Ferndale man shoots domestic wolf

Barking awakened Andy Stewart around 1 a.m. last Thursday morning. Normally, he wouldn’t pay it any mind, but this time both of his dogs were barking.

“When they both do that, something’s going on out there,” Stewart said.

Stewart got dressed, grabbed his gun and ran outside. He ran toward the sound of his barking dogs, near the sheep pen behind his house. As he approached the pen, he saw the dimly lit shape of what he thought was a wolf run into the woods that surround his Ferndale home.

The dogs ran after him. Stewart tried to see the animal with his spotlight, but couldn’t see anything. He went back inside, unable to sleep.

“The sheep are getting ready to have their lambs, so I couldn’t just leave them,” he said.

The barking started up again at 2 a.m. This time the animal was running around the shop next door. Stewart chased it, but couldn’t get a clear shot with his pistol.

The dogs followed it to Stewart’s horse pasture and it took off down the driveway.

Stewart waited for it to come back, but it didn’t.

At 4 a.m. his barking dogs alerted him once more. This time, when Stewart went outside the wolf was chasing his horses around the pasture.

The wolf was on the tail of his 3-year-old.

“I could see him moving so I shot once,” he said. The wolf was still moving.

“I shot again and he didn’t continue,” Stewart said. But the wolf was still twitching.

“I walked over and shot him a couple more times just to be sure.”

The wolf was a smaller-sized gray wolf that weighed around 100 pounds.

Stewart called the Fish, Wildlife and Parks game warden for the Bigfork area, Chuck Bartos, around 7:30 a.m. Bartos went to Stewart’s place and determined that it was a legal kill, Stewart was protecting his livestock.

If an animal is found chasing, attacking or disrupting livestock, the livestock owner can legally shoot the animal, whether its domesticate dog or a wild wolf.

If it is a wolf, than FWP needs to be notified.

In 2011, wildlife services killed 47 wolves in Montana for harassing, attacking or killing livestock. Landowners killed eleven wolves.

The carcasses of wolves killed because of livestock issues are sometimes salvaged by FWP and sold. The money made goes into a fund established by the Livestock Loss Board to reimburse livestock owners for their losses.

Bartos identified the wolf Stewart killed as a domesticated one that belonged to Ferndale resident Karin Rundquist. Bartos called Rundquist to ID her wolf by description and picture. She told him it was one of her wolves. She said the wolf was 15-years-old.

Rundquist didn’t return the Bigfork Eagle’s phone call by presstime.

FWP requires anyone who owns or domesticates a wild animal (or a mixed breed that is over 50 percent wild) to have a tattoo put on its inner lip or be micro-chipped, so it can be identified or tracked by FWP.

The wolf Stewart killed had no identifying mark.

In 1989 an agreement was made through the Lake County Deputy Attorney that Rundquist didn’t have to tattoo any of the 20-30 wolves she had at the time.

“It was determined that through photograph and description of the wolves, it would be sufficient,” said Lee Anderson, the FWP game warden captain for Region One. “It’d be nice if we there could be something could do to get those wolves micro-chipped or tattooed.”

But at this point Anderson said it probably won’t happen.

FWP estimates she has 9-10 wolves remaining on her property. Last year one of Rundquist’s wolves got out near her Ferndale property and one of her neighbors called it in. FWP was able to locate the and trap the wolf without incident.