Couldn't Believe My Eyes

[TackleBox]

I posted this on another site but in hindsight I should have just posted it here. I think the members here might better identify this.

What is it and where was it?

Mr. Bowman, you might want to take notice of this particular post. I believe you had a few articles written about this very thing a few years back.







Dammit Ken, why do you do that with the pictures?

[Darth]

Dammit Ken, why do you do that with the pictures?

Lol!


Seriously though it looks bigger than the Fox I saw the other day.

[pezdek1]

The rock that says "Prairie Stone" leads me to believe this is off of I90 out near the Sears Center. There is a big "Prairie Stone" type of rock formation/landmark right there that you can see from the tollway. As far as what it is... It looks way too big to be a fox, and just doesn't look like a coyote. It looks like it has some serious size/weight to it. My guess would be a young wolf, which is rare to see these days in Illinois, but not unheard of. If he's a loner and looking for a pack then he could have wandered hundreds of miles. Check some pics of Timber Wolves out on a google image search, they look just like this image. There's been much talk lately of wolves expanding from Wisconsin and Michigan from the "Great Lakes" pack and making their way down to us in Illinois. More and more sightings have been happening from what I'm reading. Lots of good links online. Just do a google search of "Wolves in Illinois" and it comes up with a ton of information from wolves being spotted all over the northern part of Illinois in the last few years. This would not surprise me one bit, and I would actually welcome it, so long as no one goes out hunting them down. The deer population is way out of control here in northern Illinois, especially Cook County, and though people would cry and whine about dogs going missing, etc., I would very much welcome a wolf pack into Cook County's forest preserves. This also seems to be the time of year when they're spotted. Going through articles, including a few written by Dale Bowman, they tend to be spotted between November and February. Around winter they can migrate hundreds and hundreds of miles in search of food. If food is scarce up north in WIsconsin/Michigan, then I can see them making their way down here to us where food would be abundant. This would also mean big things for conservationists. If the wolf population is on the rise, then things are going right on the conservation front for the wolves. Did you take these pics? I would shoot an email over to Bowman with the pics and see what he thinks.

[Ken G]

It's a coyote.
Last year while out squirrel hunting I stopped to take a leak. Watched a coyote running slowly toward me. I thought it would move away, but it never saw me. I'm standing there with my shotgun against the tree and my . . . in my hand and this thing runs up within 5 feet of me.

Whoa whoa whoa, what the hell are you doing. Really, what else could I say at that point. I think it was more of a scream. It then finally saw me and took off.

So, yes. Definitely a coyote. You don't forget things like that when you get up close and personal.

[Ken G]

Dammit Ken, why do you do that with the pictures?

It's called saving bandwidth.
You do realize some people still have dial up.
I don't know of anyone, but that's the rumor.

[pezdek1]

After googling some coyotes, I guess it could be a coyote, just seemed like it's way too big to be a yote. Most yotes I've seen are less than 50lbs, this thing looks bigger. And I've seen many of coyote first-hand. I had a run in with a few on my snowmobile a couple years back. Was out riding near my parents house when I stopped and got off to piss. I turned around and there's a yote standing about 10 feet from me looking at me all goofy. So I hop on my sled and take off. He proceeds to follow me around for a mile or so. I stayed slower so he could keep up. He just kept following, so I turned around and he took off the other direction. I proceeded to follow him for about a quarter mile. Then turned around and he followed me again for a while. We continued to play this little game of tag for about 30 mins. Back and forth, back and forth. Finally I chased him into a section of trees that I couldn't see into, was too thick. I turned the sled around and sat there for a few and low and behold he comes wandering out staring at me... with 2 more yotes on his tail. It was at this point I decided I would go put the sled away for the night rather than be hunted down by a pack of coyotes LOL. I've seen this pack before around my parent's house, and it has about 10-12 coyotes in it. There was another incident on my snowmobile where I ran into the entire pack sleeping early one morning. They were all laying around cuddled up in a big ball of fur when I entered this little field on my sled at like 5am. They all got up and looked at me and my loud ass snowmobile, at which point I took off and put it away again.

[TackleBox]

Up until about midnight last night I was convinced that was a wolf. I see a lot of coyotes because of the profession I'm in and I've never seen one so big and so deep red in color. They are usually scrawny and tan/grey in color. That animal looked as if it weighed as much as my cousins 85 pound golden lab. It looked to be somewhere around 50-60 inches long and a good 25-30 high.

I did some comparison between wolves and coyotes via the interweb and from everything I could gather it was a coyote. Kind of disappointing in a way. I thought I may have stumbled onto a rarity.

Gorgeous animal nonetheless. I was much closer to it the first time I passed it. I thought someone lost their german shepard as I came up from behing it and when I got along side it I realized "that ain't no doggie". Whipped a quick yuey and pulled out my camera. He/she didn't mind me too much as you can tell from the first pic. It stoppped and stared at me for a few seconds then trotted along the walk for a bit until it reached the PrairieStone nature walk, then disappeared into the brush.

There isn't a lot of dense brush there and the area is somewhat confined. I entertained the thought of getting out and looking for it to get some more pictures. I didn't have the right kind of footwear for trekking through the underbrush though.

Yes, right in front of Cabela's my friends, at four in the afternoon. I love Chicagoland.

[Ken G]

I've noticed that the closer you get to Chicago, the more scrawny the coyotes look. When I was living in Elmhurst they looked awful. Out in Yorkville now and the one that ran up on me all look like the one in your picture.

More for them to eat I guess.

I'm going to Marseilles on Saturday. Opening of upland game and more squirrels. The upland game part is a joke. Even when there is snow you see nothing but tracks by deer, squirrels and coyotes. 4 square miles of tough terrain and I've never seen a rabbit track. Or any kind of ground birds like pheasant.

Those healthy looking coyotes eat them all.