Possible Gray Wolf sighting inside my town

[A.K.A. Tommy Boy]

I live about 50 miles north of the Twin Cities in East Central Minnesota.
On the night of January 30th at 9:30 PM, I was taking my dog out back to do his business. I turned on my backyard flood lights. Standing in the middle of my backyard was a canine. My dog is thirty pounds and this animal looked to be around 50 to 60 pounds. My dog started to go out to it but I called him back. The animal was about 30 to 45 feet away and stood its ground looking at us. The animal showed no aggression but no fear either. It stood there staring at us and we stood at a doorway looking at it. After around 3 to 5 minutes it slowly walked back towards my property line. It stopped a couple of times and stood sideways and looked at us. The last time It did that it was standing in front of a straw bale. Based on the measurements of that bale I estimate the body length of the canine to be 52 inches excluding head, neck and tail. The chest looked to have a width of 16 inches and it stood around 24 to 26 inches tall. It had an overall reddish tinge to its fur, it had long legs, large paws and a black tip on its tail with some black inside its ears. Between the comparison to my dog and the straw bale out back I got a good idea to it's size. The yard was very well lit up. It showed no fear of either me or my barking dog. When it left my property, it slowly walked away. At no time did it run away. It must have stayed out of sight in the woods out back for a while because the dog barked incessantly inside my house for about 30 minutes. I called the Wildlife Research Center near me and reported the sighting this morning. They think I may have sighted a young male Gray Wolf. They said there has been confirmed wolf sightings with trail cam photos in my area. As for me I was not able to take any photos.
Many times I have seen wolves out in the woods but this is the 1st one in my backyard.

Below are 3 pictures of some of the other sightings in my area.


Best Wishes - Tom

[Rat Sniper (AKA: PaulT58)]

We get bears and coyotes in our backyard, but a wolf is pretty scary!  The coyotes are skittish and run if confronted, the bear do also, unless cornered.

[ranchibi]

Tom! That is so COOL! Thanks for sharing!

[only1harry]

Cool!  I 'd love to see a wolf in the wild. 
If its body was in fact 50+ inches long excluding the neck & head then it was definitely not a coywolf which some of them can reach 50-55 pounds.  It's strange it did not run away at the sight of a human, and so close.  Wolves are very smart and know they don't belong in a residential area so they are "generally" extremely cautious and do their best not to be spotted by people.

What's interesting is this canine behaved like a coyote which at times will stand its ground waiting for the (smaller) dog to chase it into the woods where it will attack it or drive it into a trap where other coyotes are waiting to elimination it.  A 30lb dog is usually no problem for a couple of good sized coywolves.  Then again a wolf will probably do something something similar.

I have seen a lot of coywolves in my area and they definitely look like wolves except smaller and usually have some red/orange fur (and people here always say "I saw a wolf today!").  I think wolves in the winter are predominantly gray & white (with some black), but I am no expert.  Also big coywolves will reach a body length of close to 4ft, so I would not exclude a coywolf if they are common in your area (?), since a 52" body excluding the neck & head is the size of at least a full-sized adult female wolf.

[A.K.A. Tommy Boy]

Cool!  I 'd love to see a wolf in the wild. 
If its body was in fact 50+ inches long excluding the neck & head then it was definitely not a coywolf which some of them can reach 50-55 pounds.  It's strange it did not run away at the sight of a human, and so close.  Wolves are very smart and know they don't belong in a residential area so they are "generally" extremely cautious and do their best not to be spotted by people.

What's interesting is this canine behaved like a coyote which at times will stand its ground waiting for the (smaller) dog to chase it into the woods where it will attack it or drive it into a trap where other coyotes are waiting to elimination it.  A 30lb dog is usually no problem for a couple of good sized coywolves.  Then again a wolf will probably do something something similar.

I have seen a lot of coywolves in my area and they definitely look like wolves except smaller and usually have some red/orange fur (and people here always say "I saw a wolf today!").  I think wolves in the winter are predominantly gray & white (with some black), but I am no expert.  Also big coywolves will reach a body length of close to 4ft, so I would not exclude a coywolf if they are common in your area (?), since a 52" body excluding the neck & head is the size of at least a full-sized adult female wolf.

Hi Harry.

I have seen several Minnesota Gray Wolves while I was out deer hunting.
What I saw last night did not look like anything I had previously seen over the past 55 years.
I talked for about 15 minutes with the senior wolf biologist at the Wildlife Research Center.
I told him, I was not sure what this canine was.
I told him that I had been looking at images of Coyotes, Coyote/Wolf hybrids, Wolf/Dog hybrids and Gray Wolves, trying to determine what this canine was.
What I told him was it fit the description of an Eastern Timber Wolf.
I also pointed out the overall reddish fur.
I also told him that my straw bale is 52 inches long, it stopped right in front of the bale and the body matched the size of the bale.
He said that an Easter Timber Wolf was very unlikely and most likely what it was was a subadult male gray wolf.
He said that they had verified sightings of one that matched my description, close to where I live.
He also said that he was documenting our discussion and passing it on to other wolf biologists.

As for me, I really am puzzled. I am not sure just what it was.

The pictures below are of Easter Timber Wolves.
They look like what I saw.


Best Wishes - Tom

[splitbeing]

This is a very interesting mystery, Tom.  Thanks for sharing.  I am sometimes in the Philadelphia area and in the past decade coywolves have been appearing. What they were was a mystery to folks there at first.  This mystery from Minnesota is a different class than that.

[ER00z]

Tom, very cool!

I've encountered yotes on my property, but they're runts in comparison Lol.

[Back_Roads]

 
 I had an encounter with a Coyote one spring turkey season. I had a hard time deciding if it was a yote er no, was more gray toned than any yote I have seen around here.

[A.K.A. Tommy Boy]

Here is a photo of Gray Wolves prowling thru the small town of Sandstone which is north of me.
They put the trail cam out looking for stray dogs and this is what they got.

[Nvreloader]

About 5-6yrs ago,
I had finally drawn an Elk tag, we, my son, (Reg guide in NV), G-son, wife and I were glassing for the Elk, and about a 1/2 mile away on a tall ridge, I saw what I thought was a very large yeller dog > coyote walk in to view.

I kept on looking around with the spotting scope and then saw 4-5 more LARGE yeller dogs walk into view.  It dawn on me that these were wolves, a pack of 6 total.
We watch them for over an hour, the were walking back and forth and looking in our direction, we could see fresh Elk tracks in the snow coming off the ridge in our direction.

At that time, there were no known wolves in NV around O'neil basin, or in NV.  My son attached  his good camera to his Swarovskyi STS 80 spotting scope and took several photo's.

I told my son that we could call them in to us, I had my calling pack with me, always when out and about.  I have a Howler I made for locating yeller dogs, and it sounds like a coyote/wolf howling. We set up with the wind in our face and I gave a little howl on the horn.

All the wolves jumped up and started loping towards us, we could catch a glimpse of them as they crossed the small draws between us.  They got within about 400+ yds and were standing on a ridge top, looking all around.

Just as I started to give a small yip howl, when a 4x4 pulled up on the road by our PU and slowed down, then stopped, in plain sight of the wolves, they became very nervous and started heading back towards where they came from.

Needless to say, we were all mad at that other hunters rig which blew that chance at taking a wolf or 2.

On the way back to camp we met the local warden, which we all knew.  I ask him how long has this pack of wolves been in the basin, he stated "There are NO WOLVES in or around here", that he knew of.  We showed him the photos we had taken and he was surprised, and requested that the photo's were to be sent to him.

I see now, that there is a section showing the difference between coyotes and wolves and they are now protected in NV and can not be legally taken by hunters.  I can see the elk/deer herds are going to be lost here here just like where I hunt in ID.  The wolves has just about wiped out the elk in the Orofino area.  Time to get the Super Cub out..........

[only1harry]

Cool story Dan.  We need wolves for a proper ecosystem so if they eat most of the elk it's all good but I can see where hunters would not be too happy. 

Denial and secrecy by State wildlife and conservation agencies is pretty common.  In NY state our Dept of Environmental Conservation (DEC) also denied that we had wolves and Cougars in our state for many years even after thousands or reported sightings and pictures sent to them until they finally started passing laws for protecting them, and confirmed that they do exist a couple of years ago. 
They just don't want people to know that endangered species especially large predators are roaming the state as to not scare people and also not have landowners shoot everything in sight thinking it's a big bad wolf coming to take their livestock.  At least not until they have all the laws in place, and too many people have encountered them and have good evidence, forcing them to come clean and admit it.