Shelby County, Kentucky Mystery Animal
Posted by: Loren Coleman on December 14th, 2012
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — A mystery in Shelby County has people on high alert.
Something is on the prowl, attacking animals and leaving them for dead.
People say a creature attacked six goats — five of which had to be put down — and four calves in the past couple weeks.
Rusty Newton, Deputy County Judge Executive, says, “It’s not doing it to kill the animal to eat, these animals are just being mauled. That’s where the mystery is at this point.”
Neighbors say it lurks in the woods, and only comes out at night.
No one has seen the creature, but people are on the lookout. A couple found what they believe are tracks from the animal.
Frank Edwards lives in the area. He says, “We’ve got trail cameras out, we’ve got traps out it’s like it’s smarter than we are.”
County officials are holding a meeting Monday night at 6:30 in Waddy to inform neighbors.
Looks like a large candid track.
Intriguingly, another Frank Edwards was a paperback author 50 years ago of “unexplained reports” of mystery animals, and other Forteana.
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.
First thing I would do is find who in the area has a really big dog they’re letting out at night.
Certainly looks like a canine print of sorts, but nothing really to give it scale to determine if it is a wolf, or a smaller canine such as a coyote or domesticated dog.
nice pic of a large dog/wolf print
Would have been helpful to include a size reference but, that is a canid footprint.
Probably a large dog. Note claw marks…non-retractable. Google “dog footprint” and you will see some that are almost exact matches for the footprint shown above. No doubts here, I have two Golden Retrievers.
Bad dog! Bad dog!
A little Sherlockian musing: perhaps someone has trained a very large canid to attack and kill on command to either “perfect” its training and responsiveness to commands, or the person(s) could be trying to perpetuate a cryptid mythos, or it could just be as suggested: just a big ‘ol dog that’s not quite balanced (I remember years ago some misinformed idiots would feed their dogs gun powder to make them “meaner”; it of course only served to destroy the brain causing the dog to be unbalanced) going around killing animals.
I agree with the others that this is probably a large dog. I would think a good vet might be able to tell the breed by the prints and bite marks. We do however need to know what the Judge means by “mauling.” Wolves have been know to kill pray and eat only certain parts, e.g., the livers, leaving the rest of the animal to rot.
the only difference between big dog and cougar would be that the claws are present. Other than that, they look almost identical
And, large dog paw prints in mud can look HUGE!
Wolves in Kentucky? Don’t think so.
I pretty much agree that this is a canid’s footprint, most likely a dog’s. Where it starts to itch my brain is that the person(s) who found this “assumed” it was the culprit. But seeing as they couldn’t tell it was a dog’s pawprint, they obviously couldn’t tell if it was this dog that was the killer.
What I’m trying to say here is, the finder(s) of this track must have simply found a big pawprint near an attack site. They assumed it was that thing that attacked the poor little beasties. But goats? calves? aren’t they animals you find on farms? What kind of dog does most farmers have then? Answer : big ones, to act like guardians.
In short this is the pawprint of a dog most certainly, but NOTHING points to it really being the culprit. Since we miss most of the informations we’d need to close it, this case is still open.
Ehem ->
The internet is amazing. I’ve seen the photos above, using the top one to examine the hoaxing of the bottom one. However, don’t people count, and see the top one is of a bear paw, with five toes, and the bottom is of a canid print, with four toes?
You mean we actually have to COUNT now? I want a RAISE!
I could believe a wolf in Kentucky, especially if it’s someone’s wolf hybrid running amok at night. But the paw print in that photo looks like a dog’s paw print & there are a LOT of free-ranging dogs in rural Kentucky. I think it’s a dog or dogs doing the livestock damage.
Funny, I thought of the Frank Edwards of “Stranger Than Science” fame too. First Fortean book I ever read. In elementary school.
In Alabama we had to go dog hunting just about every year to stop abandoned dogs from eating calves. Sometimes the dogs weren’t abandoned but would just run with a pack of dogs killing livestock and then go back home to be petted and fed with the owner none the wiser.