The response to a young cow moose found wandering along Calgary's Deerfoot Trail on Tuesday afternoon was "horrifically mishandled," an animal rights group says.

The roving moose brought traffic to a halt on the busy freeway in the city's northeast for about an hour, crossing the road several times. It then ran into a nearby field where it was killed by a police sharpshooter.

The Calgary Animal Rights Coalition questions whether enough effort was put into tranquilizing the animal before the decision was made to kill it.

"A moose is a large animal, one of the larger mammals, and it shouldn't be that difficult [to tranquilize it]," said spokesperson Sandy Alvarez-Toye.

"I suspect there was laziness involved, and they were more interested in just dealing with the problem than helping the animal itself. It was horrifically mishandled."

But officers could not get close enough to tranquilize the moose, and they were worried someone was going to get hurt, said Darcy Whiteside, spokesman for Alberta's Sustainable Resource Development department.

"We tried as much as possible to tranquilize the moose and unfortunately we just were unable to. The public safety concern was too high," he said.

The meat from the carcass will checked over and if it's OK, it will be given to a needy family, he said.