After trapping for only a couple of years, Newfoundland resident Kevin Strowbridge set out into the woods in November, just as he had many days prior, to check on his fox and coyote snares. What he found instead was a large animal the Botwood man assumed was a wolf.
“So I had some fox snares, some coyote snares, a few traps, and last week when I was checking them I got this guy in one of my coyote snares,” he told CBC News last year.
“On my bucket list is a coyote, which I haven’t caught. I’ve caught a few foxes in that area last year, so I was hoping to get a fox or a coyote. That was the biggest I was hoping to get.”
The trapper estimated the animal weighed somewhere in the neighborhood of 60 pounds and out of curiosity, took the animal for testing to confirm whether or not the animal was a coyote or a wolf.
“His paws were nearly as big as my hand,” Strowbridge said as the animal was left for testing in Corner Brook.
Late last week, testing performed by Canada’s Department of Environment and Climate Change confirmed the animal was, in fact, a coyote-wolf hybrid. Referred to by some as the Coywolf, this hybrid species is believed to have originated at the southern end of Algonquin Park less than 100 years ago and continues to spread across the northeast.