By Chris Huber
Rapid City Journal
BLACK HILLS – A gray wolf has appeared
where he isn’t supposed to be: the Black Hills.
The proof of his presence looks like a clip from
a nature documentary, a video that shows a
lean, long and powerful gray wolf trotting up a
forest hillside and stopping at a distance of
about 70 yards. The wolf gives an intense stare
back toward the camera for only a moment
before scurrying into the safety and seclusion
of the aspen and pinefilled forest.
The scene wasn’t filmed in Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, or Minnesota, the wolf’s usual
habitat. It was shot less than a week ago in a favorite elkhunting spot by rural Hot Springs
resident Lance Verhulst, who is keeping quiet about the exact location, saying only that it is
north of Jewel Cave.
Verhulst, 47, and a friend were driving along bumpy U.S. Forest Service roads scouting for
elk at about 6:30 p.m. on Aug. 14 when they saw the animal. Verhulst recorded the whole
thing on video.
“We came around a little bend in the road, and there it was,” Verhulst said, speculating the
animal must have been sleeping or lying down and didn’t seem overly concerned with the
vehicle.
Thirty yards. That was the distance at which Verhulst first saw the animal he estimated to be
80 pounds. He scrambled for this camera and was able to record it for roughly 45 seconds
before it trotted up the hill and disappeared into the woods.
Verhulst posted the video on YouTube, but the fuss that erupted shortly after caused him to
remove it and regret ever posting it. The video was then picked up posted again by another
website.
“If I knew all the trouble it was going to cause for me,” he said, “I wouldn’t have ever put it
up.”
Dozens of hunters, conservationists and the just plain curious from around the country
flooded his phone with calls, and he wanted them to stop. In the past there has been fierce
debate over the existence of wolves in the Black Hills and what to do with them if they are
here. His video may have sparked that again.
“We are pretty confident from the video it is a wolf,” said John Kanta, regional wildlife
manager for the South Dakota Game, Fish & Parks.
“More than likely it is a lone male just traveling through the area though,” Kanta said,
explaining that young males sometimes range into the Black Hills from Wyoming or the
Great Lakes population in Minnesota.
Verhulst was contacted by the state but didn’t release the exact location to GF&P — or
anyone else for that matter— because he doesn’t want a bunch of people looking for a wolf
in his elkhunting spot.
“Because we don’t know exactly where the video was taken, we can’t go out and confirm
100 percent that this is a wolf,” Kanta said while noting that all signs point to its being a
male gray wolf.
This video will go into a state database that houses all of the wolf sightings for South
Dakota. That database gets between five and a dozen entries a year for sightings in the
Black Hills. Most of the sightings are unfounded, but sometimes they can be confirmed
Kanta said.
Kanta said the last confirmed wolf in the Black Hills was in 2012, when one was shot in
Custer County. DNA testing showed that one came from the Great Lake Region.
Also in 2012, a radiotransmittercollared wolf from Yellowstone National Park was found
dead on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. A black wolf was spotted near Dalton Lake in
February 2014 by two loggers, one of whom was Verhulst’s nephew. But GF&P could not
confirm that sighting.
Kanta said the most common mistake people make is seeing a large coyote in the woods
and thinking it is a wolf.
Verhulst knows what he saw earlier this month. “I go coyote hunting every winter, I know the
difference,” he said, and Kanta seems to agree.
In a phone interview with the Journal, Verhulst was nonchalant about the whole incident. An
avid hunter, he grew up in Harding County and spends most of his time in the outdoors. This
isn’t even the first time he has seen a wolf in the Black Hills.
“I’ve seen three in the past two years,” he said, though he added this was the closest he has
ever gotten to one.
Verhulst isn’t sold on the that assessment the Black Hills gets only a few wolves traveling
through the area.
“There seems to be a lot more people seeing wolves, and I think the odds are pretty low that
every wolf they see is a male traveling through,” Verhulst said.
If there were a population of wolves in the Black Hills, Kanta said the state would know
about it.
“Our people are in the woods every day,” he said. “If it was more than a few passing
animals, we’d figure it out pretty quickly.”
As for the wolf Verhulst saw, a GF&P wildlife damage specialist will be heading out to the
general vicinity of the sighting to look for signs of a wolf and “howl it up,” according to Kanta,
who added, “That is kind of a needleinahaystack situation.”
Unless the state finds evidence of a wolf in the area, Verhulst’s report will go into the state’s
database as an unconfirmed sighting.
The same video also has drawn the attention of some large conservation groups. Wolf
populations in the United States have long been a contentious issue for policymakers,
hunters, ranchers and groups trying to protect the animals.
Wolves have been known to attack livestock.
The gray wolf is listed as endangered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and is protected
under the Endangered Species Act in most of the country, including western South Dakota.
In Montana and Idaho the gray wolf was removed from that list in 2011, allowing for an
annual hunting season. The animal is listed as threatened in some spots in the Great Lakes
Region, and a hunting season did occur in Minnesota for three years starting in 2012 but
has since been discontinued.
Michael Robinson, a conservation advocate working for the Center for Biological Diversity,
said the video prompted him to make calls to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife office in Wyoming in
hopes someone there could get the word out about the presence of a wolf in the Black Hills.
“I want them to release a statement letting people know there is a wolf in South Dakota and
that it is under federal protection and illegal to kill,” Robinson said. No such statement has
been released.
Robinson said often wolves get mistaken for coyotes and are shot by hunters or ranchers.
He wants the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to educate the public about the differences
between the animals.
“The last thing we want is for someone to confuse this animal for a coyote and shoot it,”
Robinson said.