Tag Archives: red wolves

Rare Black Coyote (Video)

October 23, 2021 Chester Moore 1 Comment

Coyotes are the most common large predator in the United States.

With populations everywhere from Yellowstone National Park to Central Park in New York City, they are highly adaptable creatures.

In fact, the Navajo people have a tradition that coyotes would be the last animal on Earth.

Black (melanistic) coyotes are super rare and we have an exclusive video of one sent to us by our friend and research partner Todd Jurasek.

He has been getting some incredible trail camera videos of bears and bobcats in southern Oklahoma.

Now, he sends us this beautiful, black coyote in broad daylight.

Click here to watch the clip.

Melanism (think reverse of albinism) is present in many animals including canids.

With recent evidence showing red wolf DNA in coyote-like canids on the Texas Coast, it would be interesting to have a DNA sample from this black one.

The red wolf which was native from Texas/Oklahoma to the eastern seaboard had a subspecies called the “black wolf”. It was later called the Floria black wolf and was believed to be a long-extinct subspecies of red wolf.

In fact, black wolf was a term commonly used throughout the South for what is now known as the red wolf due to the presence of black individuals.

I have a copy of the 1946-47 Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Biennial Report that goes into detail about wolves in the Bayou State.

Under the headline “Predator Control” the following information is given.

“The Legislature of 1946 increased hunting license fees to $2.00. Twenty five percent of these funds (the increase) were dedicated to predator control.”

Interestingly, the article shows the above photo of a predator control officer with a dead “black wolf”.

The red was declared extinct in the wild in 1980 due to hybridization with coyotes.

Whatever this particular coyote’s genetic heritage, it is a strikingly beautiful animal and we are grateful to Todd Jurasek for sharing it with us.

Do you have videos or photos of black coyotes or other wild canids? If so, email them to chester@chestermoore.com.

Chester Moore

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Mysterious Wildlife

Red Wolf Shot-Or Not? A Look Into The Archives

March 30, 2021 Chester Moore 2 Comments

The first article I ever had published as a wildlife journalist was about red wolves and their hybridization with coyotes.

I was 19.

In high school I did a lot of research on red wolves because some of the last ones to live naturally in the wild were just a few miles from my home.

During my early research into the species, my aunt Brenda gave me this clipping from the Orange Leader newspaper dating back to 1986.

It shows a man with what looks very much like a red wolf he shot in Orange County that year. The article says the man “shot an 80-pound timber wolf”.

It’s obviously not a timber (gray) wolf but it has a lot of red wolf characteristics.

The official word was that all of the animals left were “coyotes” or at best wolf/coyote hybrids.

But at the very least this photo shows the red wolf genetic was strong in the area after the extinction declaration.

We now know this to be true as I broke the story on red wolf DNA found in a road-killed canid on Galveston Island, TX in 2018.

I was honored to win a Texas Outdoor Writer’s Association “Excellence In Craft” award for that piece.

You can read it here.

I found this photo searching for some other images and thought you might enjoy seeing this rare image from the past.

Chester Moore

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Mysterious Wildlife

A Mexican wolf in TX? (Photo)

January 16, 2018 Chester Moore Leave a comment

Mexican Wolf In Texas

I’ll never forget staring into the eyes of a big male Mexican gray wolf.

Its piercing eyes reflected a wild lineage that roamed the Southwest until the white man moved in with guns, traps and poison.

This was early in my career and the animal resided at a captive breeding facility where remnants of the highly endangered subspecies were being bred for release into the wild.

I shot tons of photos but they were lost in Hurricane flood damage-along with many others.

Since that time there have been numerous releases in New Mexico and even pups born in the wild there.

So, when Jaclyn Booth sent me this photo I took notice because the animal looked very much like the wolves I had seen at the facility so many years ago.

The photo came through our “The Wildlife Journalist” Facebook and had no information on where it came from.

26794016_1752587581420598_142681517_n — Photo courtesy Jaclyn Booth

My thought was “Wow, thats a gray wolf, probably a Mexican gray wolf.”

I messaged her to find out what state the photo came from and when she said it came from her ranch in Hall County, TX I was in shock.

The photo below is a coyote from the same ranch and in fact at different angles of the same log. Compare this coyote and the canid in the above photo.

26793878_1752587598087263_1780314723_n — Photo courtesy Jaclyn Booth

Now compare with this one of a Mexican gray wolf taken at the Alameda Park Zoo below. Notice the extreme likeness.

Wiped Out On Purpose

The Mexican gray wolf is indigenous to this part of the world but like all other representative of Canis lupus was wiped out due to government predator control and unregulated killing on ranches.

Is there a remnant pocket of these hailing from the captive breeding program in New Mexico? Or maybe a rogue wanderer?

It is possible but unlikely.

After all a gray wolf radio collared in Michigan was killed by a bowhunter in Missouri in 2001. That’s a much longer journey that New Mexico to Hall County, TX.

Is there a remnant pocket of Mexican gray wolves in North Texas and perhaps even in the Trans Pecos?

In 2013 I had a professional trapper who has trapped and killed thousands of coyotes tell me of seeing a Mexican gray wolf near Alpine, TX the year previous. He was adamant at what he saw.

Is there a possibility of having Mexican gray wolf-coyote hybrids (that maybe lean heavily on wolf appearance) in the region?

Absolutely. It has been proven that coyotes and gray wolves hybridize by numerous researchers.

I will be writing a lot about wild canids of the United States this year and will be posting photos, videos and research.

Are there Mexican wolves in Texas?

The jury is still out but on a ranch in Hall County there is definitely an animal that looks a whole lot like one.

More to come…

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Chester Moore, Jr.