McCone Creature Mystery Continues

Has the Shunka Warak’em of McCone County, Montana returned? And in what belief system do thoughts of “manipulated breeding” carry any truths to explain such incidents? Dave Loos tackles the news from Montana with perfect prairie prose that hits at the edgeness of this enigma:

A mystery predator responsible for 12 sheep deaths in Eastern Montana last month could be connected to the dozens of similar attacks in late 2005 and early 2006, which some officials blame on a domestic hybrid species of wolf.

Montana’s top wolf official said this week that two suspicious animals remain on the loose in and near Garfield County following the sheep deaths in late August. A third animal killed in a coyote snare earlier this month has yet to be positively identified as wild or domestic.

“It’s a young female, charcoal gray in color,” said Carolyn Sime, wolf coordinator for Fish, Wildlife and Parks. “It looks like something we would see in the Northern Rockies, but I’ve also seen domestic wolves that look the same. It’s unclear what the origin is.”

The recent deaths revive last year’s furor in McCone and Garfield Counties over the 100-plus sheep slaughtered, and the subsequent hunt that ultimately left dead a domestic wolf, the product, officials believe, of manipulated breeding in captivity.

More than that, the frustration of stockmen, as Hal Herring wrote last year for NewWest.Net, was “not entirely directed at the creature itself (the stockmen here know full well how to handle that problem) but at the federal and state governments, at complex regulations imposed to protect an animal that they despise, and at a far-away society that seems to have lost all respect for them and their constant struggle to remain self-reliant, solvent, and on the land.”

Sime said the dead wolf does not match the description of either animal spotted by USDA wildlife service officials on August 22 as they searched for the predators from an airplane. One of those animals was brown, the other was gray. Both were spotted within two miles of the most recent sheep attacks near Jordan.

“The brown color is a flyer that something is not right,” said Sime. “The one last year was brown as well.”

Officials authorized the USDA to kill both of the spotted wolves, but ended up catching the third unidentified wolf species instead. Sime said it’s possible that one or both of the wolves that remain on the loose are domestic. “It’s unusual for wolves to disperse as groups,” she said. “It could be a combination of captive and wild animals.”

Sime said wolf sightings of the last month could be an extension of events from late 2005 and early 2006, but admitted that the agency remains somewhat baffled by the new case. There have been no sightings in vicinity of Jordan since Labor Day weekend.

And the mystery of the Creature of McCone County continues. by Dave Loos, “Montana Wolf Mystery Revived, Officials Snare Second Hybrid Wolf,” New West, September 21, 2007.

Find the past stories here and here (#7) .

Thanks to kittenz for putting us on the prowl.

Loren Coleman About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

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