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FAIRBANKS - Iditarod champion Jeff King has been charged with illegally killing a moose inside Denali National Park and driving an all-terrain vehicle in the park.

The four-time Iditarod champ from Denali Park said Thursday the charges were "bogus."

"I look forward to having my side of the story aired," King said by phone Thursday.

The charges stem from an incident that occurred on Sept. 6, 2007.

According to an affidavit filed in Fairbanks federal court on Monday, King, who finished a close second to Lance Mackey in this year's Iditarod, is accused of killing a young bull moose just inside the 6-million-acre park and using an all-terrain vehicle to take it back to his camp, which was located about a third of a mile outside the northeast border of the park.

Only federally qualified subsistence users, which King is not, are allowed to hunt within park boundaries.

National park ranger John Leonard and Alaska State Trooper Thomas Lowy contacted King and his daughter, Cali, in the camp as they were conducting a routine patrol on the Rock Creek Trail, according to the charging documents. They found the Kings in camp with several pieces of a freshly-killed bull moose and an ATV.

The Denali Park musher told the ranger and trooper that he had killed the moose earlier in the day, pointing to the general area where he shot it, and his daughter invited them for coffee, King said. The topic of the park boundary came up and King told Leonard that the park service needed to mark the boundary better, according to court documents.

While he has hunted in the area for several years and has "a general idea" where the boundary is, King said pinpointing it is difficult. King said he had a GPS system with him but he didn't have the coordinates to determine exactly where the park boundary was located.

He also told Leonard and Lowy that he could find only one silver park boundary marker in the area. Without two markers to line up, it's difficult to identify the boundary because it's a straight line, King said.

"We've dealt with that for years," King said of trying to locate the park boundary.

According to King, the moose fell about 600 feet inside the park boundary. The moose may have covered all or part of that distance after the first time he shot it, King said.

"I shot it once, it ran, I shot it again," he said. "I did not believe I was in the park."

Following the initial contact with King, park rangers returned to the Kings' camp on Sept. 8 during another patrol and found a pile of bones about 300 feet north of the park boundary and a mile from King's camp.

Investigators returned in a helicopter the next day and located the kill site of King's moose. They theorized the bones had been moved from the kill site, which was inside the park boundary about three quarters of a mile from King's camp, the affidavit says.

They also determined the tracks of the vehicle that dumped the bones were made by a the same kind of ATV King was using, according to the affidavit.

Park service rangers served King with a search warrant in late September and confiscated the moose.

The thing that bothers King most is the perception that he tried to deceive authorities by moving parts of the moose outside the park after it was shot. In fact, King said he took the moose back to his camp and cut the meat off the bones to make it easier to haul out before dumping the bones near the original kill site about a mile from his camp.

"The fact they think I was hiding something ... the whole thing is humiliating," said King, who has lived in Denali Park for 30 years. "To think that I would fool anyone with an armload of femur bones as being a kill site, that's ludicrous."

The well-known musher said he planned to return to the camp to hunt with another family member and didn't want to attract any bears to the area.

"We fully intended to come back hunting again. We're not about to leave bones where we camp," he said.

King has been charged with two misdemeanors. Each of the charges carry a penalty of up to six months in prison and a maximum $5,000 fine, assistant U.S. attorney Stephen Cooper said.

King's arraignment is set for May 8 in Fairbanks.