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I am a wildlife biologist who specialized in wolves. All respect to your Aunt I think she saw a coyote or feral dog. Most people would not recognize a wolf if they saw one in the wild and almost no one does. If anyone saw the movie GREY. The movie is a pile of crap nothing in that movie is based on factual information other than the fact that wolves live in Alaska. Even some of the howls were coyotes.
First - Wolves are repulsed by human scent (See South Dakota Study 1975 US Fish and Wildlife Service) and will avoid human contact or habitation religiously.
Second - Wolves are crepuscular which means they are active mostly during the early dawn and twilight hours or at night.
Third - Wolves do not howl for the heck of it. They will do so to communicate and for social bonding. They DO NOT HOWL while hunting or after a kill.
Fourth- If the sightings were between late April and August it definitely was not a wolf. Wolves are denning during that time and have young so they would not give their location away. Besides wolves travel in packs and although the lone wolf does exist (a sick, old or exiled wolf) they are even more secretive than a healthy wolf.
Fifth - From what I have been able to gather the Michigan/Wisconsin packs stay in the extreme northwest area of the state and along the state line with the UP. The furthest south I have ever heard of them is where the Kettle and St Croix Rivers meet.
Sixth - The TV version of wolf howls that we all grew up with are in fact coyotes. If you have ever watched Dances with Wolves, the howl you hear on that movie is a wolf.
For those of you in the south (florida) who say you have seen a GREY wolf you are mistaken. Canis lupus has never roamed that far south. The furthest south the "gey wolf" has ever gotten based on available records going back to pioneer days is Kansas. The typical grey is between 100 and 150 pounds but looks much heavier has a 5 to 6 inch pad track and has short bristly fur in the summer with longer fur in the colder months. The southern version of the wolf (TX, LA, MS) was the red wolf which is not extinct in the wild except for those which were released into protected areas in NC and other areas.
For those of you who say you have seen a cougar in the Upper Midwest, you are again mistaken. Cougars became extinct in Wisconsin in the 1880's and to my knowledge there has not been an authentic sighting since then except for some "roadside zoo" animals which were set free or escaped and all of those were captured. Cougars have not been seen in Minnesota since the early 1900's as far as I know.
I am a wildlife biologist who specialized in wolves...For those of you who say you have seen a cougar in the Upper Midwest, you are again mistaken. Cougars became extinct in Wisconsin in the 1880's and to my knowledge there has not been an authentic sighting since then except for some "roadside zoo" animals which were set free or escaped and all of those were captured. Cougars have not been seen in Minnesota since the early 1900's as far as I know.
U of M doctoral student Michelle LaRue has been compiling confirmed sightings and physical evidence collected by wildlife agencies and a non-profit group called the Cougar Network. LaRue found 178 cougar confirmations in the Midwest, with numbers steadily increasing over the last 20 years. That may not sound like a lot of sightings, but LaRue says the team was very particular about the evidence it accepted..."It had to be either a carcass, photo, video, track, or scat of an actual animal," she said. Researchers also accepted sightings by trained wildlife biologists.
There was a sighting of a wolf several years ago in Plover by a woman. It turned out to be a German Shepherd. Take these "sightings" with huge grains of salt.
I am a wildlife biologist who specialized in wolves. All respect to your Aunt I think she saw a coyote or feral dog. Most people would not recognize a wolf if they saw one in the wild and almost no one does. If anyone saw the movie GREY. The movie is a pile of crap nothing in that movie is based on factual information other than the fact that wolves live in Alaska. Even some of the howls were coyotes.
First - Wolves are repulsed by human scent (See South Dakota Study 1975 US Fish and Wildlife Service) and will avoid human contact or habitation religiously.
Second - Wolves are crepuscular which means they are active mostly during the early dawn and twilight hours or at night.
Third - Wolves do not howl for the heck of it. They will do so to communicate and for social bonding. They DO NOT HOWL while hunting or after a kill.
Fourth- If the sightings were between late April and August it definitely was not a wolf. Wolves are denning during that time and have young so they would not give their location away. Besides wolves travel in packs and although the lone wolf does exist (a sick, old or exiled wolf) they are even more secretive than a healthy wolf.
Fifth - From what I have been able to gather the Michigan/Wisconsin packs stay in the extreme northwest area of the state and along the state line with the UP. The furthest south I have ever heard of them is where the Kettle and St Croix Rivers meet.
Sixth - The TV version of wolf howls that we all grew up with are in fact coyotes. If you have ever watched Dances with Wolves, the howl you hear on that movie is a wolf.
For those of you in the south (florida) who say you have seen a GREY wolf you are mistaken. Canis lupus has never roamed that far south. The furthest south the "gey wolf" has ever gotten based on available records going back to pioneer days is Kansas. The typical grey is between 100 and 150 pounds but looks much heavier has a 5 to 6 inch pad track and has short bristly fur in the summer with longer fur in the colder months. The southern version of the wolf (TX, LA, MS) was the red wolf which is not extinct in the wild except for those which were released into protected areas in NC and other areas.
For those of you who say you have seen a cougar in the Upper Midwest, you are again mistaken. Cougars became extinct in Wisconsin in the 1880's and to my knowledge there has not been an authentic sighting since then except for some "roadside zoo" animals which were set free or escaped and all of those were captured. Cougars have not been seen in Minnesota since the early 1900's as far as I know.
Thanks
Wolfman 24
You need to update your info. There are wolves all around WI, and a hunting season has even opened for them. There are also multiple confirmed reportings of cougars in WI, MN, IL, CT, MI. One was killed in Chicago.
Last edited by ben242000; 07-25-2012 at 08:21 AM..
Reason: added MI
I recently talked with the US Fish and Wildlife Office in Minneapolis. I also looked on the US Fish and Wildlife's quarterly report from January 2012.
The only three states that have official confirmed sightings or known populations of wolves in the Midwest are Minnesota (mostly the boundary waters)
Michigan (confined to a large area of the UP, none in the lower penn)
Wisconsin (confined to the upper 7-10% of the state west of Rhinelander) My source did say that within the next decades wolves will be common all along the northern tier. Based on this information I do not doubt wolves could be seen east of this line since a wolf packs home range (not to be confused with territory) is usually about 10 sq miles per wolf in ideal conditions. So sometimes a pack may be seen east of this line especially in winter. There may also be some smaller packs that move around. After all that is how the wolves got to Wisconsin in the first place. (Contrary to popular belief they were not "planted here" by the DNR or USFWS.)
There are no confirmed sightings of Wolf packs in any other midwestern state.
The things to keep in mind are
1. Wolves do not travel alone, even "lone wolves" will stay within the home range (not territory) of the pack they use to belong to so a single sighting in Illinois is unlikely. Besides the habitat in Illinois is unfavorable to wolves.
2. Some people keep wolves illegally. For example when I was in school in Eau Claire (72-77) the guy who owned the building next to Papa Bears brought back two wolf pups from Canada he had illegally bought from a trapper. When the wolves got too big his plan was to let them go or sell them. Unfortunately for him the DNR found out and arrested him. The wolves were sent to a rehab facility in Minnesota.
If the sighting in Illinois was a wolf is was not a free ranging one but more than likely a captive.
One more note. I did a study in NW Wisconsin in 1976 to investigate stories we were hearing that packs of coyotes were forming and taking down cattle. What we found was that the normal solitary or family group (2-5) coyotes were indeed packing and taking down larger prey including cattle, deer and sheep. We also discovered that those coyotes that were engaged in this activity were MUCH larger than an ordinary coyote. Males ran between 50 and 70 pounds and females slightly smaller. The average pack size was between 5 and 7 related individuals. Their appearance was also more wolf like, less guard hair and larger bone structure. However their foot track had not changed. So anyone not familiar with or having been around these type coyotes (or wolves for that matter) which now inhabit most of the upper midwest would easily mistake them for wolves. Also, it is still possible that males will come and go on their own from time to time which would result in sightings of "lone wolves" by people not familiar with the species.
Sightings of wolves in urban areas or near human habitation other than farms or "wilderness" areas are unlikely to be wolves. Coyotes are much more comfortable in these situations. Sightings of "lone wolves" by anyone especially in urban area or around human habitations other than those mentioned is more than unlikely. Wolves avoid human like the plague and will break their normal routine in order to do so.
There are three great books on this subject, two are for laymen and one is more technical.
A Wolf in the Family I do not remember the authors name but he is Canadian.
The Wolf by Pimlot and Rutter
The Wolf (technical) by L. David Mech
I will check out those books. The states I listed in my previous post were about cougar sightings (and the IL one was a death, traced from the Black Hills if my memory serves me right).
I do not want to sound argumentative, but whether it be cougars or wolves the point is still the same. Both species have specific territorial needs and Illinois does not meet any of them. Also the idea of a free ranging cougar being found in the greater Chicago metro area has no merit to put it politely. Again, if a cougar was killed in the Chicago land area it was not free ranging but a captive release. (ie someone had a "pet" and couldn't handle it any more or it escaped). We had a similar incident at UWEC in 1975. The ahole who released his pet is still in Waupan (fact). He has between 5 and 10 more to go.
I do not understand your comment about the Black Hills. IF you are saying it had a radio collar on it or sometime of location device or was tagged you may not understand how that particular system works. Because of the general public's mass hysteria over these critters a cougar would have no chance of getting out of South Dakota without being detected, darted and returned even deeper into the "bush". Also as I said a cougar has territorial needs and once those needs can no longer be met, the creatures will return to a more satisfactory area. Combing territorial demands, distance, control measures, tracking, and habitat requirements, it inconceivable that a cougar would travel that distance or want to.
The most current information I have (after re-checking on it) regarding cougars is that in the Midwest and upper plains states they are currently found in South Dakota (and have been for a long time), Minnesota (migrants from SD), the extreme upper tier of Wisconsin and the UP. There are no authentic reports from any other locations in Region 3 (MN, WI, MI,OH, IL, IA, IN) or the SD control areas. Their total population based on confirmed or authenticated sightings are very low in Wisconsin and the UP.
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