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+--- Thread: Large Canine Paw Print Found (/showthread.php?tid=2470)
Large Canine Paw Print Found - Michigan Swamp Buck - 11-13-2024
I have a Wildlife Feeding Area (WFA) with an "Observation Post" nearby. When I checked the amount of feed left, I found a large canine paw print. It was a fore paw about 3 & 1/4 inches long and wide. Unfortunately, no trail cam for the WFA.
It had identical, evenly-spaced toes that were the size of my thumb. The deer tracks beside it distorted the right toe, so I suspect it may have been wider than 3.25".
A week ago, we were surrounded by coyotes, howling and yip-yapping in every direction for a couple miles. I freaked so bad, that I keep the shotgun loaded now, whereas I never did that before.
Given the size, it may be a domestic dog running after the deer, a huge coyote, or less likely a small wolf. I think perhaps a coy-dog, the coyote/wolf hybrid of the Great Lakes Region.
What do the Rogues think?
RE: Large Canine Paw Print Found - Ninurta - 11-13-2024
(11-13-2024, 04:26 PM)Michigan Swamp Buck Wrote: I have a Wildlife Feeding Area (WFA) with an "Observation Post" nearby. When I checked the amount of feed left, I found a large canine paw print. It was a fore paw about 3 & 1/4 inches long and wide. Unfortunately, no trail cam for the WFA.
It had identical, evenly-spaced toes that were the size of my thumb. The deer tracks beside it distorted the right toe, so I suspect it may have been wider than 3.25".
A week ago, we were surrounded by coyotes, howling and yip-yapping in every direction for a couple miles. I freaked so bad, that I keep the shotgun loaded now, whereas I never did that before.
Given the size, it may be a domestic dog running after the deer, a huge coyote, or less likely a small wolf. I think perhaps a coy-dog, the coyote/wolf hybrid of the Great Lakes Region.
What do the Rogues think?
It's probably a large dog or a smallish wolf.
When I raised wolf-shepherd hybrids, my ex wife was also raising bitty little yappy ankle-biter mutts. I noticed one day that one of my male's toes was bigger than her bitty dog's whole damned foot!
Coyotes are generally on the small side, relatively speaking. I've been told that ALL of the coyotes east of the Mississippi are "coy-wolves", hybrids that mixed with wolves in Minnesota about the time they crossed the Mississippi river, but I don't know that for sure.
It's possible that it's a huge coyote, or an interbred with wolves coyote.
I do know that they say there are no wolves around here any more, but there are coyotes all over the place. So much so that we have a bounty on their scalps now in certain places. One morning, about 8 years ago I saw what looked like a big gray wolf that was about 5 feet long from the tip of his nose to the root of his tail, not counting the tail itself, standing in a meadow. That's pretty damned huge for a coyote. He also had the heavier muzzle and the blunter ears of a wolf, but since there are no wolves here, well, it musta been a coyote... but the wolf marks would suggest it was pretty heavily interbred with wolves.
Some indians called coyotes "medicine wolves", and didn't make much distinction between coyote and wolf, The wolves we had here back in the day were Red Wolves, which size-wise are hard to tell from a coyote. They're not very big. Now most all of them are raised in the mountains of NC at a reserve, and are being reintroduced into the wild at the other end of the state of NC in the marshes. Other than that, they are mostly extinct now. Not nearly as big as a Timber Wolf, which the coyotes interbred with when they got a little bigger than they were.
Some wolves have developed tracks where the toes are a little bit more widely spaced to allow for more insulating fur between the toe pads, but I think those are all farther north than you are.
Being where you are, I would weight it in favor of a wolf track. Not a huge wolf, but a respectable one.
ETA: for those that don't know, you can tell a canine fore paw from a canine rear paw because the fore paws are as wide as they are long, making them rounder. The rear paws are longer than they are wide. Cats are different - their claws don't show in most tracks unless they are gaining purchase, and their fore paws are wider than they are long, while the rear paws are rounder, about as long as they are wide.
So, yeah, that is a canine fore paw. The left toe of which has been distorted by something stepping after it to it's left, pushing the mud right-ward and distorting the track a bit.
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RE: Large Canine Paw Print Found - F2d5thCav - 11-14-2024
MSB,
Saw a juvenile wolf once in an area the local authorities swore hadn't had wolves in over a century.
Turned out it had left a pack further to the south, in another country.
I was relieved that it was skittish and avoided contact.
Your print, as Ninurta mentioned, may well be from a wolf considering where you live.
Cheers--
RE: Large Canine Paw Print Found - Michigan Swamp Buck - 11-14-2024
I highly suspect there are wolves in the lower peninsula. They were introduced in the upper peninsula and have established packs there. Twenty-some years ago, there were reports of cougars in the lower peninsula. People even had trail cam pictures, but the DNR denied their presence until a study proved they were there. Even then they claimed there were some that wandered into the state, but there wasn't a breeding population.
Now, back then, when I was looking into cougars, I found unofficial reports of wolf dens just south of the straits in the northern lower. There was speculation they were traveling south in the winter over the ice sheets. The coyotes are hybrid and if there are a few larger ones, I can believe it may be a coyote, but I can't rule out a wolf. Normally, if I found such a track on the road, I think a domestic dog was on the loose. In this case, on the main trail, maybe a domestic dog, but on the feed pile, that makes me think it's a wild dog of some kind: feral domestic, coy-dog hybrid, or a gray wolf.
RE: Large Canine Paw Print Found - Ninurta - 11-14-2024
The toes on a domestic dog will often splay out more in deeper mud like that. That's what leads me to think either a large coyote or a small wolf.
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RE: Large Canine Paw Print Found - F2d5thCav - 11-14-2024
I'm always amazed at how "invisible" large animals can be in the woods.
A few years back, Mrs Cav and I took a shortcut through a local wood. I just about had a heart attack when two large forms jumped out of the bush and took off running at high speed.
Wild pigs. Had they attacked me, I would have had no chance to react.
Cheers--
RE: Large Canine Paw Print Found - Michigan Swamp Buck - 11-14-2024
There used to be some feral pigs on the loose not far away over in the next county. The locals killed them all before they came around here. They had some kind of pit trap I believe that caught them all within a year or so.
I had big concerns about those animals, wild boars are destructive and dangerous.
RE: Large Canine Paw Print Found - Michigan Swamp Buck - 11-16-2024
Thanks guys, I'm glad to share this subject here.
It has helped me become more aware of the game signs and the overall picture. I looked into pig tracks compared to others, like whitetail deer, and found a number of very good track charts. I downloaded a couple of charts as PDF files for my own personal reference.
I gave little thought to identifying much smaller tracks like mice or what have you or more importantly, cougar tracks. There is one I have thought to be aware of, and it is much like a canine track. You got badgers, mink, fox, beaver (I'd love to see those tracks), ducks, and so on, all of which I never bothered with much if I had noticed them to begin with.
RE: Large Canine Paw Print Found - Michigan Swamp Buck - 01-07-2025
I found out what made that track, it was a neighbor's German Sheperd.
There were a bunch of these tracks around the house, so I followed them around. The prints were of one large and one medium canine. The smaller paw prints looked familiar to me. It turns out the neighbor has a boxer and the front fore paw print looked like a boxer's print.
The girlfriend messaged the neighbors who are a little over a mile away, and they showed her their dog's tracking data, and sure enough, they had come up this far and then some. They are over to the other neighbor's place more than ours apparently, running all over their 80, just passing through here to get there I guess. They were going a mile west, then another mile north to our place then NW about a half mile where they were running circles, probably chasing the deer bedding down under the hemlock spruce trees back there. Then they'd head home back the same way it looks like.
RE: Large Canine Paw Print Found - F2d5thCav - 01-08-2025
Must be a big shepherd to rival a wolf's paw print.
Cheers
RE: Large Canine Paw Print Found - Michigan Swamp Buck - 01-09-2025
(01-08-2025, 06:13 PM)F2d5thCav Wrote: Must be a big shepherd to rival a wolf's paw print.
Cheers
I haven't seen either dog, not even pictures, but the big prints appeared a little smaller and well-defined in the fresh snow, as opposed to the spread caused in the muddy print from November.
I hadn't seen the boxer's prints before, but having had a boxer of our own, the print was familiar and it clicked as soon as I knew the neighbor had a boxer along with a shepherd. The two traveled together, mostly on the main trail, but they cut through the swamp without hesitation.
They traveled in low areas, out of sight, when not on the trails, also, we never saw them during the day, so I suspected a coyote mating pair. But once the neighbor's shared their tracking map, and that one was a boxer, it was obvious what was making those tracks.
Another thing, the fact that the prints never traveled the frozen creek bed downstream to the big swamp and river beyond was more evidence that this wasn't coyotes. Traveling the frozen waterways is the expected pattern for coyotes during the winter.
Then too is the fact that they went right up to the porch, ate some cat food, and didn't eat any cats was a dead give-away it wasn't coyotes. The feral cats are on the coyote's menu, we lose a couple every season. We shouldn't be feeding them, but they are becoming tamer and we will be able to wrangle most of them now to be "snipped and released", the best answer we have to the over crowded shelters in every county here abouts, other than target practice that is.
RE: Large Canine Paw Print Found - Ninurta - 01-09-2025
(01-08-2025, 06:13 PM)F2d5thCav Wrote: Must be a big shepherd to rival a wolf's paw print.
Cheers
Might not be a pure shepherd. Could be a "Timber Shepherd" like I used to raise - a cross between German Shepherds and Timber Wolves. My big male was 50/50 wolf / german shepherd. His pa was a 160 pound pure blood timber wolf, and he himself weighted 140 pounds. His paws were so big that my ex wife's bitty little ankle biter dogs had entire feet that were not as big as one of his toes.
Some folks are reluctant to let it be known they have a timber shepherd, because any mix over 10% wolf requires a wildlife license, if it's even legal to keep at all. For example, I don't think wolves are legal to keep at all in Virginia, and neither would be a 15% or better timber shepherd.
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RE: Large Canine Paw Print Found - Chiefsmom - 01-10-2025
Hey swampy!
I've heard a few people claim to see wolves in lower Michigan, just a bit north of Manistee. After, as you said, all the BS from the DNR regarding the cougar, I'm more inclined to believe the regular Joe than them.
If there is, someone will get one on a trail cam.
And the DNR will still deny it. LOL
(01-09-2025, 10:12 PM)Ninurta Wrote:(01-08-2025, 06:13 PM)F2d5thCav Wrote: Must be a big shepherd to rival a wolf's paw print.
Cheers
Might not be a pure shepherd. Could be a "Timber Shepherd" like I used to raise - a cross between German Shepherds and Timber Wolves. My big male was 50/50 wolf / german shepherd. His pa was a 160 pound pure blood timber wolf, and he himself weighted 140 pounds. His paws were so big that my ex wife's bitty little ankle biter dogs had entire feet that were not as big as one of his toes.
Some folks are reluctant to let it be known they have a timber shepherd, because any mix over 10% wolf requires a wildlife license, if it's even legal to keep at all. For example, I don't think wolves are legal to keep at all in Virginia, and neither would be a 15% or better timber shepherd.
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That is a beautiful dog/hybrid!!!
RE: Large Canine Paw Print Found - Ninurta - 01-11-2025
(01-10-2025, 08:08 PM)Chiefsmom Wrote:
That is a beautiful dog/hybrid!!!
Thank you, and yes he was! He got hi thicker fur, bushier tail, "wolf ruffs" of longer fur on his jowls, and apparently his feet, from his timber wolf pa. He also had the longer legs - relative to body length - of a wolf. He got the taller ears and narrower muzzle of a German shepherd from his ma. Also his white color - she was some sort of special breed of white German shepherd that had only recently even been recognized as a breed by the AKC.
I took him to the vet one time, and the vet, while examining him, said "this isn't a dog - it's a wolf!" So I said "yeah, about half. what tipped you off?" and the vet said it was his teeth. Apparently wolves also have bigger teeth than German shepherds.
I started to say "all the better to eat you with, my dear", but refrained because the vet was already freaked out enough...
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RE: Large Canine Paw Print Found - Bally002 - 01-11-2025
(01-11-2025, 04:42 AM)Ninurta Wrote:Pretty dog.(01-10-2025, 08:08 PM)Chiefsmom Wrote:
That is a beautiful dog/hybrid!!!
Thank you, and yes he was! He got hi thicker fur, bushier tail, "wolf ruffs" of longer fur on his jowls, and apparently his feet, from his timber wolf pa. He also had the longer legs - relative to body length - of a wolf. He got the taller ears and narrower muzzle of a German shepherd from his ma. Also his white color - she was some sort of special breed of white German shepherd that had only recently even been recognized as a breed by the AKC.
I took him to the vet one time, and the vet, while examining him, said "this isn't a dog - it's a wolf!" So I said "yeah, about half. what tipped you off?" and the vet said it was his teeth. Apparently wolves also have bigger teeth than German shepherds.
I started to say "all the better to eat you with, my dear", but refrained because the vet was already freaked out enough...
.
Looks like our dog Girlie cept she only has 3 legs. (Swiss white shepherd in her breeding)
Kind regards,
Bally)
RE: Large Canine Paw Print Found - Michigan Swamp Buck - 01-11-2025
I hear'd them hybrid wolf-dogs only get mean if'en you feed 'em gunpowder and light their ass up when they fart - otherwise loyal and great pets.
RE: Large Canine Paw Print Found - Ninurta - 01-11-2025
(01-11-2025, 02:45 PM)Michigan Swamp Buck Wrote: I hear'd them hybrid wolf-dogs only get mean if'en you feed 'em gunpowder and light their ass up when they fart - otherwise loyal and great pets.
They are loyal and great pets, but here's the thing - they have to bond with their owner within their first year of life. Beyond that, they will not bond with anyone, so you can't even give them away after that, because they will never warm up to the change. If the owner dies or something like that, they have to be put down.
They make great guard dogs. I had a miscreant beak in through my back door one evening, and I set them loose on him. They kept him busy and on the run while I went after my shotgun. He tore the hell out of my back fence getting back over it and getting the hell out of there before he got eaten.
So long as they are properly trained and recognize you as the "pack leader" or "alpha", they're no problem at all. My female weighed about 90 pounds, and didn't realize how big she was. She'd take a running go across the room and jump into my lap like she was still a puppy... but the impact usually sent my chair flying, with me and the dog both in it, until a wall stopped it. When she took that notion, about all you could do was brace for impact and enjoy the ride!
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