he said.

Lilly was not hurt, and the moose wandered off, he said.

Lilly’s Lexus sustained about $5,000 damage in the 9:20 p.m. collision.

And earlier this week, Oxford County Deputy Justin Brown was called to two car-moose collisions in the Hanover area.