I will be the first to say, "I was wrong." But I don't think I am.
The first thing that caught my attention was a wolf track. It was dead in the middle of a trail that I hike down to go deer hunting - just south and east of Genesee. Doubting myself, I think, "Maybe it's a cougar track." All I know is that this is not just any ol' big domesticated dog track. This is a big track, and there's no other big dogs around. It was either a cougar track or a wolf track in the mud. That is what I'm sure of.
I also saw, adjacent to the track, elk tracks - definitely a cow and a calf. Now this is across a freshly planted Winter Wheat field in the Palouse. It's not entirely rare for elk to be out and about in the fields. And the place that I'm hunting is near a drainage that drops down into Lewiston. So seeing elk tracks was surprising, but not shocking. This was Tuesday.
Wednesday morning, my friend and I headed out for deer in the same location. I saw something move several hundred yards out across the field. I lifted my 9x Leupold, and I saw a big dog shifting around out in the middle of a field. In my mind, there was no doubt as to what it was. My buddy thought it was a deer at first. That's how big it was. But the magnification clearly showed a dog of some sort.
Seeing elk in this area was surprising, but not shocking. Seeing a wolf was a little bit more of both. My friends keep on asking me to prove that it was a wolf. All I know is that I have seen suspicious tracks, and then I observed a dog that was way too large for a coyote or any other domesticated dog.
Maybe it was just my "little red riding hood syndrome" taking over, but I doubt it.
Should it really be so surprising that wolves might be 15-20 miles south of where they have been documented as being? It's just that this is just a little too close to the front steps of farmsteads.
The following day, I visited with a man who lives between Plummer and St. Maries. According to him, the wolves frequent his 400+ acres of woods and creeks. But he is quick to point out that while some Canadian grey wolves were introduced here (wrongly), some Wisconsin-Minnesota timber wolves have made it here on their own.
He claims that most of the wolves he has seen are black colored, and are the Wisconsin timber wolves, a breed that has made it here without help.
More research is needed on that, to be sure.
~ J. Bunch
Wolf Sighting Near Genesee?
