As storm clouds loomed over the coastal prairie and low, rumbling thunder echoed in the distance, I quickened my pace.
Having placed a motion-sensing camera near a small, brackish marsh, there were still several hundred yards left to change film and perhaps validate sighting reports for the area.
After rounding a corner of the trail, I stopped for a second to adjust the hood of my jacket when I saw it.
Lying in the broad open was what appeared to be a wolf. A large wolf.
Its coat was deep red and the head showed a prominent sagittal crest, broad snout, highlighted by large ears. Its tail was long but not too bushy and it had a white tip that matched the lining on the front of its legs.
Fewer than 40 yards separated us yet I wanted to move in closer. Slowly walking toward the animal without looking directly in its eyes, I closed the distance another 10 yards before it showed any signs of distress. Then it suddenly jumped to its feet and retreated with a gait only found in wolves.
Validation would not come from the lens of the camera but with my own two eyes in what was the most unique wildlife encounter of my life. A reader of my newspaper column tipped me off to the wolves in this area and following up had paid off in a magnificent way, but this encounter would not be the end of the story.
What was it that I saw?
Canis rufus, the red wolf, was common in the southeastern United States from the Carolinas to central Texas. However, popular theory has it predator control programs combined with habitat loss in certain areas reduced the population and by the 1970s, United States Fish and Wildlife Service officials declared the only remaining red wolves were in eastern Texas and southwestern Louisiana.
The common thinking was the population threatened itself by interbreeding with Canis latrans and Canis familiaris (domestic dog). In response to this, Service officials made Canis rufus the first-ever mammal put on the endangered species list and started a capture program in 1973 to find the last remaining “genetically pure” red wolves and found a captive breeding program. In 1980, Service officials considered the red wolf extinct in the wild and labeled only 14 of the hundreds of animals they caught as pure red wolves. These 14 specimens are the basis for all of the red wolves in the federal recovery program.
Research that is more recent suggests the red wolf is a fertile hybrid of the coyote and gray wolf. DNA analysis of 77 canids captured for the captive breeding program from 1973-1976 (including some of the first animals in the captive breeding program) revealed genotypes found only in southern coyotes or gray wolves. In fact, they even showed a gray wolf characteristic associated with the Mexican gray wolf, another highly endangered canid.
Without question there are animals in Texas that look virtually exactly like the red wolves in the federal captive breeding program. Whether they are genetically the same remains open to debate, but there are clearly wild canines other than coyotes on the landscape. Many of these animals occur along the upper Texas coast and are geographically close to the so-called “ghost wolves” documented in the Galveston region. These Galveston-area canids attracted scientific attention after genetic studies revealed they carried significant red wolf ancestry despite living outside the federal recovery program.
The animals I have documented share many of the same morphological characteristics associated with red wolves, including larger body size, broad skulls, long legs, reddish coloration, large ears, white markings, and a distinctly wolf-like gait. Given their proximity to the Galveston ghost wolves and their remarkable physical similarity to recognized red wolves, it is reasonable to suspect these animals may also possess significant red wolf DNA. Only comprehensive genetic testing can answer that question definitively, but the evidence suggests these coastal canids may represent an important reservoir of red wolf ancestry. The popular term for them is “coywolves.”
You can go to my YouTube channel and see numerous videos on this topic including the one below.
A landowner called late one Friday evening and said he had been feeding coyotes on his property in hopes of killing them before he built a facility there. He feared the coyotes would cause problems around tenants’ dogs and cats, so he planned to eliminate them. The evening before he called me, he sat out with his rifle and watched as three wolves came up to the dog food he had put out to lure coyotes.
“I looked through my scope and immediately noticed them as red wolves because of the articles I had seen in the paper and the fact I have seen lots of coyotes and knew this was no coyote,” he said.
I rushed over to the spot, set out my Trophy View motion-sensing video camera and that evening captured nearly 30 minutes of video of a beautiful red wolf eating dog food. The video is so long because the wolf can hear the camera running but cannot quite place the sound, so it takes a bite, runs off, looks around and takes another bite. The video is quite humorous to watch and shows something that is definitely not a pure coyote.
After the beautiful animal at the beginning of this story ran off, I walked toward one of my motion-sensing cameras and heard footsteps in the dry leaves behind me. When I turned around, I noticed the wolf I had just seen was following me. At a distance of only 10 yards, it showed no aggressive posturing but a general curiosity as to what I was doing in its habitat and perhaps more importantly how long I was going to stay.
As I locked eyes with it, I saw an untamed, majestic wildness that reminded me why I got into wildlife study to begin with. Then almost instantly, its eyes changed and a look of deep fear overcame it. It stared for a second, put down its ears and ran off into the brush.
I have pondered many times what that animal was thinking as we stared at one another and then another thought crossed my mind.
If a simple stare caused this proud creature to retreat into the brush, what could a growing human population starving for land to develop do to them? How many are there? Could some of these animals represent descendants of the same red wolf lineage once thought lost forever? These are questions I continually ponder.
At the end of the day, I say if it looks like a wolf and howls like a wolf, it is probably a wolf.
Or maybe, in this case, a wolf carrying the legacy of the red wolf.
Based on what we are learning from the Galveston ghost wolves and similar animals documented along the Texas coast, that possibility may be far greater than many ever imagined.
Chester Moore
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