Bill Anderson’s Tour Bus Hits a Moose

With its crazy travel schedules, hotels, planes and so on, touring can be an unpredictable endeavor for any musician, as country star Bill Anderson well knows. The singer-songwriter and television personality ran into something unexpected (literally) while out on the road with his acoustic trio recently, when his tour bus struck a moose near Sandpoint, Idaho.

The 74-year-old Country Music Hall of Famer and his band were traveling to do a show in Libby, Montana over the weekend when the accident occurred. Anderson's website reports the "moose-hap" shook everyone up, but nobody was hurt -- except the moose, which the site reports "paid the ultimate price."

Anderson has enjoyed a decades-long career as an artist, releasing more than 40 studio albums and placing seven No. 1 hits. His low-key vocal delivery and spoken word recitations earned him the nickname "Whisperin' Bill." He co-hosted the game show 'The Better Sex' in 1977, and the music quiz show 'Fandango' on the Nashville Network from 1983 until 1989, but it is as a songwriter that he has had the most impact, writing hits and standards including 'City Lights' for Ray Price, Connie Smith's 'Once a Day,' 'A Lot of Things Different' for Kenny Chesney, and the Brad Paisley/Alison Krauss duet 'Whiskey Lullaby,' among many others.