coyote or red wolf?

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Comment by Ramona Adams on April 23, 2009 at 6:59am

Yes, Jim. we live off Gaither Road in Readyville. The only reason I took the photo was because he looked so different from the other coyotes I have seen. I have seen coyotes come that close to the house several times. Twice, my Yorkie went and decided to confront them...once a group of three. She is pretty lucky to be alive. I saw them and went out screaming and she managed to escape. Yorkies are very fast...lol. There were two of these, but I was only able to photograph one. I will post a couple more photos with different angles. But, they were absolutely, the biggest, darkest, and most muscular coyotes that I have ever seen. The other one looked about the same, but was more shy...staying in the tall grass.

I didn't think about them being anything other than coyotes till I went to print the photo and looked at it closer. My thoughts were that it looked similar to wolves that we had seen in Yellowstone, so I googled "wolf tennessee" to see if there were any around and found that flyer about the red wolves and that they had been re-introduced in the smokies several years ago.

But...some folks say that red wolves are just a variety of coyote anyhow. Made for some interesting photos anyhow.

Comment by Jim Gibbs on April 22, 2009 at 9:51pm

That is very interesting. I'm darn sure not an expert on either but he is heavy looking and really dark. It is hard to tell from the photo withour any reference -- but -- did he look larger, not just fatter? Was that taken in Cannon County?