by Tim Mowry
All seems to be quiet on the North Pole wolf front.
The Alaska Department of Fish and Game has not received any more reports of wolf sightings in the Hurst Road area off Badger Road since Tuesday, said department spokeswoman Cathie Harms.
There was a report on Monday that a wolf may have attacked and killed a dog in the back yard of a home on Hurst Road on Sunday but ADF&G was not able to confirm it was a wolf that killed the dog. The owner of the dog said it was a “large, dark animal” but couldn’t say for sure it was a wolf, another dog or a coyote.
A pair of state wildlife biologists went out to North Pole on Tuesday to look for wolf tracks in areas where there had been sightings reported but found no evidence of wolves in the area.
The only report the department has had the last few days was from a man who saw a large lynx and wondered if that could be the large, dark animals that people have seen.
A man named Red Williamee who lives in the area, however, called the News-Miner on Wednesday to report that he had chased a wolf out of his back yard two days earlier.
“It was trying to get one of my dogs,” Williamee said.
Williamee threw firecrackers at the animal to scare it off, he said. Williamee said he used to be a trapper and he knows what a wolf looks like and the animal in his back yard was a wolf.
“I’m only about 2 1/2 miles from the woman who claimed her dog got killed,” he said.
Wolves cross the Tanana River every winter and come into the neighborhood, Williamee said.
Another Hurst Road resident, Pat Wilson, called the News-Miner to report that he had seen what he thought at the time were two overly sized huskies running around his house last weekend. Now he wonders if they weren’t wolves. One of the animals looked like it had a thick collar on, Nelson said.