Wolves in Ridgeway

by Layne
(Ridgeway, Ontario, Canada)

Last spring my husband and I were sitting at the table eating lunch at a property near Stonemill Road on the Lake Erie waterfront in Ridgeway, Ontario.

Two Wolves ran across the lawn and down the beach for quite a distance.

A few minutes later one of the Wolves came back and it stopped to pee/mark as it came back up on the lawn. We were shocked, we knew Coyotes were numerous in the area but hadn't seen a Wolf around here.

Because people kept saying that it was a Coyote we began to wonder if we were wrong, so about a week after that we took my son to Zooz (Safari Niagara) and we headed straight for the Wolf Habitat.

The wolves there are listed as Bush Wolves(?)

These were the type of Wolves we saw, long-legged and very tall with the tell-tale Wolf mask.

I remember as a child about 35 yrs ago that a friend of my mother's would talk about seeing Timberwolves on the train tracks behind her house in Ridgeway.

I'm happy that these majestic creatures are back, however I am more aware when working in the area we spotted them, for a bit I even took a sickle type thing when I took weeds and brush into the woods.

This is really interesting, and I'm happy to publish it - some of the Coyotes in this area are Wolf-Coyote hybrids, sometimes called Coy-Wolves, with many of the Coyotes having Red Wolf (Algonquin Wolf) genes.

I wonder if that is what you saw? Because they are a mix, they can look like Coyotes but behave move like Wolves, or on the other hand they may look more like Wolves, but their behaviour may be more that of a Coyote.

Please let us know if you see them again, we would love an update!