This one is a spotted hyena. Maybe it was a cross between something else and a hyena.
In the late 19th century, the Hutchins family moved into an area of Montana along the Madison River's West Fork, in Broadwater County. They were soon to report encounters with a mysterious canine beast known to Native Americans.
One of the descendants of the original clan was zoologist Ross Hutchins. In 1977, he would write Trails to Nature's Mysteries: The Life of a Working Naturalist. Within this book is reference to one of the most obscure creatures to grace North America's cryptozoological landscape. The following account is reproduced from that book.
'One winter morning my grandfather was aroused by the barking of the dogs. He discovered that a wolflike beast of dark color was chasing my grandmother's geese. He fired his gun at the animal but missed. It ran off down the river, but several mornings later it was seen again at about dawn. It was seen several more times at the home ranch as well as at other ranches ten or fifteen miles down the valley. Whatever it was, it was a great traveler... Those who got a good look at the beast described it as being nearly black and having high shoulders and a back that sloped downward like a hyena. Then one morning in late January, my grandfather was alerted by the dogs, and this time he was able to kill it. Just what the animal was is still an open question. After being killed, it was donated to a man named Sherwood who kept a combination grocery and museum at Henry Lake in Idaho. It was mounted and displayed there for many years. He called it ringdocus.'
An Ioway Indian named Lance Foster approached Loren Coleman in 1995 and informed him of traditions existing in that tribe of an animal called a shunka warak'in ('Carrying-Off-Dogs') which cried like a human when killed. Foster's descriptions of an animal that looked something like a hyena and the existence of one in an Idaho museum are testimony that the animal killed at the Hutchins ranch was a Shunka Warak'in.
Coleman speculates that the creature may have represented a survival of a prehistoric species known as Borophagus, although my own researches into the animal makes it seem even more likely that it may belong to another prehistoric species, a creodont known as Hyaenodon montanus. H. montanus was a rather lightly built memeber of the Neohyaenodon subspecies
COLEMAN, Loren 1996 On the Trail: Hunting Hyenas in the US. Fortean Times 87 (June). 1999 Cryptozoology A-Z (w/ Jerome Clark).
La Chupacabra!
Looks like a bloated wolf to me.
Ping.
This is a caption for the Recent photo:
‘Jack Kirby poses in Ennis next to the wolf-like creature his grandfather shot in 1886 in the Madison Valley. He is holding the G.W. Morse rifle that was used to kill the animal. Kirby retrieved the mount from an Idaho museum where it was being stored.’
A neighbor lady relates the story of back in the 60’s she looked out in her back yard and saw a monkey dressed in clothes with a parrot on his shoulders. It scampered off but she called the police, who of course laughed at her.
She saw them (always together) off and on for quite a while over the next few weeks. It turned out a circus HAD lost them and she wasn’t going nuts!
From what little I know, mostly from watching the “Lion King” when my kids were younger, the rear legs being shorter than the front legs reminded me of a Hyena. And maybe they do have a terrible sound - hence using the voice of Whoppi Goldberg for one of the hyenas in the movie?
I hate it when that happens to me...
Looks like a wolf with a severe case of constipation to me...
Looks like a very hungry wild boar to me.
Taxidermy spoofs were very popular a century ago.
Looks like a cross between a peccary and a coyote.
This one is a spotted hyena. Maybe it was a cross between something else and a hyena.
Tasmanian Devil. The body build, some aspects of the coloration. Oddly similar.
PING!!!
“Now after 121 years, the taxidermy mount has been found. “
This has always bothered me about state run museums. That phrase “has been found.”
My friend was a curator of oriental art at a state museum. He took me to the backroom where there were drawer after drawer, and case after case, stacked to the ceiling, of oriental artifacts that couldn’t be displayed because of lack of display space in the oriental art section.
Some of the artifacts were crumbling from age and lack of proper climate control.
Artifacts like these need to be auctioned off to private collectors where they will be cared for.
A WHITNEY KENNEDY RIFLE! WOW! Now that is rare! Tell us more of the history of this rifle!
Good shooting!
It isn’t a Dire Wolf is it?
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Thanks pcottraux. |
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