i finished work on a guys hog trap. i delivered it today and we were telling war stories. he was telling me that the Mexican wolf was starting to move into the area. we have a lot of coyotes and bobcats at the lease (soon to be taken care of after deer season) but about a month ago, i saw what i thought was a coyote but it was too pretty. rust/red fur white/tan legs and husky shaped face. after google imaging a Mexican wolf, it fit the picture. could they be in southeast Texas?

I would say if so it was the most uncommon thing you will ever encounter in your hunting career. at one point there were thought to be zero. from the late 90's up until 2010 50 wolfs have been released in south east arizona in the Apache National Forest. out of those 50 they are all well monitored to the point that it is known that there is only one breeding pair. With that information I would have to say it was a Coyote. They can range in all kinds of color schemes i shot a nice rust red with a copper shine dog last winter in the snow. Also size differences is extreme with coyotes being described as 15-40 pounds and these wolfs 60-80 with males being larger than that by the same sight.

just my .02

Now the mexican wolfs are sneaking across the border.

don't you cross us or try and cross our borders so many guns piled up were like mother F#$%ing Hoarders…

heres a pic just pulled off the web

While it might be possible for the Mexican wolf to be in east Texas, the prospect seems rather unlikely for it to be there naturally and without any other sightings between east Texas and its known range that is at least 100 miles distant.

From the coloration and size described, it sounds like what you may have is a Red Wolf. East Texas is within its historic known range. Note that the Red Wolf is sometimes confused with being a coyote.

pafree did it look anything like this guy?

it looked simular to the one in the snow. it didn't have the long fur but the coloring was simular. it came out during the day and was sitting on one of the roads on the lease. when we got closer, it went into the woods but after we passed it came back out and started to follow us down the road.

all the "deer" hunters on the lease are saying the deer movement is weird. could it be him shaking them up?

I've seen Jacurundi in the Hill Country...back when I had my coon
and cat dogs...The local game warden (now retired) Ernie Lerma
also saw them...When I lived in Alto and hunted almost daily with my hounds, I caught some red pups from a coyote looking
animal...I now believe to have been a red wolf..they never socialized..had to turn them loose...Saw one timber wolf over
by Weches about 2AM..biggest darn wolf I ever saw...DD

that picture i posted is a coyote...

that is why i brought up this subject. i want to get into varmint hunting and after seeing what i saw and hearing stories of the wolves. i don't want to shoot something that is endangered.

Red Wolf? Wasn't the red wolf extinct in 1980, then reintroduced in the late 80's in North Carolina. While there could be a slim chance I would doubt it. Coyotes and red wolves were thought to possibly cross breed and there have been yotes that have had a lot of red wolf characteristics.

I lived in the panhandle on the high plains for most of my life. There are big coyotes up there, and when they get a fat winter coat grown in, they're even bigger. Now I live in Galveston, and coyotes run through my neighborhood all the time and live in the swamp on the east end of the island. These suckers are bigger than anything I saw in the plains, close to the size of German shepherds. But they most certainly have the facial structure of coyotes and not wolves, but their size and weight are much closer to those of a wolf. I did a little reading after seeing one here for the first time, and there seems to be some agreement that as settlers decimated the Texas red wolf population, it began to interbreed with east Texas coyotes. This accounts for the OCCASIONAL pack of massive coyotes with red wolf characteristics. I think the isolation of the island population may have prevented some of the suppression mentioned in the link below.

http://www.nsrl.ttu.edu/tmot1/canirufu.htm

as far as that goes i would say the only thing in east texas you have to worry about is shooting a dog thinning its a coyote. I would be willing to bet anything that you never get a chance at a wolf there. And if you did i highly doubt you would even get prosecuted. The chances of a wolf being there are almost 0% so you would not know any better. coyotes can come in all types and colors i shot a black coyote a few years back up north. It is very common for people to think that different coyotes are wolfs

and yes the red wolf was extinct and was artificially reinstated. (release of captive animals) only 50 were released and they are all monitored very closely. out of the 50 released between 1980s and 2010 only one breeding pair was ever known to breed.

get out there and start laying down some song dogs and i wouldnt not worry about ever shooting a wolf! varmint hutning is a passion of mine im sure you will love it.

LOL, red wolves were not declared extinct, but "extinct in the wild." You can't re-introduce a species that is extinct. The last known remnant population before reintroduction was in SE Texas and Louisiana. So yeah, chances are pretty slim. However, if what was cited in the OP was as described and is a wolf, the traits described do not match the Mexican wolf. Indeed it probably was a coyote.



Wow, that pair must be really busy because there are now approximately 20 known packs comprising 100-120 individuals that exist in the wild where reintroduced.
http://www.fws.gov/redwolf/

Not sure what you saw was a wolf but the Mexican wolf was reintroduced into new Mexico a few years ago. Contact the new Mexico ranger district to get info on numbers and known travel and breeding. They keep pretty good tabs on them.

I saw this when doing an elk harvest report for my uncle on the NM wildlife page. http://wildlife.state.nm.us/recreation/hunting/documents/Wolfcountry.pdf


We don't need wolves in TX. Don't want to end up screwed like Idaho.

you used the extinct word. this summer while hunting hogs, the birds would hit the feeder right before dark. there was one bird that would be mixed in with the rest that looked like a pigeon or dove but had a red breast. after googling, it looked like the extinct passenger pigeon. http://www.wbu.com/c.../passpigeon.htm i have always said that Liberty county was 20 years behind the time. no worries during the Y2K scares here because the county is still trying to get out of the 80s.

thanks to everyone for the information on the wolf thing. hog hunting has been very addicting and hope varmint hunting will too.