Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire DNA confirms wolf shot in Colorado

Hell, we got this big Yeller tom cat. One day he was walking across the bottom outside kitchen window and I hear wifey's caregiver yellin! "What's that???!!! ".

I said that's just ol' Stumpy Boy! ( he's got short legs). LOL!!! She thought it was a bobcat or something!!!!

In the North Eastern US there be some giant coyotes and I could certainly understand confusion there.
62 lber...



Western coyotes are on average much smaller than even a yearling wolf.

Where I used to live in North East Pa. a coyote could weigh 55 lbs easy. Some reports of 65 lbs were not unheard of. Easy enough to confuse with an 80 lb Eastern Timber wolf. The 35 lb coyotes of the west and the 100 lb plus wolves of the "Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem" not so easy to confuse.
Listen for howls at night if it's a yappy short sound howl it's coyotes, the long deep howls tend to be wolves.
One night in Grand Tetons while working the coyotes were yapping away and from Rosie's Ridge area a bunch of long deep howls started, the coyotes clammed up and ten minutes later a whole herd of elk came running through the rear of the campground we were staying at....
S.S.S. is the best possible solution to wolf sightings. No need to arise people's attention.
JMHO

Indeed, Wolves have a deep baritone howl, coyotes are much higher pitched.

Hopefully, they have became a bit more human. I recall reading a story in an outdoor magazine years ago, where a bow hunter in Colorado was attached by a grizzly while deer or elk hunting and was able to kill it with an arrow used as a short spear. The DNR gave him a ticket for the bears death in his hospital bed a day or two after he was admitted for his injuries.

Hell, if CO has to do a DNA test to determine it was, indeed, a wolf, then there should be no charges against the hunter. How could HE know it wasn't coyote when Colorado had to do a DNA test to decide what it was.

He only had a couple seconds to decide whether or not to shoot, they had all the time in the world, with a dead critter to test.

The DNA test was to confirm that it was not a hybrid (i.e., escapee), and to start determining where it came from, not to determine whether it was or was not a coyote or a wolf.

In the absence of government representing what people who live there want--what are the choices?

It will not be enough. The people of the UP are are good of example of people anywhere who tend to take care of things themselves. The goings on in the Great Lakes states offer a current example to the tenacity of the wolf. Colorado is a 24/7 buffet for wolves compared to Michigan's Upper.

Back a bit, coyotes and wolves were viewed as solution to high deer populations in Michigan with the coyote being the more effective fawn killer of the two. Now our deer populations are hitting lows and the predators are entrenched, which may prevent the usual recovery. If you believe the state and put it all on bad weather (like the 1st quarter GDP) then at the very least the coyote and wolf will certainly retard a deer population recovery. The coyote population in the UP amounts to an infestation.

Of course, the liberal left views an "adequate" predator population as a cure for human hunting.

Sadly, a few years down the road and you guys will be kissing OTC tags good-bye.