When Tim Fox went out to check on his animals at 6 a.m. Monday, June 4, he found a furry intruder in the pigs’ pen.
“He thought he would have pork for breakfast,” Fox joked about the wolf in with his pigs.
But the predatory visitor was about to be outfoxed, and pork wasn’t to be on the menu after all. Fox went back to the house, got out his gun and shot the lupine interloper.
On inspection of the body, Fox discovered the wolf was wearing a collar. The farmer called up nearby trapper Herald Friedenberger, who suggested Fox bring it down to biologists who just happened to be in town talking to local trappers.
The biologists were able to tell right away from the number on the collar that this wolf had been visiting from somewhere south of the border. Further investigation revealed that the wolf had been collared in Idaho.
It’s not unusual for wolves to travel 400 to 500 miles, Friedenberger said. “We’re hoping to get the GPS chart and see exactly where it had gone,” he told The Arrow Lakes News. The chart will map the wolf’s movements when it was collared, giving information to interested hunters and trappers as well as biologists.
This wolf found at Fox’s farm was caught on tape by Julian Sapietis’ trail camera. Although Sapietis is mainly busy running Nakusp Painting and Contracting, he does hunt quite a bit as well, and sees many animals thanks to the camera.
Trapping in the area for over 25 years, Friedenberger has seen a change in the wolf population in the area recently.
“Believe it or not it’s only the last four or five years they have seem to come in here [as a pack],” he said, “I think they’ve always been around but it seems like they were lone wolves, not a pack.”
Wolves are extremely smart, said Friedenberger who has seen a wolf that escaped a poorly set snare teach its cubs how to spot and avoid the traps.
Unfortunately, this Idahoan wolf wasn’t smart enough not to visit Tim Fox’s pigs.