Wolf-dog like animal wandering forests of northern Minnesota
This was one of the stranger observations we had this winter…a wolf-like, dog-like canid of sorts roaming the area. It sort of looks like a mix between a wolf and a malamute or something.
Our first two observations—Feb 29 and Mar 3— were of this animal and two actual adult wolves roaming around. But none of the wolves in this pack were part of a resident pack in our area (i.e., they were just a wandering group).
And the one sequence of all 3 shows just how different this canid’s appearance is from the wolves in our area (the other two wolves in that sequence are what mature adult wolves in our area generally look like).
We then had 10 observations of this animal by itself from March 11 to March 20 all across the Greater Voyageurs Ecosystem so this animal was roaming substantially (and likely left the area as we had no observations of the animal after March 20).
Notably, we have never seen a “wolf” that looks like this but we suspect that either this canid is a wolf with some strange mutation that makes it super fluffy and extra large (seems unlikely but trying to think through the options)…or it is a wolf-dog hybrid.
Since we have seen no evidence that wolves are breeding with dogs in our area or heard of this occurring in northern Minnesota, we think it most likely—if it is indeed a hybrid—that the animal is a hybrid that was either released or escaped.
Of course, this is all speculation and your guess is as good as ours. Just trying to think of the most likely explanation.
Or perhaps this is the re-incarnation of London’s Buck from Call of the Wild:
“He was a killer, a thing that preyed, living on the things that lived, unaided, alone, by virtue of his own strength and prowess, surviving triumphantly in a hostile environment where only the strong survive…
…Deep in the forest a call was sounding, and as often as he heard this call, mysteriously thrilling and luring, he felt compelled to turn his back upon the fire and the beaten earth around it, and to plunge into the forest, and on and on, he knew not where or why; nor did he wonder where or why, the call sounding imperiously, deep in the forest.”-Jack London
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