First…. I've owned 4 huskies over the years. One of them was from show dog lines, down right handsome. Lol…. I was walking this husky on a leash in town and he walked around a building corner ahead of me and out of my sight for a few seconds. I heard a woman's panicked voice shout “wolf”. I rushed around the corner myself to calm the person down.
Second…. I grew up on a ranch in OK. In our area, the main predators of calves were not coyotes but feral dogs. These are dogs that are either runaways or more likely dumped in rural areas. We shot them on sight. Our other defense was a standard collie dog crossed with a St. Bernard. Biggest damn herding, ranch dog I've ever seen. Most of the time, we had a 30-30 in the back window of the ranch truck to deal with feral dogs.
Third…. In 2020, I went camping for several months in TN and northern NM mountains. I encountered two feral dogs in the TN mountains. Both were hunting hounds that had gotten loose. The first was a beautiful dog that I noticed about 100ft from camp laying down watching me. He obviously had been out a very short number of days. I enticed him closer with water but not close enough to get a rope leash on. After 15 minutes, he trotted off. The next night or two, I heard him howling. The last night I heard him yelp and figger a bobcat got him.
The second feral hound had been feral for awhile but not long enough to be totally wild. Starving and scarred up from predators. I didn't see the hound until he was at my table with his snout in my coffee cup lapping it up. I was shouting and drawing on him when he ran off. He came back a few minutes later to the edge of camp but ran off before I could get a shot off.
Well said, sir. Glad to see a voice of SANITY on this thread.
3 days into a five day backpack trek in the Smoky Mountains two dogs entered our camp. They had radio collars and name badges.
We fed them a small amount since we didn’t have a lot extra. They hung with us.
When we got a phone signal we called the owner who met us when we came off the trail.
Turns out the guy was a bear poacher. We should have shot the dogs.