Question for KY hunters

[Boz330]

Anybody from KY ever see or heard of anybody seeing a wolf in KY?

I was on the way home from work last Friday evening when what I thought initially was a coyote ran across the road in front of the vehicle in front of me. My second impression was that this was a huge coyote. As I passed the area where it had gone I saw a critter that looked the size of a German shepherd but it definitely wasn't.
To qualify things a little the total time seeing this canine was only a couple seconds at most. It ran across a rural 2 lane road. It ran down a lane to a farm field perpendicular to that road and there was tree line next to that lane that only allowed a brief look of it going away. The coloring was coyote like but the size was bigger than any coyote that I have ever seen and I've seen quite a few and have shot several as well. I worked as a guide in NM for a number of years and had seen Mexican Grey Wolves on several occasions from an airplane while low level scouting for elk. The first time I saw the wolves there I thought the same thing about the size. Then I found out that they had been introduced out there, much to the consternation of the ranchers.
I have never heard of wolves in KY but wonder if it was possibly an escaped pet wolf or cross. This thing acted totally wild though in the way it crossed the road and traveled down the lane.

Bob

[beagle]

I was coming up the Bluegrass Parkway one night heading for Lexington about 11:30 and right past Lichfield where the coal mines were, I approached a bridge approach. Right before I got to the bridge, two yotes and something big (almost twice the size of the yotes) crossed the road about 75 yards in front of me.

I'll always beleive it was a wolf although FWL says there's aren't any here but they say that about bears too most of the time but we have 'em./beagle

[44fanatic]

My guess is that it would be a hybrid. Allot of talk about mountain lions and panthers down here in TN though.

[starnbar]

There's been a few yotes we shot down here around ocala that weighed between 60-70 lbs. Florida Wildlife Officer said they were hybrids he said he's seen em up around a 100 lbs.

[Boz330]

My guess is that it would be a hybrid. Allot of talk about mountain lions and panthers down here in TN though.

Here to, but F&G says no way. A local hunting and fishing program host said that several people he knows have seen them and he says that they are reliable and know what they are talking about.
They are very secretive animals. I spent nearly 10 years guiding in NM and there were lots of them there and I never saw one in all of that time. The number of deer and elk that they take out is incredible, we saw the remnants of that all of the time.

Bob

[Baron von Trollwhack]

The posters on the KY Hunting forums go back and forth on this very question. I do not know myself.

But I tell you, NC introduced the "red wolf" into the eastern part of the state some 10 years ago and then found out that they were mostly coyote in DNA and soon the naturally invading coyotes coming from Pa., Va., and the northern and western states took over breeding.

Previously I had hunted in Talliaferro County, Ga. for years and the coyotes that came in naturally from across the lower Apalachians were whoppers......GREAT GOOGAMOOGA !!!! 50-60- pounders, whereas the Va. transplants were more like 40-50 pounds for a big one.

BvT

[Got-R-Did]

Can't say I have ever witnessed anything on the scale you Fellows are speaking of, but one of the last Coyotes I shot weighed just over 45 lbs. This was with my Marlin 39 D as mentioned in the Rimfire post, and I was helping to reduce the yote population in Trimble Co. near Campbellsburg. This male had all the characteristics of a typical coyote, but he was big. If I can email an image to someone here to post on the Forum you would be able to see him.
Glad he is out of the gene pool.
Got-R-Did.

[Taylor]

On two different occasion's I've seen what I first thought was the BIGGEST coyote's ever.One aproaching my deer stand,the other crossing a bean field in another part of the county.Big and grey.Looked healthy too,not scrouny and nasty.As the crow fly's we are not that far from each other.I have family in Eastern Ky,none of them have mention seeing any "odd looking" coyote's.

[flounderman]

we are over run with red wolves in eastern carolina. they are crossing with the coyotes, coyotes cross with dogs, wolves cross with dogs. the government spent all that money to restore the red wolf and what they got isn't what the original was and after a few generations of mixing the canine gene pool there won't be a pure red wolf left. the red wolf project was a bigger mistake than electing obama. they were released in refuges but nobody told them they were supposed to stay there. I saw a couple laying on a ditch bank with a beagle and I saw two with one of my hounds I had lost the day before. apparently they all consider each other just dogs. my deer hounds did trail one out across a few miles of fields and when I saw it, I thought first it was a big deer, then it didn't run right and I thought bear. then when I saw the tail, it was a wolf. it was bigger than my hounds. I saw an original before it was released and it looked like a german shepard crossed with a plott hound. since then I have seen short haired, and shaggy, medium sized, to enormus. all of the canines will interbreed and sometimes you get an apparent cross and sometimes the size will be the most apparent result.

[beagle]

I have a big old red yote on the place here that I've been trying to get for a year but so far, no luck. He's big for a yote and last time i saw him, he was well furred out and sleek. Whatever I saw down on the BG Parkway would stand 1/2 times over him./beagle

[Boz330]

The Reds are suppose to look a lot like a Coyote and NC isn't that far away. The Coyotes that I have seen and killed were no where near 40lbs but what I saw would go close to twice that. The fur on this thing still looked to be prime so that could make it look bigger as well. The tail was bushy which is not supposed to be the case on a wolf. WHO KNOWS?
Got R Did if you send me that Picture I'll try and get it up, I'd like to see it in any case. I'll PM you my e-mail.

Bob

[curiousgeorge]

I also live in Central Kentucky and have shot several coyotes but nothing as big as what you are describing. I do know for a fact that we are starting to see several wolf "hybrids" here locally. One of the kids in my wife's 6th grade English class was showing pictures of their "hybrid wolf - dog" and the litter of pups that they were selling. These animals get very large and seem to be the latest craze in the exotic dog breeding.

Do you and Beagle remember the one in L-ville last year that took the baby out of the crib and killed it? If I remember correctly, someone saw it on the street with the dead child (approx 20 - 25 pounds) in its mouth packing it like it didn't weigh anything. I hope that this doesn't become the next abandoned populatation of dogs, but I am afraid that it will start to happen. Can you imagine the impact on the wild game and livestock populations?

I don't know if this is what you saw or not, but the 2 local Game Wardens that I asked (Green, Taylor, and Hart counties) say that officially there are no real wolves in our area.

[Got-R-Did]

Roger That, Bob. PM replied.
Cheers,
Got-R-Did.

[Halfbreed]

I have to agree with some others, definatly sounds like a coy-dog. They look like coyotes, but are much larger. I have seen some that would go close to 100 pounds. Sadly i did not have a rifle with me at the time.
I had a friend whose son was trapped up in a tree by coyotes, he was squirrel hunting when they chased him up the tree. He killed several with his 410, then pops and I showed up with rifles and killed most of them.

John

[Big Boomer]

Reading down through these posts makes me wonder what I killed in March of 2008. We live about 50 miles above the Ky./Tenn. border just a few miles on the east side of I75. My wife runs Limousine and Angus cattle on her place and a cow had just dropped a new calf. She called me and said a "dog" wouldn't allow a cow to exit a pasture field, cross another field and get to the barn and out of the weather. It was raining, cold and windy. I took one look and said that was no dog, that it must be a
coyote or something. I managed to get my Rem. 788 .223 with some hot-loaded 52 gr. Nosler match bullets and dropped the first one of the three at about 150 yards. or so. The second critter ran off 50 yards or so further and stopped, so I dropped him as well. The third was long gone by then. These two animals were grayish white in color and were as big as large German shepherds with bushy tails and had to weigh at least 75 lbs. We had just finished moving into our new home and I had lifted enough to make a reasonably good guess regarding weight. I just assumed they were a version of coyote, never having heard of wolves in this area. I heard coyotes would crossbreed with dogs if they were not hungry.

A week ago I saw your typical looking coyote on the Bluegrass Ordnance land east of Richmond, Ky. (where all the ammunition bunkers are located). The coyote was not small by any means, but had a darker appearance unlike the two critters I killed. My wife's two sons live nearby on either end of her property. They say they hear coyotes howling nearly every night and my wife has called me to our back door more than once and told me the coyotes are howling, but with my hearing loss I can't hear a dog barking next door. A few months ago one of my wife's son's beagle dog (female) came home and had much of the skin missing from her throat. I assume she had a run in with a coyote.

Makes me wonder what is lurking around these parts. 'Tuck

[beagle]

Tuck....that place is full of yotes. I worked out there for about 10 years and we'd see and hear 'em all the time and driving back and forth to Lexington every day, I'd see at least two dead ones on I-75. Early in the morning before daylight they'd be carrying on something fierce out there where they stored the FEMA trailers. Guess they lived under them. We definitely have our share here in KY and some are healthy specimens too./beagle

[schutzen]

I live west of Paducah. I have never seen a wolf in this area, BUT 10-15 years ago there was a proposal to re-introduce Red Wolves to Land-Between-The-Lakes. Supposedly this was never implemented, but you never know. I do know is that wolves range over very large area, a 150-300 mile circular track is what I have been told. I believe you are well within 150 miles of the southern end of LBL.

In the last five years my neighbor and I have killed two larger than normal coyotes with dark reddish fur. Were they coy-dogs or coy-wolves or coy-dog-wolves? I do not know, but I do believe they were some type of hybrid.

My personal belief is that a second generation hybrid (coyote/dog then coy-dog/dog) could very easily run 75-100 pounds. Cross a coyote with a German Sheppard, a Malamute, a Wolf Hound, or any large dog and you will have a very formidable predator.

What I look at to tell if it is a coyote is the tail. The coyotes I have seen have a tail that fluffs out round while the very few wolves I have seen had a broom like tail similar to a German Sheppard. The two confirmed coy-dog hybrids I have seen also had the round tail, but this may not hold true 100% of the time.

Live in the woods long enough, you will see some strange stuff.

[Big Boomer]

Schutzen:

You are right about the tail description of these critters (whatever it was that I killed) ... they are not as rounded in fluff like any coyote I've ever seen before (like the one I saw near Richmond last week). The tails of these things I killed looked more like a German Shepherd's tail, only with longer hair and fluffier.

I would hate to meet up with a pack of those curs unarmed. The canine teeth of the two I killed were really long and in the "relaxed" position of death they still stuck out below the lower jaw lip line. 'Tuck

[gew98]

I've hammered a couple coy dogs in my AO... and only one true coyote. Never seen a big gray wolf except when I hunted as a kid in north wester PA ( weedville,berndale PA areas ). And as a kid it was one dark gray sleek looking beast with fangs galore !.
When I lived in central KY it was almost all coydogs ... and though they were stealthy they could not outrun the AR15 !.