Mysterious sheep killer puts wolf debate back in the crosshairs
Gwen Florio
Great Falls Tribune, MT
__________________
On the morning before Easter, Jordan-area rancher Mike McKeever walked the quarter-mile from his house down to the sheep pens to check on his pregnant ewes.
One was dead, but untouched. Beyond it was a second carcass, and that's when McKeever knew he had a problem.
"She was hollowed out ... it must have munched through her ribs and went down through her body cavity. It pulled out her intestines and her lambs and ate them all," said McKeever.
He is among a handful of ranchers in Garfield, McCone and Dawson counties who have lost about 100 sheep since the beginning of the year, most recently in mid-May, to a ravenous creature that dispatches 170-pound sheep with ease and ferocity.
And that creature is?
"A wolf," said McKeever.
"A wolf or wolf hybrid," said Carolyn Sime, the statewide wolf coordinator for Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks.
"A dog or a hybrid," said Suzanne Asha Stone, the Boise-based Northern Rockies representative for Defenders of Wildlife.
The forests of Yellowstone, thick with elk and deer, are more than 400 miles from the barren, windswept plains of eastern Montana. Stone said that's what makes it so unlikely that the sheep-slaughterer is a wolf.
"It's something perhaps more feral than wild .... It's very common for feral dogs to kill livestock," she said.
Kay Rene Whiteside said the mystery animal killed 21 of her sheep in January and injured another 40.
McKeever believes it's a wolf because it preys on adult sheep. Coyotes usually take lambs, and only one or two at a time, he said.
Gwen Florio
Great Falls Tribune, MT
__________________
On the morning before Easter, Jordan-area rancher Mike McKeever walked the quarter-mile from his house down to the sheep pens to check on his pregnant ewes.
One was dead, but untouched. Beyond it was a second carcass, and that's when McKeever knew he had a problem.
"She was hollowed out ... it must have munched through her ribs and went down through her body cavity. It pulled out her intestines and her lambs and ate them all," said McKeever.
He is among a handful of ranchers in Garfield, McCone and Dawson counties who have lost about 100 sheep since the beginning of the year, most recently in mid-May, to a ravenous creature that dispatches 170-pound sheep with ease and ferocity.
And that creature is?
"A wolf," said McKeever.
"A wolf or wolf hybrid," said Carolyn Sime, the statewide wolf coordinator for Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks.
"A dog or a hybrid," said Suzanne Asha Stone, the Boise-based Northern Rockies representative for Defenders of Wildlife.
The forests of Yellowstone, thick with elk and deer, are more than 400 miles from the barren, windswept plains of eastern Montana. Stone said that's what makes it so unlikely that the sheep-slaughterer is a wolf.
"It's something perhaps more feral than wild .... It's very common for feral dogs to kill livestock," she said.
Kay Rene Whiteside said the mystery animal killed 21 of her sheep in January and injured another 40.
McKeever believes it's a wolf because it preys on adult sheep. Coyotes usually take lambs, and only one or two at a time, he said.
