A wolf that a southeast Wyoming rancher shot in January might have been running around western Nebraska for months before roaming into the Cowboy State.
Two electricians saw a wolf with a mixed gray-and-black coat in October along the roadside near the village of Bushnell in Kimball County, Nebraska.
A farmer told Cowboy State Daily that the wolf was reported to be hanging around the area over the fall and winter.
When locals saw a Cowboy State Daily article about Royce Breeden shooting a wolf on his property near Carpenter in Laramie County on Jan. 25, they swore they recognized the wolf in Breeden’s photo.
“I’m pretty sure it’s the same one,” Kimball County, Nebraska, resident Cade Dickerson told Cowboy State Daily on Friday.
He and a co-worker, Craigen Long, saw the wolf sometime around Oct. 6, about 100 yards off the highway.
“It had really long legs and some really nice color to it, some black and some gray,” he said.
Farmers Report Wolf
Kimball County farmer Larry Snyder said there had been numerous reports of a wolf hanging around.
“I’m pretty sure at least three area farmers and ranchers have said they saw a wolf,” he said.
When he saw photos of the wolf that Dickerson and Long spotted, he reached out to say it bore a strong resemblance to the wolf that Breeden shot.
The area where Breeden shot the wolf “is about 30 miles” from where Dickerson and Long saw a wolf, he said.
Wolf sightings are rare in Nebraska, Snyder said, but they’ve become more frequent as wolf populations grow in other states.
In most of Wyoming, including Laramie County, wolves may be shot on sight at any time, with no license required.
Wolves can be shot in Nebraska as well, Snyder said, but only under certain circumstances.
“If a wolf is directly threatening us or our livestock, we’re able to take it out, but there’s going to be an investigation afterward,” he said.
Where Did It Come From?
Breeden previously told Cowboy State Daily that the wolf he shot wasn’t wearing a radio tracking collar, and he’s not sure where it came from.
Colorado might be a logical choice, because the kill site was about 2.5 miles north of the Wyoming-Colorado state line, he said.
Colorado began reintroducing wolves in December 2023. Before that, there was at least one pack of wolves in Colorado thought to have been formed by wolves that migrated in from Wyoming.
Kimball County borders the eastern Wyoming state line and the Colorado state line to the south.
Dickerson said that spot where he and Long saw the wolf isn’t very far north of the Colorado state line, so the wolf could have come from there.
However, wolves from the Great Lakes area have been known to trek into Kansas and Nebraska as well.
And in April 2024, a wolf with Great Lakes population DNA died in a trap in Elbert County, Colorado.
Just Past The Roadkill Elk
The wolf that Dickerson and Long saw might have been scavenging an elk carcass.
Elk are historically a Great Plains species and have been repopulating parts of Nebraska.
Dickerson said that he and Long were driving to a job site when they spotted an elk carcass in a roadside ditch.
“So we started looking around to see if we could spot more elk,” he said.
A little while later, they spotted the wolf about mile east down the road from the elk carcass.
“We stopped the truck, it was about 100 yards away from us,” Dickerson said.
He’s seen many coyotes and knew that wasn’t what he was looking at.
“I guessed it to be well over 60 pounds,” he said.
Breeden said the wolf he shot weighed roughly 80 pounds.
Dickerson said his encounter with the wolf was brief, but the animal didn’t seem too alarmed by his and Long’s presence.
“It just kind of looked at us for a while and walked away,” he said.
Mark Heinz can be reached at mark@cowboystatedaily.com.
