Large Canine Paw Print Found

[Michigan Swamp Buck]

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?

[Ninurta]

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.

.

[F2d5thCav]

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--

[Michigan Swamp Buck]

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.

[Ninurta]

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.

.

[F2d5thCav]

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--

[Michigan Swamp Buck]

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.

[Michigan Swamp Buck]

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.