Pastimes: The Last Red Wolves

After thriving in Louisiana for millennia, the red wolf (canis rufus) population began to plummet during the mid-twentieth century. Hunting helped contribute to the decline.

Thirty-five years ago, Homer Martin shared his wolf hunting knowledge with the Calvin Folklore Society’s publication “The Sassafras.”

Martin explained how hunters located the wolves by blowing on a cow horn about sun rise. The horn was normally used to call hunting dogs, but any wolf in the area would immediately respond to it with a howl.

Once the wolf was located, hounds were put on its trail. Wolf hunts were communal affairs with large groups of boys and men following the dogs on horseback.

According to Martin, the wolf sometimes turned on the dogs. “I’ve seen as many as three dogs in a pile. The wolves could just eat them up.”

Because of the wolves’ sometimes aggressive nature, Martin explained that it was too dangerous to hunt them at night. “You couldn't see and you'd get yourself hurt and the dogs killed. The wolves were lots bigger than a German Shepherd dog, smart, and hard to track and kill.”

[Read another Pastimes article by Terry L. Jones about Louisiana red wolves here.]

The state government also contributed to the red wolves’ decline. When wolves preyed on farmers’ livestock, state predator control officers were called in to trap and kill the pests. The state also offered a ten-dollar bounty for each wolf killed, which encouraged private citizens to hunt down the wolves, as well.

My friend and fellow outdoor writer Glynn Harris became quite familiar with wolves while growing up near Goldonna because his father, Thomas Ernest “Doc” Harris, was a predator control officer.

When locals complained about a pack of wolves in Madison Parish, Doc took Glynn and his brother Tom with him on the hunt.

“In a matter of seconds,” Glynn recalled, “here came three loping wolves toward where two scared little boys were sitting on the hood of the Jeep. Tom remembered dad’s pistol he kept under the seat, grabbed it and fired a shot, not trying to hit one but to let them know they needed to skee-daddle, which thankfully, they did in a hurry.”

According to a “Glynn Harris Outdoors” article, Doc located the pack’s den and came up with a plan. Having taught Glynn how to howl like a wolf, Doc left him and Tom with the Jeep while Doc and another man set up in the woods between the Jeep and the den. Glynn was to howl to attract the wolves, and Doc and his companion would ambush them.

When Glynn howled, the wolves immediately responded but they managed to avoid Doc’s ambush. Glynn howled again and the wolves responded just fifty yards away.

“In a matter of seconds,” Glynn recalled, “here came three loping wolves toward where two scared little boys were sitting on the hood of the Jeep. Tom remembered dad’s pistol he kept under the seat, grabbed it and fired a shot, not trying to hit one but to let them know they needed to skee-daddle, which thankfully, they did in a hurry.”

By 1964 there were only a few red wolves left in Louisiana, and a Canadian biologist came to study them. The only wolves he found were three small packs in northeast Louisiana’s East Carroll, Morehouse, and Madison parishes. The man also examined the wolves that were trapped by predator control officers and declared that they were actually coyotes.

The Canadian’s research began a controversy across Louisiana. Farmers, ranchers, trappers, and predator control officers insisted red wolves continued to live in Louisiana, while state wildlife biologists claimed that coyotes were being mistaken for wolves.

When the red wolf was placed on the threatened species list in 1967, the only free ranging red wolves left in America were a few dozen that roamed southwest Louisiana and East Texas.

To save the species, a trapping program was carried out in the 1970s to remove the wolves from the wild and place them in captivity. More than four hundred canids were captured but only forty-three were identified as wolves. The rest were coyotes or hybrids. When the captured wolves were later used for a breeding program, biologists discovered that only seventeen were pure blooded red wolves.

Today, the red wolf is considered to be the world’s most endangered wolf. The free ranging red wolf was declared extinct in 1980, but biologists bred the wolves that were captured earlier to reestablish them in North Carolina.

In 2019, the twenty-four animals in this pack were the only red wolves left in the wild (approximately two hundred live in captivity). Some wildlife officials do not believe they can sustain themselves much longer and want to place them in captivity, as well, to save the species.

Interestingly, recent studies have indicated that some red wolves must have escaped the biologists’ traps back in the 1970s. In southwest Louisiana and on Galveston Island, Texas, hybrid coyotes have been discovered that have as much as 40 percent red wolf genes. Over half of the coyotes sampled had at least 10 percent red wolf genes, and one canid might have been a pure-blooded wolf.

The average lifespan of a red wolf is six to seven years. That begs the question, where did these wolf genes come from if the last wild red wolves were captured nearly fifty years ago?

Dr. Terry L. Jones is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Louisiana at Monroe. For an autographed copy of Louisiana Pastimes, a collection of the author’s stories, send $25 to:

Terry L. Jones

P.O Box 1581

West Monroe, LA 71294.