Moosehead Region Hunting Report: November 16, 2007

In recent years I have been called out quite a few times to investigate someone’s “wolf” sighting or discovery of “wolf tracks. These excursions have taken me to Sapling, Guilford, Dover, Alder Brook Twp, Beattie Twp, Greenville, Bowerbank, Lobster Twp, and T4-R17 WELS. Call me a skeptic; for a long time we figured wolves in ME were extinct. When I was called to these places, when I could draw a conclusion, I figured the tracks were left by coyotes (Not large enough to not be a coyote), but in one instance, it was a large hound, probably left in the woods by cat hunters. The scat was the deciding factor. There later was a wolf in Guilford that was later shot and determined definitively to be of captive origin. It had been neutered.

There have been other wolves here, one was shot by a bear hunter (who was fined) near Lost Pd in T 5-R16 WELS in the 1990s. That animal acted oddly for a wild wolf. It closely approached campers, as if it was accustomed to being around people, shortly before it found the bear bait.

Soon after that, partially full dog food bags were found in the vicinity of where another “wolf” was picked up.

Meanwhile one or two authenticated wolves have been taken in the province of Quebec, south of the St Lawrence in recent years. To Quebec authorities, there remains the question of whether they got there on their own.

A few days back I received a clipping from the Vermont Journal, dated 10/10/07. The drift of the article was that a 92 pound coyote-like animal shot in Vermont a year ago had been identified by the US Fish and Wildlife Service forensics lab as having had parentage that included two widely separated (geographically) varieties of wolves. They suggested that particular animal was not likely the result of breeding that occurred in the wild, but rather was derived from captive animals. The question remains though, did it escape or was it stocked?

Note well, As far as I know our Maine “coyotes” peak at approximately 56 pounds.