It was an honor to recently join Will Crebs on the Under Pressure OutdoorsPodcast to talk about Dark Outdoors® and some of the strange and sometimes dangerous things I’ve investigated over the years.
Will asked a lot of great questions, and I really enjoyed the conversation. It’s always fun to connect with someone who genuinely loves the outdoors and is interested in exploring stories that go beyond the typical hunting and fishing discussion.
One of the things I appreciate about Will’s show is his approach to interviewing people.
“We talk about pretty much anything and everything related to hunting and the outdoors. We have everybody on from regular guys with some great stories to some of the biggest names in the industry, and we try to keep the conversations laid-back and genuine,” Crebs said.
“The idea is that you can listen, learn a thing or two, maybe get a different perspective on something, and have a few laughs along the way,” he said.
That’s exactly the kind of conversation I enjoy.
With Dark Outdoors, my goal has always been to tell stories that are compelling, sometimes unsettling and hopefully make people think a little differently about what can happen in the woods and on the water.
I appreciate Will having me on and giving me the opportunity to share some of that work with his audience.
Be sure to check out Under Pressure Outdoors on your favorite podcast platform, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Will is doing some great things, and I think many Dark Outdoors listeners will enjoy his show.
Halloween is going to be extra special this year as Dark Outdoors® reaches a major milestone: 100 episodes!
To celebrate, I’m launching Dark Outdoors Week, featuring six consecutive days of mysteries, strange encounters, horror movie connections and real-life investigations, beginning Monday, October 26, and concluding on Halloween, October 31.
This special week brings together many of the subjects that have made Dark Outdoors such an exciting journey, from creepy childhood experiences and mysterious figures to real predators and the true stories behind some of horror’s most memorable movies.
Here’s the Dark Outdoors Week lineup:
Monday, October 26 — Blood Road: The Grim Reaper and the Road That Bled. I revisit a mysterious Southeast Texas road and the eerie stories that surrounded it when I was growing up, including my own experiences connected to this unsettling location.
Tuesday, October 27 — When the Real Pamela Voorhees Called Me. I share the remarkable story of my friendship with Friday the 13th actress Betsy Palmer, including the first time she called me while I was walking through the woods beside a lake. We’ll also explore real-life summer camp horrors and the legends associated with them.
Wednesday, October 28 — Real-Life Wolfen: Are Wolves Living Just Beyond the City Lights? Inspired by one of my favorite horror movies, 1981’s Wolfen, I investigate real wolves living near cities, the wolves of Chernobyl and the mysterious ghost wolves of Galveston Island.
Thursday, October 29 — The Werewolf Ritual That Terrified Me as a Kid. When I was in elementary school, I discovered an old book containing a disturbing account of a supposed werewolf ritual. What I read frightened me and left a lasting impression. In this episode, I revisit that childhood experience, investigate the folklore surrounding werewolves and explain why I believe people should be cautious about dabbling in occult practices.
Friday, October 30 — The Hooded Ones: New Accounts and Strange Origins. New firsthand accounts of mysterious hooded figures lead us into an investigation of strange encounters and their possible historical origins.
Saturday, October 31 — Episode 100: The Real Jason: The Phantom Killer’s Legacy. On Halloween, we investigate the terrifying 1946 Texarkana Phantom Killer murders and their connection to The Town That Dreaded Sundown. It’s a fitting subject for our landmark 100th episode.
Daily Giveaways During Dark Outdoors Week!
And there’s more!
I’ll be doing giveaways every day during Dark Outdoors Week on the Chester Moore – Higher Calling Wildlife Facebook page!
Be sure to follow the page and check in daily for opportunities to win prizes as we celebrate this special milestone.
Reaching 100 episodes means a great deal to me. Dark Outdoors has allowed me to investigate fascinating mysteries, share extraordinary experiences and explore the sometimes frightening side of the natural world.
I appreciate everyone who has listened, shared episodes, submitted stories and supported the show along the way.
You can find Dark Outdoors® on all major platforms where you listen to podcasts.
Join me October 26–31 for six days of mystery and real-life horror as we count down to Episode 100 on Halloween!
Chester Moore
Follow Chester Moore and Higher Calling Wildlife® on the following social media platforms
Halloween is almost here, and I wanted to share something special with my Dark Outdoors subscribers!
My new book, I Was an ’80s Horror Kid, is a fun, personal journey back to the days of monster movies, Halloween masks, creepy music and growing up in the 1980s.
Through Halloween, you can get a personally signed copy of the book PLUS a FREE signed copy of my new Freak13® CD,No Longer Living Dead, for just $20, INCLUDING SHIPPING!
Just include your shipping address with your payment or send it to me privately at chester@chestermoore.com.
We’re also counting down to the 100th episode of Dark Outdoors on Halloween! Thank you for being part of this journey and supporting the show. I truly appreciate it!
God bless!
Chester Moore Dark Outdoors®
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Lyle Blackburn has spent years investigating monsters.
From legendary cryptids and strange creature reports to the dark imagery surrounding his band Ghoultown, Blackburn has built a career exploring the territory where folklore, fear and the unexplained collide.
Now he’s taking on a different kind of monster — one that actually exists.
Blackburn is the latest guest to join Sharks Aren’t So Scary a special public-service campaign from the Gulf Great White Shark Society that brings together horror culture, unusual personalities and shark conservation.
For Dark Outdoors, the connection couldn’t be much better.
When Real Animals Become Monsters
One of the things we regularly explore on Dark Outdoors is the difference between the genuine dangers found in nature and the stories people build around them. Sharks might be one of the greatest examples.
A great white shark is an enormous predatory animal equipped with an incredible sensory system, speed and a mouth full of serrated teeth. There is no reason to pretend an animal like that can’t be dangerous.
But that’s very different from the nearly supernatural monster popular culture has created.
Sharks don’t stalk specific people. They don’t hold grudges. They aren’t plotting their next attack underneath somebody’s fishing boat. Those ideas belong in the same realm as the creature features, horror movies and campfire stories we love discussing.
The real shark is far more interesting.
Enter Lyle Blackburn
That’s what makes Blackburn such a great addition to the campaign.
As an author and cryptid researcher, he has investigated some of America’s most enduring creature legends, including the Fouke Monster and Lizard Man. He’s also the founder and frontman of Ghoultown, whose horror-infused music fits comfortably into the darker world Blackburn has explored throughout his career.
Having someone who spends so much time investigating alleged monsters talk about an animal that has been turned into one by popular culture is a fun twist.
And Blackburn isn’t the first person from the horror world to join the campaign.
Brinke Stevens, Count Drahoon and Sharks
Sharks Aren’t So Scary has already brought some interesting personalities into the Gulf Great White Shark Society’s conservation work.
Horror icon Brinke Stevens, one of the recognizable scream queens to emerge from the 1980s horror scene, participated in the campaign. Long before her career in acting, modeling, writing and directing, Stevens studied marine biology, giving her involvement an interesting connection to the animals themselves.
Horror host Count Drahoon also joined the fun, bringing some old-school creature-feature energy to the project. We even turned him loose on some of the worst shark movies ever made, which is exactly the kind of assignment a horror host deserves.
Now we can add a cryptid researcher and horror musician to the list.
Instead of running away from the horror imagery surrounding sharks, we’re having some fun with it.
We can love Jaws. We can laugh at absurd killer-shark movies. We can enjoy monsters, cryptids, Halloween and everything that comes with horror culture while recognizing that real sharks aren’t movie villains.
That distinction matters.
Dark Outdoors has always operated in similar territory. There are legitimate dangers in wild places. There are also mysteries, legends and stories that become larger with every retelling. Sometimes figuring out which is which is the most fascinating part of the investigation.
Great white sharks don’t need Hollywood’s help to be intimidating.
And they certainly don’t need it to be fascinating.
Watch for more from Lyle Blackburn and the Sharks Aren’t So Scary campaign as we move toward Halloween.
Because the outdoors has a dark side but sometimes we’ve made it darker than it really is.
Chester Moore
Follow Chester Moore and Higher Calling Wildlife® on the following social media platforms
Growing up in the 1980s was an incredible time to be a horror fan.
From classic monster movies and late-night horror television to scary movie magazines, Halloween masks, creepy music and trips to the local video store, horror was everywhere. And I loved it!
My new book, I Was an ’80s Horror Kid, takes readers back to those days through my personal experiences growing up fascinated with monsters, movies and all things spooky.
And now, through Halloween, I’m offering a special deal that brings together two important parts of my creative life: horror storytelling and monster metal.
For just $20, including shipping, you’ll receive a personally signed copy of my new book PLUS a FREE signed copy of the new Freak13® EP,No Longer Living Dead, on CD!
The book is a journey through the horror culture of the 1980s, filled with memories, strange encounters, childhood adventures and stories about how my fascination with monsters eventually helped inspire my music with Freak13.
But there was another side to growing up a horror kid in those days.
The Satanic Panic was sweeping America, and being fascinated with horror sometimes brought unexpected consequences. I share what it was like to experience that atmosphere firsthand, survive some difficult situations and eventually find my own path to faith.
At its heart, this is a book about growing up, discovering who you are and remembering a time when horror was something you found on VHS tapes, magazine racks and late-night television.
FREE Bonus: Freak13 — No Longer Living Dead
As an added Halloween bonus, every book ordered during this promotion comes with a free copy of the new Freak13 EP, No Longer Living Dead, on CD.
Freak13 is my Texas monster metal band, and this new release brings some of our classic material back to life in a different way.
The EP features four Freak13 classics performed unplugged, plus one brand-new studio track.
Track Listing:
New Orleans (Unplugged)
Swamp Devil (Unplugged)
They Don’t See It (Unplugged)
Jackal’s Daughter – Crystal Lake (Unplugged Medley)
No Longer Living Dead (Brand-New Studio Track)
The unplugged recordings offer a different take on songs from the Freak13 catalog, while the title track marks the band’s return with new studio material.
Halloween Special — Only $20 Shipped!
From now through October 31, you can get both the book and CD for one special price.
Your Halloween package includes:
A personally signed copy of I Was an ’80s Horror Kid
A FREE signed No Longer Living Dead Freak13 EP on CD
Shipping included in the $20 price
Please note: This is a preorder offer. Books are expected to arrive by October 25, with orders expected to begin shipping shortly afterward.
Whether you grew up loving horror in the 1980s, enjoy the strange stories featured on Dark Outdoors or appreciate some good old-fashioned monster metal, this is a fun way to celebrate Halloween.
The chupacabra began as a blood-draining monster in Puerto Rico. In Texas, it became something very different. After years of investigating strange canids—and actually retrieving one alleged chupacabra carcass—I believe science explains much of the mystery. But maybe not all of it.
By Chester Moore
I have a chupacabra skull.
At least, that’s what most people would have called the animal it came from.
The skull has been in my possession for years, the remains of a bizarre, virtually hairless animal recovered after a flash flood. Its body had grayish, wrinkled skin, and its proportions looked strange enough to make anyone encountering it in the woods wonder exactly what they were looking at. I eventually went into the field and retrieved what remained of the carcass.
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Do I believe I have the skull of some undiscovered bloodsucking monster?
No.
But that doesn’t make the story of the chupacabra any less fascinating.
In fact, the deeper I have gone into the subject, the more interesting it has become.
The chupacabra is unusual among famous cryptid stories because its modern legend isn’t particularly old. Reports exploded out of Puerto Rico during the 1990s, where witnesses described something very different from the hairless, four-legged creatures that would eventually become known as “chupacabras” in Texas. Early Puerto Rican reports described something far stranger, sometimes almost alien in appearance, associated with livestock allegedly drained of blood.
By the time the legend reached Texas, the monster had changed.
Listen: The Horror and Science of Chupacabra
I recently explored this strange intersection of wildlife, folklore and firsthand encounters on a special episode of my Dark Outdoors podcast, “The Horror and Science of Chupacabra.”
I get into the famous sightings, the Texas “blue dogs,” mange, coyotes, wolves and hybrids—and the strange skull that has been sitting in my possession for years.
The episode gets into something I’ve come to believe after years of looking at alleged chupacabra photographs and reports: a monster can be very real without being an unknown species.
When Mange Creates a Monster
Take a coyote and remove almost all its hair. Let disease and starvation reduce its body weight. Expose the ribs, exaggerate the appearance of the legs and ears and alter the texture and color of its skin.
Now put that animal at the edge of someone’s property at 2 a.m.
Shine headlights on it.
Suddenly, one of North America’s most familiar predators doesn’t look familiar at all.
Severe mange can transform coyotes, foxes, raccoons and domestic dogs into animals that look shockingly different from healthy members of their species. Hair loss changes our perception of body proportions. Ears appear enormous. Legs seem unusually long and thin. Tails can become almost ratlike, while poor physical condition can produce a stumbling or unusual gait.
That’s important because the animal most commonly presented to me as a Texas chupacabra is a coyote.
Foxes can look even stranger. Their naturally prominent ears become exaggerated when most of their coat disappears, and their eyes can appear enormous when illuminated at night. Even raccoons can become almost unrecognizable after severe hair loss eliminates the familiar mask and bushy coat.
I’ve seen reports presented as mysterious creatures that were clearly animals we already know.
But I’ve also experienced firsthand how convincing the illusion can be.
The Night Something Charged Me
One night I was near a wooded area where I had been conducting red wolf research. I saw something moving low through the brush and initially couldn’t identify it. After I made a howl, the animal answered.
Then it came into view.
In the moonlight I could see an extremely skinny animal with large-looking ears. It circled, growled and eventually ran toward me, getting perhaps 10 or 15 yards away before retreating. When I finally got a good look at it, the mystery disappeared.
It was a domestic dog with an extreme case of mange. I estimated roughly 75 percent of its hair was gone.
But imagine someone else having exactly the same encounter.
You’re standing in the woods at night. Something nearly hairless emerges from the darkness, growls and charges you. You see huge ears, a gaunt body and exposed skin illuminated by your flashlight.
If you’ve heard the stories, you’ve just encountered a chupacabra.
That’s how legends can grow around real animals.
Then I Got a Call About a Body
My strangest connection to the chupacabra mystery began with my friend David Clever.
David encountered the body of an unusual animal following a massive flash flood. When he first saw it, the carcass was bloated and floating in a pool. When he returned later, much of the decomposition process had progressed, but the remains were still there.
He described an animal with no hair, grayish wrinkled skin and body proportions that appeared unusual. Eventually, David contacted me while I was doing research in the Texas Hill Country and asked if I wanted to retrieve what was left.
Of course I did.
I went out and recovered the remains.
And I still have the skull.
Looking at it now, I don’t believe I discovered an unknown species. My best assessment is that it belonged to a large coyote or a medium-to-large domestic dog, although the possibility of some degree of canid hybridization is interesting given the history of wolves and coyotes in the region. What I don’t believe is that hybridization itself explains the strange hairless appearance.
Mange does that very effectively.
The Strange Texas “Blue Dogs”
Texas added another layer to the chupacabra legend when strange hairless canids began attracting widespread attention.
These animals are sometimes called “blue dogs” because of their unusual gray-blue skin.
That appearance has helped fuel speculation that they represent an unknown canine, some unusual hybrid or perhaps the real identity of the chupacabra.
But research discussed in my podcast points toward a far less supernatural—and biologically fascinating—explanation.
Work cited in the transcript from researchers examining alleged chupacabra specimens identified animals including raccoons and domestic dogs. All suffered from mange, with extremely limited hair, thickened skin and a dry, wrinkled appearance. The discussion also noted secondary bacterial infection associated with heavily damaged skin and the unusual coloration observers sometimes report.
That combination can produce an animal that looks like it shouldn’t exist.
But it does.
What About Wolves and Coyotes?
There is another component of the Texas mystery that deserves attention: canid genetics.
Coyotes and wolves have a complicated genetic history in North America. Hybridization has occurred in different populations, and that can produce animals whose physical characteristics don’t always match the textbook image of a coyote or wolf.
That does not mean wolf-coyote hybridization creates chupacabras.
The transcript specifically addresses that misconception. Whatever genetic mixing may occur among canids, I don’t believe hybridization explains why these animals lose their hair and develop the bizarre appearance associated with Texas chupacabra reports.
Mange remains the far more compelling explanation.
But What About Puerto Rico?
This is where I hesitate to declare the entire chupacabra mystery solved.
The original Puerto Rican story isn’t identical to what developed later in Texas.
The very name chupacabra—”goat sucker”—grew out of reports involving livestock allegedly attacked and drained of blood. The legend exploded during the 1990s, but accounts of mysterious livestock deaths and supposed blood-draining creatures in Puerto Rico preceded the famous chupacabra wave.
Descriptions also evolved dramatically.
The original creature of Puerto Rican folklore could be portrayed as something almost alien. The Texas version became a strange hairless canine.
Those may be two very different phenomena that acquired the same name.
That’s why I’m willing to say I think I know what most Texas chupacabras are without pretending I’ve explained every unusual report ever associated with the name.
The Chupacabra Is Real—Just Not the Way You Think
My position on the chupacabra might sound contradictory.
I think the chupacabra is real.
I just don’t think most of the animals being photographed, filmed and found dead in Texas represent an unknown species.
They’re real animals suffering from real conditions that can transform them into something almost unrecognizable. In many cases we’re probably looking at coyotes, foxes, raccoons or domestic dogs suffering from severe mange. That’s also the conclusion I reached about the mysterious skull in my possession.
But knowing that doesn’t make encountering one at night any less unsettling.
I’ve had one charge me.
I’ve retrieved the carcass of another.
And I have its skull.
Sometimes the most frightening creatures in the woods aren’t monsters at all.
They’re familiar animals that, for one reason or another, no longer look familiar.
Hear the complete investigation and my firsthand stories in “The Horror and Science of Chupacabra” on Dark Outdoors.
A snake breeder walked into my office carrying a kingsnake.
Before he left, he told me a story I haven’t forgotten.
He noticed a photograph of a banded sea krait hanging on my wall. These are highly venomous marine snakes from the Indo-Pacific, far removed from the waters off Texas.
He looked at the photograph and told me he had seen one.
According to his account, he had kayaked offshore near High Island, Texas, to fish around a rig. There, swimming in Gulf waters, he encountered what he believed was a banded sea krait. He described the animal as four to five feet long, distinctly banded and possessing something particularly important—a paddle-like tail.
It would have been easy to write the encounter off as mistaken identity. Except his description immediately reminded me of another strange report.
Two anglers I know had been fishing around the 18-Mile Light on Sabine Bank when they saw a long snake swimming at the surface. They described it as bluish-white and black-striped, approximately five feet long.
And they described a paddle-like tail.
Now I had separate encounters from the same general region of the Gulf involving people familiar with snakes and describing remarkably similar animals.
That was enough to make me start digging.
Since then, reports of strange snake-like animals have come to me from other parts of the Gulf Coast, including Alabama and Florida. Some may ultimately have very ordinary explanations. Eels and other elongated marine fishes can look remarkably snake-like, and native snakes can certainly enter coastal waters.
But what about the reports that aren’t so easily explained?
And if a highly venomous marine snake from another part of the world somehow reached the Gulf, is there a mechanism that could get it here?
That question took my investigation into international shipping, ballast water and the long history of animals being transported far outside their natural ranges.
My new video, “Venomous Sea Snakes in the Gulf? Investigating the Reports,” examines the eyewitness accounts and the possibilities behind them.
To be clear, this is not evidence that sea snakes are established in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s an investigation of reports involving animals that witnesses believed were something that shouldn’t be there.
And this investigation isn’t over.
There are additional reports and possible explanations I intend to examine in future installments.
Because sometimes the most interesting outdoor mysteries aren’t about proving something extraordinary.
They’re about figuring out what somebody actually saw.
Chester Moore
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There was a time when a strange photograph could start an investigation. Today, it might have been generated 30 seconds ago.
Artificial intelligence has changed the game when it comes to wildlife imagery. We now live in a world where someone can create a convincing photograph or video of virtually any animal imaginable and put it in front of thousands (or millions) of people before anyone stops to ask whether it is real. For cryptozoology, that presents an enormous problem.
Cryptozoology has never enjoyed widespread acceptance within mainstream wildlife science. At its best, however, it involves something I understand very well as a wildlife journalist: collecting reports, interviewing eyewitnesses, researching historical records, examining photographs and video and going into the field to see what can actually be documented.
That doesn’t mean every report is true. Far from it. But investigation is supposed to be about separating what can be demonstrated from what cannot, and right now that process is getting harder.
When Everything Looks Real
I’ve spent years looking into unusual wildlife reports. Some turn out to have perfectly reasonable explanations. Others involve misidentification, and some are obvious nonsense. Occasionally, however, you encounter something that leaves legitimate questions.
The problem today is that those categories are becoming increasingly difficult for the average person scrolling through social media to distinguish. AI-generated wildlife images have become astonishingly convincing. Videos can be manipulated, old photographs can be given completely new stories and real wildlife footage can be removed from its original context and presented as something it isn’t.
Then the algorithms take over, and the most sensational version frequently travels farther than the correction. That doesn’t just hurt cryptozoology. It damages public understanding of wildlife in general.
The Credibility Problem
There is another problem that technology cannot be blamed for: standards matter.
If every strange sound in the woods becomes evidence of an unknown creature, eventually none of it means anything. If every blurry photograph is presented as proof before obvious explanations are investigated, credibility disappears. The same applies to eyewitness accounts.
I believe eyewitnesses should be treated respectfully. I’ve interviewed enough people over the years to know that sincere people can report extraordinary things, but sincerity is not the same thing as proof. That’s where investigation comes in.
Can the location be verified? Does the description match known wildlife? Were there tracks, photographs or other witnesses? Does the timeline hold together? Is there a reasonable conventional explanation? Those aren’t questions designed to destroy a mystery. They’re the questions that make investigating one worthwhile.
But It Cuts Both Ways
There is another side of this conversation that deserves attention. Skepticism is healthy and, in fact, essential. But skepticism has to operate by the same rules.
If extraordinary claims require evidence, claims supposedly disproving extraordinary things should be examined carefully, too. A confident conclusion isn’t automatically a scientific one simply because it supports the conventional explanation.
That issue is about to become particularly interesting. A forthcoming film dealing with this world is already raising questions that I believe deserve examination—not because I have any interest in blindly defending cryptozoology, but because evidence and methodology should matter regardless of which conclusion someone wants to reach.
I’ll have more to say about that. For now, I’m asking a different question: Has AI, social media sensationalism and declining standards of evidence brought us to the death of cryptozoology, or has it simply made genuine investigation more important than ever?
That’s the subject of the latest episode of Dark Outdoors.
Because the outdoors has a dark side.
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I’ve seen some huge feral hogs over the years, but the animal featured in my newest video is in another category altogether.
A Texas hunter killed a massive black-and-white boar in Southeast Texas that tipped the scales at 725.8 pounds.
And that’s not an estimated weight.
There’s a photograph showing the hog on the scale with a reading of 725.8 pounds, and I was able to review documentation, video and information surrounding this incredible animal.
Watch the video here.
The hog had recently begun appearing on game camera. This wasn’t an animal Swenson had been watching grow for years. It showed up—and it was enormous.
One thing that will immediately get people’s attention is the coloration. The animal has a striking black-and-white pattern that might cause some viewers to wonder whether they’re really looking at a free-ranging feral hog.
That coloration is absolutely within the documented range for feral hogs.
Texas A&M AgriLife Extension reports feral hog coat color and pattern are highly variable. They may be black, brown, red, white, spotted or “belted.” AgriLife specifically describes belted hogs as black or brownish-red with a white band across the shoulders and forelimbs.
I’ve personally taken a couple of free-ranging hogs over the years with a similar black-and-white pattern. None of them were remotely close to this animal’s size.
Color alone also doesn’t tell us the precise ancestry of an individual hog. Texas feral hogs have a complicated history involving domestic swine, free-ranging hogs and Eurasian wild boar.
There have been plenty of “Hogzilla” stories over the years. Some involved estimated weights. Others came with very little documentation.
That’s why this one got my attention.
725.8 pounds was on the scale.
In the new video, I take a close look at the animal, the evidence surrounding it and just how unusual a free-ranging hog of this magnitude really is.
The outdoors has a dark side—and sometimes it has a really, really big one.
Chester Moore Dark Outdoors®
Dark Outdoors investigates terrifying encounters, unsolved mysteries, true crime and dangerous wildlife—because the outdoors has a dark side.
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A pair of eyes emerged from the bushes in the darkness. There had recently been a mountain lion sighting in the area, so I raised my rifle and looked through the scope. What I saw wasn’t a mountain lion. It looked like a red wolf.
I lowered the rifle.
That encounter has stayed with me for years, and it opens a new episode of Dark Outdoors®, “The Night I Had a Red Wolf in My Crosshairs.” The episode explores that experience, other strange wild canine encounters and the fascinating story of an animal that once roamed Texas and Louisiana but came perilously close to disappearing forever.
There is another fascinating chapter to this story.
Researchers studying wild canines along the Texas Gulf Coast have discovered animals carrying significant amounts of red wolf ancestry. That raises intriguing questions about whether genetic remnants of the wolves that once inhabited this region have survived within coastal coyote populations.
I explored that story in a video examining Texas coyotes, red wolf genetics and the remarkable possibilities scientists are considering for conserving those genes.
The red wolf (Canis rufus) is one of North America’s great wildlife conservation stories.
Red wolves once occupied portions of the eastern and south-central United States, including Texas and Louisiana. By the 20th century, persecution, habitat changes and hybridization with coyotes helped push them toward extinction in the wild.
A small number of animals were captured along the Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast to establish a captive breeding program. Those animals became the foundation for an effort that prevented the red wolf from disappearing completely.
Today, the only recognized wild population exists in eastern North Carolina.
That makes the discovery of red wolf ancestry in Gulf Coast canines especially fascinating. The wolves themselves may have disappeared from Texas, but some of their genetics apparently did not.
What Was in My Crosshairs?
I’m not claiming that the animal I encountered that night was a genetically pure red wolf.
There was no DNA test. I didn’t capture it. I didn’t have a biologist standing beside me.
I can only tell you what happened.
I saw those eyes emerge from the bushes. With a mountain lion recently reported in the area, I raised my rifle. When I got a better look at the animal, what I saw looked like a red wolf.
So I lowered the gun.
Years later, as research began revealing the surprising amount of red wolf ancestry surviving in some Gulf Coast coyotes, encounters like mine became even more interesting.
Could I have encountered an animal carrying substantial red wolf genetics?
I don’t know.
But unlike a lot of mysterious wildlife stories, we now know there really are wild canines along the Texas Gulf Coast carrying genetic echoes of the red wolf.
And that makes this story worth another look.
Hear the Full Story
In the complete Dark Outdoors episode, I tell the story of that night and explore other unusual encounters I’ve had with wild canines over the years.
Listen to “The Night I Had a Red Wolf in My Crosshairs”:
