Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting Anyone know how many wolves are in Colorado?

Coydogs....possibly?

WyColoCowboy, wolves were never "imported" to Montana. The re-introduction took place in Yellowstone NP and central Idaho. mtmuley

just happened to run across a pic of a Coywolf

Seriously? Packs? Hordes?

Two wolves have been seen/found in Colorado. The one that was run over on I70 was a collared offspring of one of the original wolves restored/transplanted in Yellowstone.

I smell a troll.......

Casey

I just remembered, it's up to three wolves now.......

That's right - my mistake.

it's actually more than that. There are at least two unreported.....S.S.S.....

And that's just on your place. Oops...

[/quote] All the sub-species of elk, for example, will readily interbreed. So will wolves. [/quote]

Wolves, coyotes, and dogs will all interbreed between species. Wolves and dogs seem to be the most common, as they are the most closely related. I have heard (read) it speculated that those big eastern "coyotes" are coy-dogs. Wouldn't surprise me any if there was wolf in there also. Haven't seen any DNA data on it.

Then there is the fact that with any species, a plentiful food supply will produce larger animals, which, other factors being relatively equal, will have greater breeding/survival success, and so the whole local population increases in size. Having larger prey species to hunt probably helps encourage larger body size as well.

The reverse is also true. The mastodons? on Wrangle Island were as recent as 10,000 years ago and probably less, but they were relative midgets compared to the mainland populations due to the more stringent ecology, and probably in-breeding factors.

Why do people think coyotes won't hunt in packs? A friend on the Kenai had a dog torn up pretty bad when a cute young thing in heat lured him off 40 yards or so from his owner, and he was jumped by not only her, but 3 others. In the few seconds it took the owner to rush in and break it up, the dog was severely slashed.

100 lb coyote is pretty damned big! Any actual scale weights on one, or were these at-a-distance estimates? But that IS the average size for a male wolf, females running around 75 lbs average as adults. The 9 month old female wolf that I shot a few years ago when the pack surrounded and shadowed the dog and I from a few yards deep in the brush beside the trail weighed in the mid-50's - I forget the exact weight.

According to Wikepedia there at 37 recognized subspecies of Canis, in NA, EurAsia, Africa, Australia. Maybe elsewhere - I didn't look that closely.

My brother's elk-hunting group were seeing them in the Middle Fork of Salmon River Wilderness Area at least 5 years before Idaho F&G allowed that there might be some...

And of course, as previously hinted at, I have no doubt certain "bucket-biologist 'green'" A-holes released high percentage wolf-dogs if OP's observation is true. I have no reason to question it.

Alaska has banned wolf-dog hybrids. But there are cheaters...

A very common sight here in SW MT. Man we used to have over 600 bulls wintering in Porcupine, Teepee, Dailey and Lodgepole drainages nearby! Now they are estimating 40 to 60. Sad really. I always said when the wolves made it to Colorado and started mowing through their herds, something would be done about the wolf problem. I'm guessing we are only a few years away from finding out...

It's still there, east of Hwy 69 on USFS road 634 and about half way between Westcliffe and Gardner. We took the grand-kids there last summer.

KC