Tracks in the snow ?

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wizrd

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This past winter found almost zero snow cover on the ground in NY state. First week in Feb. we spent some time at a remote Adirondack Mtn. deer camp that is a few miles off the road and usually inaccessible that time of year, usually 2 to 3 ft. of snow then.
One morning I went for a walk down a old logging trail & came across a large set of canine tracks, followed them for 3 or 4 hundred yards down the road. A single set of tracks, straight in a line with a good span between them, longer than I could take a comfortable long stride.

Then the single track turned into 3 tracks, these animals were walking exactly in the same tracks for several hundered yards. Snow cover was a few inches of frozen over crust, hard enough to support me and 1/2 " of fresh light snow from the night before. This caused me to look at the tracks closer, no camera with me, so I lay a dollar over the track & folded it over for size reference. Size turned out to be 3 1/2" long by 2 1/2" wide. Do coyotes ever walk like that in line? I've seen lots of coyote tracks in my area, but never like that. Size also seemed to be really large, tracks were quite distinct, with no melting around them to make them seem larger. I've never seen a 'yote track that large, either. I know that the NY state Dept. of Conservation has noted that DNA tests show that there is a lot of wolf blood from the Canadian Algonquin wolf-pack inter-bred with the coyote population in NY state. Any thought on the track size / single file walking thing? Any thought on the possibility of a wolf? NY state says no wolves here.
 
Out of curiosity, what area of the Adirondacks is this camp? My father used to hunt in the Jersey Field area (at least that's what him and my uncle called it). They used to tell some pretty interesting stories about what went on up there, and it's definately wild enough to conceal something.

If the snow was supporting a full-grown human (ballpark 175 lbs?) then what canine-type animal would be able to make decent impressions in crusty snow? I didn't think even wolves got that big...although NYS does have some pretty big coyotes. That big though? I don't know...

EDIT:
Yes I was close if not correct. According to Wikipedia, the largest grey wolf ever found (killed) in Alaska and weighed 175 lbs. A russian one was also killed that weighed 190, but they're supposedly bigger.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf#Dimensions

NY state says a lot of things. Whether or not they're true/informed, that's another topic entirely
 
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I'd like to hear more about this as well. I hunt the Adirondacks and it is often rumored that there is a wolf population. I've never seen one, but some hunters claim they have.


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Camp is located approx. 5 or 6 miles downstream from Rte. 28 bridge over the Moose River at McKeever. I've heard from several people who claim wolves in the Adirondacks over the years. I live in central Oneida county, rural, surrounded by woods and swamps, I can hear coyotes evey night of the week from my front yard. A 'discovery zoo' place a couple miles from me has a couple of timber wolves, my son lives across from their property. We can hear the wolves howling almost every night there, there is NO SIMILARITY between a wolf howl and the coyoyes yelping & howling. Wondering mainly about the tracks, never saw anything like that before. I mention 1/2" of fresh snow on top of crust, tracks were only in fresh snow, didn't break through the crusty stuff.
 
There is a scientific study of coyotes in NY and PA and it shows that 20% of the coyotes have wolf genes ! That explains the existance of the large 70 lb coyotes found here. That's the work of Roland Kays.
So if it looks like a wolf and walks like a wolf it must be a coyote/wolf !!:D

Next thing we have to do in NY and PA is to get the officials to admit that there are mountain lions here !
 
Yeah, I remember reading something about that study. A lot of people thought they (Coyotes) were mixed with dogs because they were so big and a lot of weird colors. I never saw one in Pa. that did not have yellow eyes, so I was always leery of the "Dog mix" idea.
 
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