Michigan Hunter mistakes 84-pound gray wolf for coyote and kills it

Update: A Michigan hunter who accidentally killed a gray wolf during a coyote hunt in January will not be charged with any crimes, and neither will the hunting guide who was with him. Calhoun County Prosecutor David Gilbert said Bridge Michigan Friday that he declined to file charges against the two fighters. Gilbert said he believed they made an honest mistake when they shot the wolf, which they thought was a coyote when they initially reported the harvest.

A spokesperson for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources also confirmed this Bridge Michigan that Gilbert’s decision was consistent with what they learned during their research. The DNR was first notified of the incident in January, when the hunter reported harvesting a large coyote during a legal coyote hunt in Calhoun County in Michigan’s Lower Peninsula. In April, the agency announced the results of genetic testing, which showed that the animal was actually a gray wolf. The announcement was surprising because gray wolves, which are still classified as an endangered species in Michigan, have not been in the Lower Peninsula for about 100 years, according to the DNR.

“Those involved appear to have reasonably believed that they were shooting a coyote,” DNR spokesman Ed Golder told the news station on Friday. “The investigation revealed no information indicating that they should have expected a wolf to be in the part of Michigan where they were hunting.”

According to Golder, the hunter shot the wolf near Marshall, which is just 100 miles west of Detroit and hundreds of miles south of the species’ known range in the Upper Peninsula. Gilbert pointed out that the hunters would have known this, and he said it’s understandable why they might have misidentified it.

“It’s like shooting a unicorn,” Gilbert said.

April 3, 2024. A case of false identification is being investigated in Michigan after a hunter shot, killed and reported an eastern coyote, which turned out to be an 84-pound gray wolf. This was announced by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources on Wednesday. The DNR has not indicated if the man is under investigation or if he will be charged in the incident, which occurred in January.

This situation is especially unique because the man, whose identity is not public, was hunting coyotes in Calhoun County, in the southern Lower Peninsula. All wolves that live in Michigan live in the Upper Peninsula, where there are between 600 and 700 individuals in 120 to 130 packs, says DNR wolf biologist Brian Roell. Living outside.

According to DNR, eastern coyotes weigh between 25 and 40 pounds. This animal was more than twice that size, which begs the question of how the hunter and his guide got the identification so wrong – especially after approaching it and seeing the carcass up close. When trying to determine whether an animal is a wolf or a coyote, aside from the size difference, wolves have shorter, stubbier noses and rounder faces, while coyotes have much more angular features and longer, sharper snouts.

The DNR conducted genetic testing to determine that the animal in question was a gray wolf. The average weight of adult gray wolf males in Michigan weigh 30 pounds (adult females average 23 pounds), so this particular wolf was of average size, Roell says – although how it ended up in Calhoun County remains a mystery.

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“This is a one-off event. This is not normal,” says Roell. “Before settlement, the entire state of Michigan was wolf territory. But even the southern Lower Peninsula, in the oak savannahs, those areas are probably not very suitable for a wolf. This is just way out of the normal range.”

But, as Roell notes, wolves are known to disperse from their packs and these journeys can take them thousands of miles from their home range.

“Years ago we saw Michigan-collared wolves showing up in Missouri, and more recently one traveled more than 4,000 miles through Wisconsin, Minnesota, even a short distance into North Dakota, Ontario, and west to Manitoba,” Roell said . “We’ve seen wolves in the Lower Peninsula before, but the five-mile Strait of Mackinaw is a pretty good barrier. We don’t have many ice bridges anymore. So how it got there is a curiosity, and we may never be able to say.”

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The DNR investigation is still ongoing. Gray wolves in Michigan are classified as a federally endangered species and any depredation of them is a crime. (They are not listed on the List of Endangered Species in Michigan.) But, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Servicesomeone has to consciously kill a wolf to be punished as fully as possible. If this hunter was truly mistaken, he could avoid the combined criminal and civil penalties of $75,000 in fines and 18 months in prison that can come with a conviction for killing a wolf.