Hikers, skiers, snowmobilers, and other backcountry users can be an important source of information for conservation and monitoring. We receive many reports of wolverine or wolverine track sightings every year, but few of these can be used because of a lack of clear evidence. In order to count as a verified sighting, we need precise information – preferably pictures and an accurate location. If you see a wolverine from a distance and can’t get a photo, let us know anyway, and be sure to note as many details as you can – time of day, location, landscape features, presence of food source in the area, and so on.
If you see wolverine tracks and have a camera, please do the following:
1. Take pictures. Take a close-up of an individual track, and then a longer shot of the gait. Include something in the pictures for scale – a pen, or some other item.
2. GPS the point, if possible. If you don’t have a GPS, locate the tracks as precisely as possible on a map.
3.Take a quick, qualitative assessment of your surroundings. Note landscape features, where the tracks are headed, whether there’s a food source nearby, or anything else of interest.
4. Post the information about the sighting here at the blog, or target it to one of the following sites:
The Wolverine Foundation’s reporting page collects reports from all over North America.
Please report sightings in the Greater Yellowstone Region at the Northern Rockies Conservation Cooperative’s wolverine reporting page. The site is linked to the Jackson Hole Nature Mapping project and is specifically designed to gather information about wolverines in Wyoming, where their status is largely unknown. NRCC is also interested in wolverine sightings across the region. A wolverine biologist will contact you for a follow-up discussion of the sighting.
If you’ve seen a wolverine in Canada, please report it here.
If you think you’ve seen a wolverine in New England or in the Midwestern US, please take a look at information about fishers, which are close relatives of the wolverine and equally intriguing. Wolverines are not found in New England or the Midwest (with the possible exception of released captives) but fishers are, and in the right light, they could look like small wolverines. If you still think you saw a wolverine, then by all means, let us know.
Note: All comments here are moderated. They will not appear without approval. Mindless, aggressive, or pointless comments will be deleted. Comments boasting about wildlife ID skills without accompanying evidence attached to the sighting report will also be deleted. These serve no purpose in trying to construct a picture of where wolverines are or helping folks figure out how to improve their wildlife knowledge.
The Wolverine Blog 
I’ve seen Wolvering tracks several times in recent years and twice in the last 5 weeks.
5 weeks ago – at the edge of the forest on the east side of the field near Whitegrass Ranch heading north.
This past Saturday – at the base of Albright mountain near death canyon heading towards death canyon. It seems as though the tracks were not as large as the tracks I saw near Whitegrass (which were huge).
I believe this to be reliable as I got a look at the tracks and followed them for several hundred yards in both instances.
I believe I saw a wolverine in Sandown NH this morning around 9am he ran across the road and dug in the snow for a bit then when he spotted me trying to get a photo he ran into the woods, I got a photo of his butt
I got a great shot of a wolverine butt just yesterday. Totally frustrating.
I have a few pictures of what I believed to be a fisher cat, however everything I had read said males up to 16 lbs and this thing was more like 25-35 pounds, large. My dog chased it up a tree and I stood under the tree and took photos. But he was like high up and they picture enlarged are grainy. It does not look like I can post pictures here?
Hi Karen,
Thanks for the report. I’ll send you a message from my email and you can send the pictures there.
I was driving home from Sartaoga Springs NY to The Corinth Area at about 12.30 AM. One the road by the white line there I noticed a wolverine ? it was not small to give you iadea of size about that of a small micorwave oven. It was dark brown/black whit lighter browns in the fur.I slowed down it showed teeth and they were large teeth scary teeth. It has a straight tail with fur. I live in the Adarondack park about 3 hours away from Canada. Well what ever it was I would not want to meet it outside of the Land Rover.
Lol – you need to quit drinking or learn how to properly identify Mammals of North America. You probably saw a ferocious RACOON
Generally not a fan of gratuitous insults on the blog, so do try to keep things polite. A lot of these reports are probably mistaken, but I encourage people to go back and try to verify what they’re seeing. If it turns out to be a raccoon, then they’re subsequently better at learning to identify raccoons. If I say something rude, then they’re just ticked off and don’t learn anything.
I seen a wolvering at 7am in Malta New York . Very much like you described.
If you see what you think is a wolverine in the snow, IMMEDIATELY take photos of the tracks. Include something for scale. Include photos of both individual prints and the gait, as well as photos of the tracks in the landscape so we can verify the location. Then send those photos to me. This is the only way we can count these sightings as verified. Thanks for the report.
What you saw was a fisher. We have a lot of them in this area now (I’m from the Saratoga area as well) and they kind of look like small wolverines, and are also quite vicious.
I completely believe that you saw a wolverine. My husband and I own over 65 partially cleared and also heavily wooded acres in New Paltz, NY. At around 5pm today, my husband was walking over to his tractor and saw a somewhat large animal trotting along the edge of the property towards the wooded area. He knew immediately from its gait, that it was not a domestic creature. He said it resembled a fisher (we know them very well, they have been after our chickens for years) but was much larger, approximately 25 – 30 pounds. It was completely aware that my husband was there, but paid him no mind. A few minutes later he emerged from the wooded area with a woodcock bird in its mouth and then started directly up the driveway towards my husband. No fear or apprehension at all in its disposition. It then suddenly turned and trotted into the woods. My husband is not great with being “on the ready” to take photos with his phone but did get a pic of the large prints it left in the snow. We looked up photos of a wolverine on google- and shockingly, this is absolutely what it was. We had no idea they could be around this area, and honestly I am a little concerned. I do not, under any circumstances want to happen upon this creature- it looks a little threatening! Also, I love the little population of woodcocks that have made a home on our property… I don’t want to see them perish!
I think I saw a wolverine at pineveiw lake utah I know there are there are’nt very many sightings in utah but after comparing it to a image of a wolverine I know it’s a wolverine
Whereabouts by Pineview did you spot it?
I saw a Wolverine in broad daylight North of Lima Ohio on April 20, 2010
I was traveling North at 45 MPH on highway 15 and about halfway between Ottawa and Defience,
I approached a Farm with a very large ( 2 -3 acres ?) front lawn (grass and a few trees)
The farm was on the East side of the road.
The area was deserted,no people, no animals, and no other traffic was on the road.
The farm house was about 300 feet off the road and nearer the road in this field of green grass was a dark object
I saw a dark Black/Brown animal about 60 feet from the road and headed for the road at a diagonal bearing . At first I thought it was a very large cat because of the amount of fur.
But as I got closer, it was far larger than a cat and did not walk like a cat at all
The tail was flat furry and slooped down to the ground. ( beaver style I call it)
The striking thing were the front legs, much wider than dogs and cats and it had claws.
both front legs were being put forward at the same time as if to grab something (like a rabbit in a hole ?) The animal was about 16 inches tall and somewhat long.
Because of it’s stocky build, I thought it was a Badger, but it was bigger than the badgers I have seen. I looked at the head when I was closest and it was triangular shaped and had no Badger stripes and was a very dark brown in color.
At that instant, I realised it was a Wolverine, and in broad daylight .
The trees were budding and there were few shadows.
Because its focus was on something else , I think I caught it unaware.
I had no camera available, but will not forget this exciting experience
This is really well-described and all identifying characteristics thoroughly discussed.
Mr. Carlstedt and I communicated a bit about this sighting and concluded that it could have a been a fisher (Martes pennanti), a smaller but equally interesting cousin of the wolverine. If you think you’ve spotted a wolverine in an area that is way outside of its territory, let us know (I am through being surprised at any distance that these guys travel, and there are always escaped captives to consider, too), but take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher_%28animal%29 for some description and pictures of the fisher, just to make sure that it wasn’t one of these secretive and little known weasels. Their range extends through New England, parts of the mid-west, and parts of the Rockies and western US as well.
In 1996 I saw what I thought was an albino badger in my back yard close to NewConcord Ohio, but it was much too large. It was the size of a medium size dog. The description fits that of a wolverine. What I saw was solid white. It stopped and starred at me for a moment and then passed on. Is there such a thing as an albino wolverine?
Thanks for the report.
Most species do occasionally produce albinos. Some wolverines have very wide lateral stripes and can appear pale when in winter pelage, so those are two ways that a wolverine might appear white.
The likelihood of a wild wolverine showing up in Ohio is very, very small, however. If it was a wolverine, it was most likely an escaped captive. Wolverines can only maintain populations in areas with deep spring snowpack through mid-May, so there is no naturally occurring population in Ohio.
Thanks again for the report – definitely the first time I’ve heard of an albino wolverine!
I saw a large mammal last night. It was right smack dab in the middle of the road on Packers Falls Rd in Durham, New Hampshire. I’ve seen plenty of fishers over the years, having lived in this area for ten years. I’ve seen and heard fishers in both winter and summer and I did not think this was a fisher. It looked to me like a small bear and was heavier than a fisher. When I looked up the animals in the weasel family, I was struck when I saw the wolverine. My instinct reaction was, “this is what I saw!” If I am wrong, and this was just a fisher clad in its winter coat, then it is a well fed fisher indeed, cause I’ve never seen one that big before. I wish I could see it again, but the truth is I almost ran it over as I had to suddenly swerve around it to miss it.
Sylvie,
Thanks for the report. My family has a summer house in New Hampshire, so I would be utterly delighted if wolverines were to show up there. I think it’s unlikely, however, that the animal you saw, if it was a wolverine, was a wild wolverine. And even imagining that it was, it would be a lone disperser. Female wolverines require deep snow through mid-may in order to den and raise kits, so a wolverine population wouldn’t persist in a place like New Hampshire, which doesn’t have that kind of late-spring snowpack.
Is there snow on the ground right now? If so, could you go back and look for prints? If you do this, photograph both individual prints, and the gait, and be sure to include something for scale.
If there’s no snow and/or no prints – let us know if you see the animal again.
Thanks again for the report!
in the late Spring of 2011, I saw what I believed was a Wolverine, in a young soybean field , behind my place, in Redkey, Indiana. I first thought it was a fox, but the steady nose to the ground, with the distinct lumbering style of trot, displaying it’s poor eye-sighted characteristic.I watched it cover a few hundred yards before it hit the tree line and got out of sight. I know Indiana is not suppose to have Wolverines, but these days, animals are traveling way past their known territories. I am about 90% this is what I saw and really the only reason I would not for that I am 100% is that it was in iiIndianaIndiana,noColoradWyoiming or Montana
Thanks for the report. Please let me know if you see it again. I’m always skeptical of reports outside of known territory, but people do keep captive wolverines that escape, and I also try to keep in mind that we don’t know everything about these animals. A mountain lion collared in South Dakota was killed on a highway in Connecticut – a wolverine from the Rockies could probably make it to (but not survive or reproduce in) the Midwest. We can’t consider anything verified without documentary evidence, however, but even the unverified reports are worthwhile. Thanks again.
I am positive I saw a wolverine in South Bend Indiana just a few days. It was crossing the road on Kern Road which is out in the country and woodsy area. It was a large animal and the way it ran was just like the videos I looked up on you tube. This was not a small creature by any means it was 50-60 lbs. I never imagined there were wolverines right in my back yard.
this description is pretty much exactly that of an animal i saw in Harmony, Pennsylvania (very small town about 30 miles north of Pittsburgh) a few days ago. my first thought was that it was a cat, but as soon as it moved, it was obviously not. my second thought was wolverine, so i have been googling photos and videos, and am certain this is what i saw. the few pictures i’ve found of fishers do not show the same color patterns.
this was about 4:30 in the afternoon. it was about 25 yards away, in clear view. i stopped to watch, but before i could get my phone out of my pocket to take a picture, to looked striaght at me and than ran to some nearby brush.
I should have said that this occurred at about 11 AM local time
Wolverine (Gulo gulo) sighted in high alpine tundra near table mountain just west of the grand teton May, 2010. Appeared to be a solitary male. Also have photo’s of three, (mom and two pups) seen in the selway bitterroot wilderness, Idaho 2003.
A few weeks ago, I spotted this animal across the river bank from my home. Not being from the area I had no idea what is was. By the time I got to my camera it was gone. In the weeks to follow, my dog and a few of his pals had an encounter with a porcupine, not fun! I decided to familiarize myself with local wildlife. In doing the research I came across pictures of wolverines. I was delighted to find out what is was, not knowing the rarity. Since then everyone I have talked to has said it’s impossible, but I know what I saw, and it’s legs were too long to be anything else in their family. So there you have it! I live in Firth, Idaho along the snake river. He was seen on a small piece of BLM land.
A recent sighting report from the Uinta Mountains in Utah that was provided to me from Michael Buxton a professor at Brigham Young University….. Here is a link that shows pictures of the area where the wolverine was seen. http://highuintas.blogspot.com/2008/09/amethyst-lake.html
“My siting of the wolverine took place around 8pm on Friday, August 20, 2010. The location was near the southwest corner of Amethyst Lake. Fishing had become poorer due to wind, so I hiked up a rocky 100ft incline directly up from the lake at this corner. I did not have any camera with me. At the top of this incline is a rocky ledge which is probably a few hundred feet wide before inclining again westward up the mountain. I began walking toward the north along this ridge and maybe 200 feet along this ridge I saw the wolverine, walking about 60 feet in front of me, crossing my path so I could see its right side perfectly. I was alone in the siting; my 25 year old son was on the south side of the lake.
The first thing I noticed was its size–it was as large as a small-to-medium sized dog. It was quite round around the belly, furry and what seemed a little fat. When I saw it, it was obvious to me it was not a badger or marmot, and certainly not a bear cub. The other thing I quickly noticed was its strange way of walking–kind of a slow trot and loping side to side. It seemed almost comical. I stopped immediately and stood still. It stopped at the east edge of the ledge and stopped, standing still, and looking at me. It appeared it was heading into some brush, but was interested in me. This was the amazing thing to me–it was just as curious about me as I was about it, so we stood there and stared at each other for more than 10 minutes. It kept looking over at me and then away. I inched forward at times and it noticed this but it stayed put. Eventually I got too close for its comfort (about 50 feet) and it quickly moved into the brush and I did not see it again.
It’s head was black. Most of it’s body fur was dark brown, but there was golden color on it’s neck and behind it’s ears. At the top of it’s tail was golden/tan color and about 1/4 of the way down it became dark brown through to the end. It’s feet were very dark brown/black. I did not smell a scent.
I have never seen a wolverine before so this was a wonderful experience for me, I was certainly not expecting it…
Michael Buxton
I’ve just returned from hiking the John Muir Trail, this is the first opportunity to report my sighting of a wolverine.
Date: Aug. 18, 2010
Time: 11:55am
As I made the ridge at Red Cones I startled a mammal approximately 40 feet away. It sent up a flurry of dirt and stones as it scampered down toward the stream. I gave chase to keep it in view as long as possible. I had a sustained look and clearly saw it’s yellow strip and broom-like tail, shaped and angled like a beaver’s paddle tail except brushy/furry. I also saw its face briefly as it angled down to the stream. I lost sight of it behind rocks near the water. I followed to the stream’s edge but couldn’t see where it had gone. The two others I was hiking with were 100 feet or more behind me and did not see the animal. I had my GPS (Garmin 60Cx)running and immediately marked the place and time where the sighting occurred.
The animal was more than twice the size of a marmot, it moved with strength and speed far greater than any marmot, and of course it had the distinctive stripe and broom tail. I had John Law’s field guide drawing of a wolverine with me which I reviewed immediately, comparing what I had seen to drawings of Marten, Fisher, and Badger as well. I am quite certain the animal I saw was a wolverine. Also, on Aug. 30 we encountered a Fisher below Deer Meadow as we ascended from Grouse Meadow (LeConte Canyon). This sighting of the smaller, solid colored Fisher further convinced me that the size, striping, and movement of the mammal I saw at Red Cones was indeed a wolverine.
James Decker
Wolverine spotted August 23 2010 at 3:30pm pos. 36.504266, -118.234318. I was in Sequoia NP, it was in a full sprint on a ridge above Cottonwood Lakes just north of Army Pass. By its size, it appear to be a male. I was with three other hikers and they concur it was not a bear and agree it was likely a wolverine. Reported this to NPS, Wolverine Foundation, and a couple of biologists.
Really fast animal either in pursuit of something or possibly running from us.
My husband and I think we saw a wolverine Sept. 25th, 2010 in Mt. Rainier National Park. We were hiking on Skyline trail near the junction of the trail glacier view point (or something close to that)in the paradise area. I had stopped to catch my breath, and looking to the east, in a rocky meadow I saw a large animal loping along. I couldn’t figure out what it could be. I see coyotes all the time where I live, and this was much fatter, lower to the ground and larger legged. It was much larger than the local marmots (by a factor of 3 -4 times). It was smaller than a bear (we had seen 3 of those the day before). It was brownish-golden with darker legs and tail. And it had a bushy darkish brown tail. It was not cat-like. And it was bigger, and fatter and thicker legged than a fox. And, not nearly as lean and long as a martin or mink, and again bigger. My husband and I watched it for maybe 3-4 minutes. We had time to get the binoculars on it and watch it move along. I thought about my camera, but figured it would just be a smallish brown spot (kicking myself about that now). We figured it was something common in the area, and when we found a ranger they would be able to tell us what it was. Well, after much talking, researching mammal guides, etc., we are now fairly certain it was a wolverine. The rangers best guess was a large marmot, but I am CERTAIN that it was not a marmot. It moved differently, it was MUCH bigger, it loped along, it was darker and browner than the marmots we saw in the area that were greyish and blended in with the rocks beautifully. It was taller, and the legs were clearly visable. I can’t think of anything it could be other than a wolverine. If I had known then how rare this sighting was I would have taken LOTS of pictures of it (far away or not). I would be interested to hear if anyone has other ideas about what this could have been. But, nothing else fits what we saw other than a wolverine.
Karen Wohlen
My wife and I believed we saw a wolverine running down the glacier in August of 2009 at Paradise. The only picture of it i was able to snap was from the rear and i can’t see its head, but its legs are defiantly not a marmot’s. Its coloring is a little on the light side and the only reason i question it being a wolverine. It had a long bush like tail with a dark underside. The picture i have is it loping down then hill.
Your description matches what I saw in July of 2002 in the morning. I saw it from the trail just up from Paradise. I saw a side view of it. It had a bushy tail and padded along on big feet. It was on the light side and was much bigger than a marmot. If you ever find out what it was, let me know. I think it was a wolverine or a silver fox.
I saw one years ago while driving up to the top of Mt. Ranier. It was running on top of the snow bank above the road and it freaked me out. It was moving fast and had longer legs. I thought it was a bear at first. The head was flat looking. It was quite large. I will never forget this experience. I asked a ranger when I reached the top of the mountain. He was unsure of what I could have seen. I figured out later that is what it was.
On Friday, September 24, 2010, about 2 PM, while hiking on Death Canyon Shelf in GTNP I saw two Wolverine tracks in dried mud on the trail near a small rivulet about 3/4 of the way to the N end of the shelf. (Under the “S” of Crest on the Mt. Bannon topo.) Using the Wolverine track ID card you gave out in April it was possible to make a positive ID. I had also been told of tracks in snow near Fox Creek Pass the 14th.
This is old data but perhaps relevant. In January 2006 we had a wolverine in our driveway. We turned on the outside lights one evening and he was at the end of our house standing at the edge of the driveway. He stood on his hind legs and moved back and forth like a startled or frazzeled little bear. He watched us for about 3 to 5 seconds and then headed into the darkness down into the area which is now the driveway to the Teton Science School. He was at 300 Bar Y Road, Jackson. There had been a red fox in the area for a few weeks prior to seeing the wolverine, then the fox dissappeared after the wolverine sighting.
Although this sighting is old, I can tell you this wolverine was at lower elevations and in a residential area.
This summer my son, Adam, and I drove from CA to upstate New York for a family reunion. Along the way he wanted to climb as many state high points as possible. On the way back, we reached Mt. Arvon in Michigan late on the evening of July 8, 2010. By late, I mean late. We drove as close as we could up the logging road. We reached the top in the dark around 10:00 pm with the aid of hiking head lamps. He wnted to sleep in the van there, but I wanted to get back a little closer to civilization. A couple of miles into the return trip, an animal ran into the road in front of us. We ended up sleeping along the raod in what appears to be a quarry. So the sighting between there and the high point. The animal loped ahead of the car for 3-4 seconds and then darted off. At this time of night on this dirt road, we were only moving at 5 to 10 mph. We discussed what we thought it was. I felt it had to be a wolverine because of the football team. It had no white markings but did have some loghter color fur along its side.
A week ago, I saw the PBS show about wolverines. What I learned from this show makes me feel quite certain we saw a wolverine up by Mt. Arvon.
I live in a coastal New England town in Connecticut called Branford. About a month ago I saw two large, bear like animals which I figured were Fisher Cats in my backyard. After doing some research I realized they could not have been Fischer Cats and must have been Wolverines. They were much larger than Fishers, standing roughly 20″ tall and were playing in the snow. We recently had over a foot of snow which is rare for our area. It was an amazing sight and I doubt I will ever see it again.
Thanks for the comment. I’m betting that if these were wolverines, they were captives or escaped captives. There’s really no way that a wolverine would be naturally occurring in coastal New England. If you happen to see them again, take photos of them or, failing that, the tracks – include something for scale and be sure to capture both individual tracks and the gait. Then send it to us. It would certainly be interesting to know how many captive wolverines are out there, and how many are released into the wild when they get too unruly. Thanks again!
I believe I saw a wolverine, either 1984 or 1985, during warm weather, when I lived with my parents on Rand Hill, just west of Plattsburg, NY, on the edge of the Adirondacks.
One evening at dusk my mother and I saw from our house a creature that seemed like a low, somewhat small bear shamble down our driveway, cross the road, and disappear. At its closest it was probably 20 feet from us. It looked like a cross between a bear and a badger, but though it seemed only a bit shorter in length than a black bear, it was too “low” in height to be a bear, the body too close to the ground. It had long two-tone hair on its lower back just like you see in many photos of wolverines, and lacked the facial markings and was far too big to be a badger. We consulted a field guide and decided we had seen a wolverine. At the time I didn’t know that where we lived was not supposed to be wolverine range.
Later I learned that the wolverine was not supposed to be in New York State, and wondered if we had been mistaken in identifying it, but the photos and descriptions seem to confirm it, and I’ve never seen any other photo or description that fit better. I’ve looked at the information on Fishers and the creature we saw was much too large to be a Fisher. In fact, I’d say that what we saw was probably on the upper end of the weight range for a wolverine. It must have weighed at least 50 lbs.
At the time we had a large horse, Morgan-Percheron cross, which in my experience was rarely afraid of much of anything. Twice in the weeks before we saw the wolverine that horse had exhibited very curious behavior, in the evening, of first standing at one end of its field, facing the opposite corner, snorting and stamping for several minutes, then charging at full speed in a broad arc to the opposite corner, turning to face the corner from which he had just come and continuing to snort and stamp for several more minutes. Both times we presumed that there was something in the field that the horse was aware of that we could not see. Since a bear would likely have been visible, taller than the grass, we were curious about what the predator was and had imagined it might be a coyote, wolf, or mountain lion. After seeing the creature that we believed was a wolverine, we wondered whether that might not have been what had disturbed the horse previously.
Thanks for the message. This is interesting, and I appreciate the report. There’s some wild country in the Adirondacks, close enough to Canada for a wide-roaming critter like a wolverine to potentially make it. (As you may know, there’s speculation that a wolf shot in western Massachusetts last year actually came from Canada and/or down through the Adirondacks.) We do know, though, that areas without deep spring snowpack can’t support reproductive wolverine populations, and the Adirondacks, unfortunately, don’t have that kind of snow. So if it was a wild wolverine, it would probably have been a young male disperser from Canada.
It could also have been a released captive, especially if it appeared abnormally large (wolverines generally look bigger than they are, due to the fur, so a 40 pound animal could appear to be about 50 pounds. Captive wolverines, of course, tend to be better fed than wild wolverines, hence maybe larger.)
That said, I’m also consistently taken aback by how small black bears are in reality, as compared to in my imagination, when I actually see them. They vary widely in coloration and a cub at that time of year would be about gulo size. Not to cast doubt on your ID, but as a reminder to anyone out there seeking to identify an unknown animal – this is why we can’t consider a sighting verified without a photograph or some kind of definite evidence. There are so many possibilities for what it could be.
Thanks again and definitely let us know if you see one again!
This blog is over a year old and I don’t know if anyone reads it any longer but I too live in the Adirondacks near the Canadian border, and saw something that I could not name. It was March 2010 and I was driving near Chateaugay Lake on a back road. I saw this all white animal run across the road and up the bank. At the top of the bank it turned its head towards my car and I had never seen any animal like it. I searched the internet to find something that resembled what I saw and when I came upon the pictures of wolverines I found it. The one I saw was albino for certain but without a doubt in my mind, a Wolverine.
Even if I had a camera, this wolverine was so fast on the snow I would have never got the picture.
Chateaugay Lake is only about 20-25 miles west as the crow flies from Rand Hill where I saw the animal that I’m pretty sure was a wolverine in the 1980s.
Not sure how deep the Spring snow needs to be, and in the few years we lived there the snow cover was never more than maybe 3′ at the most, but that was considered light. Our neighbors down the street had a photo of just a couple years before we arrived where the snow bank on the side of the road there was high enough that a person standing on it was on eye level with the top of the utility poles. Of course that’s what the plow piles up, rather than the natural accumulation, but still indicates a lot of snow. Weather data maps show that area typically gets 80-100 inches of snow per winter with areas only 30-40 miles to the west getting as much as 130 inches of snow per winter, and this region is included in the “historic range” maps of gulo gulo.
My family saw a wolverine a few years ago at the top Huntington Canyon, Utah at about 10,000′ elevation. It was walking across a snow field as it was late winter/early spring. At first we thought it was a bear, but it was smaller and had a tail. I was fortunate to be able to take pictures of it, albeit from a distance and with a regular digital camera.
Thanks, this is intriguing. The fact that it was walking across a snowfield sounds convincing. Would you be willing to send the photos for verification? If it is a wolverine and could be verified, it would be a big deal, since we don’t have any confirmed reports from Utah.
I would be glad to. Where should I send them? My date on the pictures is May 15, 2004, so more time has passed than I thought. The pictures show it from the side and were taken from the side of the road. I also have a photo of the Highway 31
mile marker I was next to.
Please send them to rebecca@nrccooperative.org
I was particularly intrigued because we “lost” a young male wolverine in 2006 – he disappeared from the airwaves – and I was thinking it could be him. But 2004 would have been too early. Nevertheless, I am very interested in seeing the photos. Thanks!
I emailed the pictures to you this morning. Let me know if you did not receive them and I will try again.
Got them, thanks! We are taking a look now – it may take a little bit to get everyone to weigh in, but I’ll be back to you soon. Thanks again.
Hey rj,
Had I known how rare wolverines were in the US, I would’ve reported the sighting a bit sooner. I spotted a wolverine this summer while I was working in Wyoming. Specifically on the edge of Medicine Bow National Forest near a town called Esterbrook, about 7 miles or so north of Laramie Peak. It was the middle of the night and I was driving back to the wilderness camp I was working at. The wolverine was crossing the road about 10 feet in front of me, and I got a pretty good look despite it being dark. It moved off the road as I got closer, but it didn’t seem frightened of me at all. It just kind of shuffled off to the side. I didn’t actually know what it was at first. I’ve seen bears in person before, and because of the fur, coloring, build, etc. I knew it wasn’t one. It wasn’t until I was at a museum and saw a stuffed one there that I realized what it was.
I hope this helps!
Thanks for the report, Ben. Much appreciated.
We have to be a bit skeptical, so just curious: could you give some more details on what it looked like, and how it was moving? And what makes you certain it was a wolverine, and not a badger?
Not to cast doubt, but these out-of-context wolverine sightings could potentially be SO important to our work, and I need to follow up in every way possible to see if we can consider them “likely” as opposed to “inconclusive.”
Thanks again, and if you see another one, definitely report it immediately – and take photos if possible!
I live in pennsylvinia north east seen an aminal I never seen before cross through my yard at night 4 foot long or more jet black thick fur walked like a cat stalking a pray went straight across the yard I was 20 feet from it . It went over the stone wall into the woods .I’ve been hunting for over 40 years never seen anything like it
I saw what i first thought was black bear tracks in the snow around valley view hot springs, up near the bat cave, but when i looked up the tracks in my field guide i saw that it was a wolverine, i’m glad that this website is here so i can let someone know about it. i wish i took pictures of it.
Hi, and thanks for the report. Could you specify where (in which state?) and on what date you saw the tracks? What did the tracks appear to be doing? Was it a single set of tracks? What exactly did the tracks look like? Were they in snow, and if so, how deep was the snow? Could you describe the gait and the approximate length of the stride?
Unfortunately, of course, without photographs we can’t really consider anything verified. This is probably the single most important thing for anyone reading this blog and hoping to document wolverine sign: Take photos. Include something for scale. Take pictures of the gait as well as individual prints.
We appreciate the reports even without photos, but we can’t use them for scientific purposes because we can’t consider them verified. But thank you again for the report, and let us know if you see similar tracks again!
hey what happened with the pictures?? Do we have a confirmation for Utah?
After some consideration, we can’t consider the sighting verified. The photos are intriguing, but simply too far away to tell for sure. I played with them in photoshop, enhancing the exposures and trying to get a better view of tracks in the background, and it still isn’t conclusive enough to stand up to a scientific test. Many things about the photo suggest that it is indeed a wolverine – the stance, the fact that the animal is on a snowfield, etc – but some things seem off – the length of the tail, for example. If it came down to claiming that Utah had a species that was potentially up for ESA listing, we would need something more certain.
Utah has had several reports of wolverines over the years and I believe that they did some aerial surveys last year, but failed to turn up any tracks. If wolverines are there, it seems likely they are probably just passing through right now.
We are really grateful to everyone who reports sightings, though, and this is not to cast doubt on people who are sure they’ve seen a wolverine – it’s simply about what kind of evidence stands up in the face of potential challenges. So keep sending the reports, and if you see an animal, take photos, and then try to find the tracks and photograph those. Include something for scale and be sure to get some shots of the gait as well. Then take photos of the tracks against a background so that the location can be verified.
In 2009, my wife and I spotted a wolverine at Larch Hill Pass, along the Chinese wall in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, Montana. We were coming to the junction where the trail turns and heads south along the wall when we spotted the wolverine coming down the mountain, I got one picture of it but not a good one before it saw us and took off but we did get a good look at it and both new what it was when we saw it.
This may sound crazy, but I believe my wife and I spotted one just above “Devils Slide” near Croydon, Utah a few years ago.
I am a professional musician and was traveling home in the middle of the night from a show I’d played in Park City when I heard my wife say “What is that?” and then “It’s an anteater!”. I glanced over just as we passed an animal pacing back and forth on the side of the road. I’m convinced it could only have been a wolverine. My wife then explained that she had yelled out “anteater” because that’s the only animal she’d seen that fit what she was looking at: the hair pattern, the long course hair, the profile, etc. She was, of course, talking about an African Anteater, which we’d seen at the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City.
We are both Utah natives and regularly see foxes, coyotes, badgers, raccoons, bobcats, marmots, beaver, as well as other native species, but in fifty years of traveling Utah’s backcountry, we’ve never seen anything resembling what we saw that night. We wouldn’t have seen anything if it hadn’t of been for the Utah Dept. Of Transportation…
There was road construction going on and the highway department had erected a tall wall of concrete barricades to separate the two remaining lanes of traffic. I believe the animal (whatever it was) had tried to cross the road and was turned back by the concrete wall. When we passed, it appeared to be scoping out the wall as if deciding whether to try again.
I’d love to hear some possible alternatives to what we saw that night, but as my wife pointed out, it would have to be a fairly large animal (bigger than a badger) with a low profile and humped back which sloped into a bushy tail. It would also have to have a lighter colored fringe around the bottom of a long, course, coat of hair… Like an anteater!
Well, that would be a fairly lost wolverine, but it’s never outside the bounds of possibility that one was wandering around down there. If you’re sure it wasn’t a badger, I can’t think of any other species that would match the description. If it was a wolverine, this would represent some good information on road-crossing issues, which are always a problem for wildlife. I do have some difficulty believing that a wolverine would willingly approach a construction site, but who knows?
Could you tell me when this sighting occurred?
By the way, “anteater” is now my favorite mis-identification of a wolverine.
Thanks for being in touch, and, although we can’t consider it verified without a photo, we will add it to the growing number of reports of sightings from Utah. Seems like something’s going on in the state, and maybe we’ll get some verified info soon. Keep those reports coming!
I was thinking it was only three years ago, but I checked with my wife and she was pretty sure it was more like seven (she’s usually right). We couldn’t even remember the season of the year as we frequently drive that stretch of road at night and the drives all blend together (especially coming home from gigs).
There really wasn’t a “construction site” where we spotted this animal, just the concrete barricades; the actual road work was still many miles from where the sighting occurred.
I did a quick google search to see if there were any other sightings in the same time frame and found a confirmed sighting (road kill) on highway 30 near Fossil Butte National Monument in 2004. This is close to the time of our sighting and 60 miles away (as the crow flies).
I was surprised by one aspect of my google search: I couldn’t find a reference to a confirmed sighting near Vernal, Ut about forty years ago.
Some guy spotted it near a road and, not being able to figure out what it was, grabbed a rifle from his gun rack and shot it! Hopefully this wouldn’t happen today, but forty years ago folks were shooting anything that moved. It made the local papers when I was a kid, and I later saw the mounted animal itself in the Vernal museum (where I suspect it still resides). Where you already aware of this confirmed sighting? Vernal is just south of the Uintas and I suspect that there has been a small population holding out there for the last century or so…
I was not personally aware of the sighting 40 years ago, but I bet that some wolverine-interested folks I know probably were. They conducted aerial surveys in Utah last year, including in the Uintas, and didn’t find any tracks, as far as I know. I need to ask more about this effort so that I have my facts straight. I’ll post on this once I get in touch with them.
Let us indeed hope that we have moved beyond the “shoot-it-to-figure-out-what-it-is” mode of verifying wildlife sightings.
I would not be surprised at all to learn that gulos are periodically making it back to Utah, even if there isn’t a breeding population. There are far too many reports, and the mountains of Utah showed up as a probable dispersal corridor on a “least cost path” paper published a few years ago; the paper basically analyzed landscape characteristics to predict how wolverines would move south, and the Utah ranges showed up as a pretty desirable – from the gulo perspective – travel route. So actually, a wolverine on that route wouldn’t really be lost at all.
60 miles isn’t too far in wolverine terms, so perhaps your wolverine’s encounter with road-crossing ended badly. It’s sad, but points to the need to provide better options for getting wildlife across highways. With wolverines, every single animal counts, and dispersal is critical to maintaining genetic diversity in island populations.
Thanks again for the report!
In case you haven’t seen this yet, here’s the “verified info” you requested. It comes from the Utah Division Of Wildlife Resources…
Mike
P.S. Since this was coming from the north slope of the Uintas, it was probably about 30 miles from where we spotted one sometime around 2005…
Here’s a detailed report of this sighting…
http://wildlife.utah.gov/wildlife-news/1448-wolverine-photographed-in-the-uintas.html
This sighting was quite a while ago, but Jason Wilmot mentioned at his talk in Boulder, CO, this winter that all potential sightings should be reported, so here goes.
In the summer of 2000, my brothers and I saw a probable wolverine in the headwaters of the Jarbidge River in NE Nevada (a bit downstream from Jarbidge Lake, at around 7700ft.) It was rummaging around in avalanche debris that had collected in the creek bed. When it realized we were there (we were about 40-50m away from it), it exploded up out of the creek ravine in a couple of huge bounds and ran at full speed across the meadow into the heavy lodgepole pine forest. It was in the open for about 75m and seemed to cover that distance, uphill, in maybe 6-8 seconds. It ran with an undulating gait unlike any other running animal I’ve seen. It was dark brown with obvious tan stripes down the sides, had a large bushy tail, and had a wide, low-to-the-ground posture. Unfortunately the whole incident was so quick we didn’t get any photos, and we couldn’t find any tracks in the gravel along the creek.
While none of us had seen a live wolverine before, we are pretty convinced that that was the only possibility for this animal. It was at least twice as big as a marmot, too dark in color, and too far away from rocks. We didn’t think it could be a bear cub because it was the wrong shape, had a big tail, and didn’t gallop like a bear. A fisher wouldn’t have the longitudinal stripes.
The area where we saw it is part of the Jarbidge Wilderness Area and is topographically and ecologically similar to central Idaho, where wolverines seem to be relatively plentiful. I wouldn’t guess whether there’s an actual wolverine population in the JWA or whether this was just a wanderer, but the large deer and elk herd and heavy snowfall in the JWA makes me think it could in theory support wolverines.
Thanks, and yes, we appreciate reports of all sightings, no matter how long ago.
This represents only my second report from Nevada, and while we can’t consider it verified, it is interesting. Nevada was historically part of wolverine range, so it’s entirely possible that a few are making it back there. To me, this is one of the most exciting parts of studying wolverines – they’re recolonizing historic territory, and keeping track of it is epic. If only climate change wasn’t such a looming threat….
Thanks again, and keep those reports coming.
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I live in Massena New York and by the Robert Moses state park. I have spent many years in Vermont are very familliar with fishers. Yesterday I saw a wolverine in the park. It was black in color and judging by size I estimated at about 45-50 lbs. I was standing still then I watched it run through about 5-6 inches of snow. While it was standing there it still had room between its chest and the snow. I have never seen a wolverine here before as I stated and am willing to stand by the fact that it was a wolverine and not a fisher. Hopefully I can get a picture next time. If anyone else has seen one or heard of any in the area please let me know.
Thank you for the report, Andrew. I went to school at St. Lawrence University, so I know Massena.
If this sighting occurred only yesterday, in the snow, please return to the park IMMEDIATELY and photograph the prints!! This is absolutely urgent, if you think you really saw a wolverine.
Take a photo of any individual prints that you can find, but, more importantly, please photograph the gait (the entire layout of the animal’s tracks, to determine how it was moving…) Even if the tracks are melted out, we can sometimes tell that it’s a wolverine from the gait.
Again, absolutely critical – include something to indicate scale. This can be your phone, a shoe, whatever – but best if it’s an actual measuring tape.
I hope this doesn’t come across as too peremptory, and I know that people don’t have time to run all over the place to photograph tracks, but if you think you’ve seen a gulo in upstate New York, and if that could be documented, it would be huge.
You state that NH never supported a viable population of wolverines. However in 1922 river drivers working in the region of the Dead Diamond River in the Academy Grant region of northern NH did find a female wolverine in a den with young. It was the last known sighting of wolverine in the state. Having spent quite a bit of time in this area I can testify that it is wild rugged country and will keep significant snow cover well into May – most years.
Interesting. Could you point me to the source of this information?
A few years ago some colleagues of mine did a pretty comprehensive assessment of all the available anecdotal and verified reports of wolverine sightings throughout the US from colonization onward and their conclusions were that post-Pleistocene, New England has never been good gulo habitat. My family has had a summer place in the NH mountains for nearly a century and although we are certainly aware of lingering snow in that region, wolverines need deep snow through May – as in, 5 or 6+ feet on the ground at the beginning of May. Wolverine biologist Jeff Copeland modeled the required snowdepth in his 2010 paper and NH did not show up on the models for snow. The dynamic might have been different back in the early 20th century, so there’s always a possibility that at least one female and one male wolverine were hanging out in NH at that time. A persistent breeding population that far south would require widespread regions of suitable habitat, however, with good connectivity to other areas of suitable habitat. Those conditions simply don’t exist in the northeast.
That said…in Mongolia we see wolverines well outside the snow model, sometimes as far south as the borders of the Gobi Desert. When we look more closely, these “vagrant” Mongolian wolverines are all contained within a summer temperature envelope in which maximum August temperatures remain below 22C (c. 70F). Interestingly, northern NH does show up on the Copeland model as falling within this same temperature envelope, and that temperature envelope extends south from Labrador in eastern Canada, which we suspect was at one time occupied by wolverines. One hypothesis would be that in areas with fully healthy wolverine populations, females can breed successfully in more marginal habitat during cold spells in which larger amounts of snow do remain on the ground. This is just a thought, but one of the things that I’m trying to investigate in my work in Mongolia.
So, I would be quite interested to learn that there is, in fact, a verified report of a breeding wolverine in NH in the early 20th century.
I read about this wolverine sighting in a book on animals that used to exist in New England but have long since been extinct from this region. It was over 15 years ago when I stumbled upon the book at my place of employment – the USFS – and the book was used by one of the wildlife biologists. The title of the book escapes me. However what didnt escape me was the chapter on wolverines and the mention in the book of a discovery in the early 1920s by river drivers of a denning female wolverine in the northern part of NH. To me it was fascinating.
However, Helennette Silver in her well researched book “NH Game and Furbearers ” states that wolverines may never have existed in the state. If wolverines were found in the state -my guess is that it would have been mentioned in her book. Her book was based upon extensive research going all the way back to the mid 1600’s.
Thanks for the info. If you happen to ever come across the book again, let me know. Wolverines are so elusive that I feel like it’s hard to say what their range might have been in the early days of European colonization, especially given the cold spell from 1400-1800, which the colonists would have encountered the end of, and which might have extended gulo range further south than we would think of it now.
But I also tend to be skeptical of people saying they’ve seen “wolverines” – we have enough experience with these reports now to know that they generally turn out to be badgers, fishers, melanistic foxes, or sometimes, the neighbor’s dog. So even if two guys said they found a wolverine den, I would look for documentary evidence – photos, or the ID of a wildlife official who knew wolverines well – before we could consider it verified. In looking into Thoreau’s mention of “wolverenes” in New England, I was surprised to discover that in early days, the word was sometimes used to describe lynx, too. Totally weird. So there’s enough grounds for confusion that we have to be pretty cautious about considering these reports true.
In any case, I’ll ask my colleagues if they know of this report and whether they considered it in their analysis.
Thanks again!
I’m skeptical about about sightings too. If all the cougar sightings I’ve heard were true, they would be abundant.
I spent a good part of my life roaming the White Mts of NH. Like Sam said, I think there’s places now that support deep snow in May. I’m in my early 50’s, and when I was in school we’d ski untill Easter , [No snowmaking then.]and I think they’d be skiing untill 4th of July in Tuckerman’s Ravine. I’m sure there was plenty of snow 1400-1800.
Adding to the discussion on breeding Wolverines in NH: Naturalist Todd Levin makes mention of the finding of two wolverine cubs in Coos County NH in 1918 in the book by Rebecca Brown: Where the great river rises: An atlas of the Connecticutt River Watershed in Vermont and NH.
It would be interesting to see where Mr Levin got this information.
Thanks, Sam. Looking forward to looking into this. Given my own personal ties to NH, I would love to know that there is some Gulo affinity there as well, even if a century old….
Perhaps you could try spending a winter in New England! If you’re lucky, maybe you’ll see one!
I spent 22 winters in New England. There are no wolverines there.
On May 21, 2011, (our first trip to the Lake this year) I was outside my father’s cabin at Bear Lake in Garden City, Utah, when I noticed a strange bear-like animal at the neighbor’s cabin to the south. The animal had not seen me so it just continued to walk along a cement ledge (sea-wall), nibbling on the weeds that were growing there. I was able to watch it for a few minutes before going back inside the cabin to grab a camera. Unfortunately, when I opened the door to come back outside, the wolverine must have heard me and dove under the deck of the neighbor’s cabin. It was the size of a mid-size to large dog, with a long bushy tail; yellow long, spiky fur on it’s head which also ran down along the side of the animal to its tail. At first I thought it was some sort of quill but then realized that it was just long, coarse fur. I thought that it might have been a wolverine but didn’t know for sure until I checked out a few pictures of wolverines on the internet. Since it is rare to see a wolverine in Utah, I feel very lucky to be in the right place to catch sight of this animal. I believe what kept this wolverine around this area was the dead deer laying right outside the back door at my Dad’s cabin. I didn’t see the animal again and was not able to get a photo of it or spot any tracks in the neighbors yard as it was walking on cement and grass when I saw it.
Bear Lake is at an elevation of 5900 feet, in the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest, in the northeast corner of Utah, just a few miles south of the Idaho border. This year has been a particularly cold and wet winter season in that area and it has lasted well beyond the season. There are several feet of snow at the 6200 foot summit just outside Garden City and it just snowed yesterday!
Thanks for the report, Kathy. It sounds plausible, especially with a deer carcass lying nearby. I am sure that Utah Fish and Game would be interested to hear about this – have you gotten in touch with them? They have been doing surveys in Utah and are keen to learn more about the status of the species in the state.
Thanks again for taking the time to be in touch.
Matt Welch and I were walking west on the trail from White River Pass in the Bob Marshall Wilderness in the summer of 2010 in the 95+ heat. Finney, the 55 pound Springer Spaniel with us had run ahead to find water and shade, luckily for him. From below the trail, a large brown animal walked onto the trail passing 6 feet away from me. He either didn’t notice me or didn’t care because he didn’t look at me.
The animal’s fur was less than half an inch long and was completely brown except for golden-colored triangular striping (long triangles linked together) draping the shoulder and neck area. I could see rippling muscle and veins protruding from his beefy body. His forequarters cross section was an oval 20 inches or more wide and 10 inches high. The hindquarters seemed somewhat smaller. His body was approximately 36 inches long not counting the head or tail.
His/her face was brown with no markings and with round ears. The head seemed small for the body which reminded us of a dachshund only bigger than any dachshund you ever saw. His legs were short and they held the animal about 4.5 inches off the ground. I saw his feet clearly: he didn’t have large claws and the lower legs appeared skinny without fur although the upper leg was muscled with veins showing. He placed his feet on the ground like a bear would. He waddled slowly down the trail in front of us for approximately 20 yards. There was a back-and-forth motion to his gait. His tail was flat, trapezoidal, and about six inches long and like his body, without fur.
Now for the part you won’t believe. I’m not a biologist or a naturalist, but I am a measurement freak and a damn good guesser. This animal passed me at a distance of only 6 feet. It was probably 3 inches shorter than Finney the 55 pound dog, who was weighed on a vet’s digital scale two weeks before the trip. This animal’s body was much larger both longer and thicker through the middle. This animal was at least 60 pounds and maybe more. Matt’s guess just after seeing him was 70 pounds.
To say that prey was plentiful in this area would be a gross understatement. The ground squirrels were fat and the marmots were the largest I’d ever seen. There were plump pikas running here and there too. Interestingly, the prey all had normal fur and the summer hadn’t been warm.
So someone tell me: Was this a wolverine, a badger, or something else?
Hi John,
Thanks for the comment and for your email. I’m currently transitioning between countries – en route to Mongolia for some wolverine work – and I think your observation needs some time to consider. Give me about a week to wrap up in my current location, get settled in Ulaanbaatar,and run this by the experts, and I will get back to you. Thanks again!
Thanks RJ. The head looked like a wolverine for sure. However the weight, fur, short legs, small front paws, and waddling gait don’t fit. I appreciate your willingness to consider this. I’ve talked to zooligists, fur-bearing “experts”, biologists and everyone tells me something different. The fur-bearing expert at Fish and Game in Montana says a badger could get that big but everyone else I’ve talked to says no. The wolverine I saw Doug Chadwick holding in a photo looks to be the size of a cocker spaniel, maybe 30 pounds. My Springer had been close clipped so the fur on both animals was the same length. I’m sure this animal weighed, very conservatively, 60 pounds and probably more. Hope you have a great time in Mongolia!
Hi John,
I think your instincts are probably correct – if only one out of a number of characteristics fit the description, then it probably wasn’t a wolverine. Wolverines in the Rockies usually don’t get that big (and they rarely do elsewhere, either, although in some exceptional cases far in the north, they might. A big Rocky Mountain male would be about 30 pounds.) The very short fur, the lack of fur on the legs and tail, the small feet, the low stance (gulo legs are about 10 inches long) and the fact that you saw the animal in 95 degree temperatures (gulos seem to have a maximum temperature tolerance of around 70 F) are further suggestions that this was not a wolverine.
I’m not sure, based on your description, what it could have been. The only thing that comes to mind is to ask you a further question: were you near the water? Is it possible that this was a beaver? They would appear much sleeker than a wolverine, in the right light the highlights in their fur could give the appearance of being striped, their legs might appear hairless, they have flat, hairless, trapezoidal tails, and they do indeed get to around 60 pounds. They waddle, have smallish feet and bad eyesight (hence, it might not have noticed you), and their legs are short.
Sorry I can’t provide a more definitive answer, but it doesn’t sound like a wolverine. Let me know if you have a breakthrough in ID-ing the critter, and thanks again for reporting it here.
Wow, never thought of a beaver. I’ll investigate that further. Thanks for the thought you put into this. It’s disturbing to see an animal so clearly and closely and not be able to identify it.
Ok I’ve read your reports and the fact that there can be no wolverines in the Midwest but , I did see one tonight in Illinois. I am not saying it is native as we have hundreds of thousand of trucks, rail cars, and barges coming here every week from around the world, but I know what I saw. It was not a badger or a fisher it was to tall and bigger to be either. I had to stop my car to avoid hitting it and it was probally less than 20 feet from my bumper directly in my headlights.
Thanks for the report. Can you give some more details? Where exactly in Illinois did you see it? What did it look like and what was it doing? What made you sure that it was a wolverine?
Escaped captives are always a possibility, but even in that case, I’m interested to know what characteristics identified it as a gulo for you.
Thanks again for sharing the sighting.
My husband saw an animal that was identical to a wolverine on June 18th, 2011 in front of our house at 1:00am. We live in the Western Washington Cascade Foothills near Mt. Rainier. He didn’t know what it was, but after a lot of research on Washington State mammals, he stopped dead in his tracks when he saw the wolverine photos online. Every other mammal, he would say, “No, it had a longer snout.” or “No, it was fatter.”. He is reluctant to say it was a wolverine with 100% certainty, and I agree that a wolverine being this low in elevation is odd. But if it was indeed a wolverine, I figure we ought to tell someone who cares.
Thanks, Wendy. Could your husband provide some details about what the animal looked like, what it was doing, what it was that he recognized in the picture of the wolverine? Also – no mud around your house? Any chance of checking for tracks?
You might want to get in touch with the Cascades Carnivore Project, too – I am literally on my way out the door for a month with no internet access, so won’t be able to do any follow-up, but they might be interested. Their website is here: http://cascadescarnivoreproject.blogspot.com/
last week my wife and i were in the adrondacks 20 miles of lake placid in the middle of july. about 7 pm a good size critter crossed the road in front of us. it was shady over the road where it crossed so we could not see fur color well . but we saw its profile very well i could easaly see under this anmial it taill came off its rump almost strait down but id not touch the ground. it was about a foot long and very furry. over all it was about 3 1/2 feet long about 25 inches tall and very stockie. since weve got home ive looked online and understand that fishers can be mistaken for wolverines i must say this is possible. but this critter just seemed to big for a fisher at least by what ive seen online. anyway i just wanted to tell someone about this.
Thanks, Scott. We don’t have knowledge of a resident wolverine population in the Adirondacks, but we get a lot of reports.
I believe I sighted a wolverine on the edge of the Solitude Resort Village in the Wasatch Mountains at the top of Big Cottonwood Canyon in Utah last Monday night at 11pm. I startled something sizable in the bushes next to my cabin (or should I say it startled me), so I quickly got a flashlight and found the critter in the beam across the access road on top of some rocks about 20 feet away. Its outline looked like the largest raccoon I have ever seen (and I have seen some big ones camping and hiking in California) roughly 3′ long and 18″ high to the shoulder. I’d guess about 30-40 pounds.
It was not remotely frightened of me approaching with a light and I could not make out any striping on its tail, which seemed a bit short for a raccoon and very bushy. Then it turned and walked directly up a very steep grade on the embankment up to Big Cottonwood Canyon Road. The gait was like a bear walking (I have seen many bear in their native habitats: browns, blacks, Asiatic blacks) but it was a bit too small for even a cub and had a prominent bushy tail–definitely not a bear, it just lumbered like one. When it turned at the barrier about 50′ above me, I saw a yellowish patch of fur on its hindquarter that ended at the top of its dark bushy tail. Then it walked behind some bushes out of sight of my dim flashlight.
I reported it to the Forest Service (since we are surrounded by public lands of the Wasatch National Forest) and the wildlife biologist for the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache district has been up to survey the sight and photographed some partial prints I found nearby next to a spring. Two nearby fur-filled scats the size of a dog’s from earlier in the week are now with the Forest service and headed to the lab (although I saw the critter walk up the embankment, not poop, so those could be unrelated). However, dogs are forbidden in this watershed, so it’s somewhat unlikely the two large fur-filled scats are from a dog. Any dog eating furry creatures up here would not be tolerated and enforcement is strict.
The Forest Service now plans to set up some cameras and bait stations around the vicinity this fall, likely after the first snowfall for better tracking (snow often comes in September up here–the ground is snow-packed from October or November to May or early June most years and we get 600+ inches of snowfall on average).
Thanks for the very detailed report! I’m psyched that you reported it here, and also to Fish and Game – exactly the right thing to do. Looking forward to hearing the results of the scat analysis. You don’t have access to the photos of the tracks, do you? Gulo prints are pretty distinctive.
We’ve been getting more and more reports from Utah, so I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there are indeed several wolverines in the state.
The print was only partial on pretty firm and rocky wet soil with deer tracks all over complicating the search. I don’t have the photos, they were taken by the Forest Service biologist on her camera. She said they were the correct size (roughly 3″x3″), but not a good enough print to be certain of anything on first look since neither claws nor heel pad were clearly printed. I now have my own photos of a partial track that is in very hard disturbed soil, but there is no detail to the prints whatsoever, just rough size and spacing. I’ll send you those.
Hmmm. Did she say that they were 3 inches by 3 inches, or that they were “3-by” tracks?
Thanks for sending the photos. You’re right, it’s hard to tell anything definite from them, but I’m glad to have the chance to take a look, and I look forward to hearing how all of this turns out. Go, wolverines, go! To Utah, Colorado, and beyond….
The print photo that I don’t have was of a partial print showing just the middle 3 of the 5 toes clearly and no obvious claw prints or heel, so the roughly 3″X3″ that I remembered (not what she said) was the rough size of three central toes across and from the front center toe back to the foot pad (not the heel). I think what was surprising to the Forest Service wildlife biologist was the three sizable central toes arranged in an arc, since dogs, coyotes, and mountain lions typically print with two central toes forward of their 4-toe prints and those are the other large carnivores likely to be leaving prints in the high Wasatch.
We have mounted an infrared motion detection day and night camera on the only path leading to where I spotted the critter, so hopefully whatever it was it will return for a picture sometime, though if it was a wolverine it may well be miles away by now.
The arc of the toes is pretty diagnostic. Cool!
I used to be a wildlife biologist for the Forest Service in Kamas and Heber City areas. I worked with Karen, the FS biologist you are probably referring to. I helped conduct some of the wolverine surveys in that area during 2009-10. I would be very interested in seeing the photos you both have been discussing. As you are probably aware the FS did take excellent photos of wolverine tracks on the north slope of the Uinta Mountains during winter 2010-11. Dan Garcia in Evanston, WY and Anthony Gray in Heber City likely have copies of these photos. I’ve seen the photos and they are definitely wolverine tracks. The Uintas have some excellent wolverine habitat as does the highest portions of the Wasatch Range.
Me and my wife seen a badger yesterday next to a highway eating a dead bird in Massillon OH, Stark county. Thought it was a old grey groundhog at first then we got closer and it look up at us and we saw the white line down its face. Having traped and freed three goundhogs this year that were living in my back yard this guy was not a groundhog! Cool to see just glad its not living in my back yard.
From Jeremy’s mention of “Valley View Hot Springs” and “bat cave”, this has to be the Orient Mine (an important bat roosting site) on the northeast end of Colorado’s San Luis Valley. This is on the west side of the Sangre de Cristo mtn range.
As far as I know, M56 has never been detected that far south, but it is possible.
October 27th, 2011 @ 3:30pm. Carbon County, Utah. County Road 401 / Green River Cutoff Road. Approx 8 miles west of US 6.
My girlfriend and I were visiting the area from Missouri. We travelled in a rented car to the Wedge Overlook, then went east on 401 toward US 6. We stopped at several “washes” to explore. Eventually we stopped at a “bowl” about 150 yards across to look at the rock cliffs. The “bowl” was on the north side of 401. As I was looking in one direction, my girlfriend shouted, “LOOK LOOK! What is that !?” I turned and saw a large animal, larger than mid sized dog running away from us about 40 yards away in the bottom of the “bowl.” I did not see it for more than 2 seconds, but I remember: it had a tall bushy white and black tail, pointed straight up in the air. It ran into some pinion trees.
My girlfriend witnessed: it had a pointed snout, she thought it was bigger than a fox but did not run like a dog. First thought was it was a weird looking big fox or a colored wolf. Colorings were black and white. Seemed to have shorter legs and had an irregular gait. Nothing like watching a dog run.
Thanks for the report, Bo. To me, this sounds like a probable badger sighting – they are black and white, and they have short legs and a distinctive gait when they run. I don’t know how they generally carry their tails when running, but straight up in the air is possible. The dry country around Carbon County is good badger habitat.
Badgers are cousins to wolverines and by most reports, even more bad-tempered. They’re pretty cool. Thanks again for the report!
I know from experience that when you’re startled by an animal in the wild, it can see much larger than it actually is. Other than the size, the description sound exactly like a large stripped skunk; black and white, “tall” bushy tail held straight up (classic defense posture for a skunk), pointed snout, irregular gait…
I saw a wolverine about 20 years ago in Cleveland Ohio! My name is Ray and I saw it in winter driving thru Rocky river reservation parks on way to work. Could it have trekked over frozen lake Erie and made it’s way down that little river valley? it was eating roadkill, much bigger than a fisher or raccoon. weighed about 50lbs Id say. maybe little less. same markings as a Wolverine. big paws, wide arms. wolverine tail. I didn’t realize they were so rare. it was no badger. looked almost as big as a small bear. small head though. am I crazy?
Hi Ray,
Thanks for the report. I don’t know how a wolverine would have gotten to Ohio – it could have been a released captive. Wolverines have been gone from eastern Canada for a while (we think….) but you never know, it could have been a dispersing wild animal. If you ever see one again, take a photo and let us know! In the meantime, thanks again for the report.
My 14 year old son came running in the house freaking out because he saw a strange animal tonight . Much bigger than a groundhog, with its back end up way higher than its head. The tail was furry and the body hairy sort of shaggy. It was in NW Massillon in a park area . We went through lots of photos of NE OHIO mammals but none matched the description . But when I showed him a wolverine he freaked out and said “YES! THAT IS DEFINITELY IT !” My 2 daughters confirmed that yes indeed it looks like a wolverine. We watch animals often so he has seen plenty of coons, groundhogs, opossums, etc. Just the way he reacted when he saw the photo of a wolverine has me convinced it was indeed one.
Don’t dismiss me like that please! I am telling you what I saw. this sucker was no “released captive”. had no collar or anything. It knew what it was doing. Foraging right along that river bank that feeds from the lake Erie north of it. Lake Erie was likely 90% frozen over as that’s what it does most years. It was almost as big as me, as I’m not a big man. Beautiful brown mane, striping, the works. Front paws like hams! no one would release a carnivore like that right into metro Cleveland area! Haven’t you seen these devils take down bear? wolf? I have a picture of it. more of a sketch really. it was a full grown wolverine. Cleveland. Take that to the bank.
Hi Ray,
I’m not being dismissive, but for the purposes of research, any report without a photograph to back it up has to be treated as non-conclusive. We will enter it into ‘reported wolverine sightings’ but without photographic or DNA evidence, can’t credit it with more status than that. This isn’t meant to cast doubt on you, simply to uphold standards of what we can consider verified.
The wolverine that died in 2010 after successfully surviving in Michigan in the wild for several years was possibly a ‘released’ captive. By released, I mean that it could have been dumped (people who think that a wolverine kit would make an adorable pet have little idea how much work it takes to handle an animal like this once it’s an adult…people’s solution is to set it ‘free.’), or could have escaped. Either way, wolverines kept as pets are never domestic – they are tame, but still have the ability to survive in the wild, and they will do so. Wild or released, a gulo will always have the instinct to follow its nose to carrion.
The bigger the wolverine is, the more likely I am to think that it was raised in captivity. Most of the wild wolverines that we deal with are no larger than 30 pounds – and those are adult males. A 50 pound wolverine would be pushing the limits of the largest documented individuals (from Alaska), and a wild animal trying to make a living in non-habitat like Ohio (or a young animal that had just dispersed across a major swath of non-habitat) would probably be pretty small. Wolverines raised in captivity, on the other hand, are generally gigantic compared to their wild cousins.
The nearest population of wolverines is in northern Ontario in Canada (the Quebec population is now considered extirpated) – a journey to Ohio isn’t impossible, so you could very well have seen a wolverine, but unfortunately it doesn’t mean that it was part of a breeding population. So if it was a wolverine, it doesn’t much matter whether it was wild or released, it probably had an equal chance of surviving and of becoming part of a breeding population – but to do so, it would have had to turn back around and head north to Canada again.
This is simply my reasoning and you are free to doubt it. I’m not being dismissive, but am obligated to hold all reports to the same standards of proof, to think critically about what a wolverine would have been doing in the place where it was reported, and to assess the implications of the sighting for conservation of the wolverine in the Lower 48. That’s what I was doing. On the other hand, there’s still the “That’s awesome!” factor of seeing a rare animal, and whatever the implications for conservation or breeding populations or anything else, that feeling is still totally valid. So thank you again for the report and I hope that you will continue to value the experience of having seen a wolverine – certainly a privilege no matter what.
that’s more like it. no offense taken. I got so close to it I could have grabbed it. it was big and mean. it had arms like frickin hams. powerful. Come to think of it, I guess it could have been a big badger or fisher. It was dark after all. Maybe it was a bear cub. It was a long time ago!! It was as long as me. I know that. I’m not exactly tall though so that is NOT saying much. I wish I took a photo of it now. Then you would believe me. We have coyotes around here. doubt it was one of those. then again, it was dark!
I love wildlife. I wish it was a wolverine. good luck in your research.
I spotted a wolverine in central Alabama, in a remote area between Tuscaloosa and Fosters about half a mile from the Black Warrior river crossing highway 11 at night on January 3, 2012. I live right on the river and sometimes see critters that seem not to belong here. I am certain it was not a fisher, as it’s legs were way too long. Has anyone seen one this far south?
I saw an animal at about 8:30 this morning across a yard in Union Pier Michigan, southwest michigan. It looked to be about 35lbs, dark brown, very stocky, short to the ground, no striping, humped back. It scurried across the open area. Definitely not a dog, cat. It looks exactly like the wolverine images I found when searching for animals in southwest Michigan. The exact location is the open area across the street from 15920 Goodwin.
Hi Kathy,
Thanks for the report. Any chance you could go to this location and look for tracks or other sign? Was there snow on the ground? If you do go to look, and you find something, please take photos and let me know.
Thanks again!
Just ran across your web site. Back in 1998 or 1999 I was living in my home in rural Pike County PA off RT 739. My wooded property butts up to the Delaware State Game Lands. It was about 10am on a sunny clear morning when I saw a wolverine cllimb up a dead tree located only about 50′ from my front window. My view was clear, unobstructed & I observed it climb about 12′ up the trunk of the broken dead tree where it stopped & spent about 5 mins. digging in the wood with its long black front claws. It was trying to get to a chipmuk it had chased up into a hole in the tree. The critter was about 30-40 lbs., dark dark brown (black, really!) with a distinct orange band around its sides & over its brow. It was about 2-2.5 feet from nose tip to tail tip & it was way too big for a pine martin or a fisher! Both of these look more like weasels to me than this animal. This critter had a wide body build that was closer to a badger’s build but it had longer jointed legs & a long bushy tale with orangish-brown underfur showing at the base of its tail hairs. We had a lot of snow that prior winter so maybe it was a migrant down touring from Canada. But it was NOT a bear cub, don’t even GO there with me — I watched cubs all the time from my windows out where I lived in PA so I would NOT make any such confusion in broad daylight 50′ away for an unobstructed 5 min. view of the animal. I didn’t realize wolverine are considered rare on the eastern side of the US. Have there been any other reports of sightings in PA or NJ? My home is in what’s call the tri-state area (NY-NJ-PA) & I noticed there are some other reportings in NY also. Maybe some of the more robust males are migrating south from Canada when we have winters with heavy snow fall. I recall that winter had been quite snowy with over 4′ of snow pack down by the start of spring — unusual snowfall for that part of PA.
Thanks for the report. It’s interesting and intriguing, but….wolverines have definite and very visibly white claws, like a cat’s. They are particularly evident in contrast to the dark paws. The status of wolverines in Eastern Canada is unclear and it’s unlikely that there are enough of them to be regularly dispersing all the way to Pennsylvania, although one never knows. They certainly range widely. That doesn’t rule out an escaped captive, either.
We get reports from all over the place, including New York, Pennsylvania, Alabama. Virginia, and other places where wolverines are extremely unlikely to occur naturally. But we try to keep open minds. So let us know if you see another. Thanks again.
Re your issues with lack of white claws…sorry, friend, but I sincerely doubt this critter had received a good soaking pedicure in a LONG time!! 🙂 Also, my sighting was during late spring with lots of deep mud still in the woods that year. So the front claws were possibly just darkened from all the mud in the woods that month. I couldn’t see the back claws clearly from my angle. My sighting was around May as I recall & the heavy snow pack that year had just recently melted so we had lots of runoff & flooding that spring. Bottom line? Everything was a muddy MESS in my woods that time of year. Remember too that when I observed the animal, it was 50′ away & mostly digging with its front claws flashing in & out of the tree hole; so in thinking back, I only got glimpses of long darkened front nails while it was trying to get the chipmunk out of the hole in the tree. Therefore, my recollection of dark claws might be accurate (due to mud & dirt stains) without ruling out a wolverine. Trust me, I’ve searched LOTS of info sights & keep ruling out everything except a wolverine. Of course I have no way of knowing if it was wild or a captive release. It looked like a young (but fully mature) adult & appeared quite healthy to me — e.g. it looked well-fed but not really overly fat…just sleek & active with a beautiful coat of shiney dark fur and those distinctive orange side & brow stripes. I have my house in PA rented for now so I don’t get to stay up there very often. However, now that I know this animal is rare I’ll definately try to get a photo or paw print if I ever see another one up there!
I live in Shohla Pa, Pike county. I live right off of 434, right by state game lands. Last night I saw a large 30 to 40 pound, black animal with either gray, white or silver markings on it. It was 930 at night and dark out, so what I could see of it was with porch lights. It was very furry and had a long bushy tail. I had no idea what it was. I have looked at many pictures of fisher’s, badgers and other mammals. Just for the heck of it I clicked on wolverines as none of the other animals looked like what i saw. I had no idea what a wolverine looked like and was shocked to see it was what I had seen in my back yard. I don’t know if it has been here before or if it will be back. But I assure you that I will make every effort to get a picture of this creature to share on this blog. I am certain that it is a wolverine.
CEDAR MOUNTAIN UTAH:In about the spring of 2005 or 2006, while driving on Highway 14 at the summint, just under 10,000 ft., I slowed to let an animal cross the road in front of me. As I watched it clearly in my headlights at about 1:00am, I was puzzled to what kind of animal this was, as I had never seen this before. It was all gray, about 15 to 20 lbs, very furry, with large paws that almost appeared to be walking a bit pigeon towed. I later described to my friends and neighbors what I saw. No one knew what kind of animal I was talking about. About a year later, while watching Animal Planet, they showed a WOLVERINE. I instantly knew that was the exact species I had seen crossing the highway in front of me that night. There is no doubt in my mind that it was infact a Wolverine. Now I am very intreiged and interested to find out more about this amazing creature.
Hi Daniel, thanks for the report. I would not be surprised at all if we discovered that there are wolverines in Utah – although pigeon-toed and grey makes me think badger (I have seen a badger at about 10,000 ft in Wyoming, so it’s not out of the question.) If you see one again, be sure to get photos of the animal and or tracks if possible. Thanks for letting me know about this and I fully support your mission to find out as much as possible about wolverines – they are amazing animals 🙂
Hello Everyone,
I have seen wolverines twice in my life, once in Alaska’s Glacier Bay National Park (1998) and another in 2000 at Montana’s Glacier Natl Park ( coincedence eh?).
The Glacier Bay sighting was from the water while on a tour boat in Muir Inlte with a NPS ranger on board. He was very shocked surprised and excited. The animal was scampering over and around rocks on a smallish rocky mountain facing the water and was about 50 yds-100yds from the boat. Wide white stripes could be seen along its sides. I think since the rear legs are longer wolverines move in a very distinctive humping sort of way from other animals. Glacier Bay in this area has almost no large vegetation but only smallish shrubs. The animal was exposed to full view for minutes at a time.
The Glacier Natl park (MT) sighting was when I was back packing on a trail over a high mountain pass. As I turned a cornor( late afternoon) it was there in the trail. When it saw me it ran away very fast. Again it moved in a distinctive humping sort of run. The white side stripes were evident. After completing the hike I reported it to a NPS ranger. He said that other people had reported Wolverines in that same area. They were collecting sighting reports but not making wolverine presence official at that time. He went on to say they were considered temporary residenst from Canada (GNP is on the Canadian border).
Thats all I remember….
Thanks for sharing. Both accounts sound convincing and they are certainly well within the range of wolverines. It’s fantastic that you had a chance to see wolverines in the wild, twice. Let us know if you see any more.
I live in Cottonwood Heights, UT. There was one in my backyard late last night. My dogs woke me up because they were frantically barking. When I looked in my backyard, i couldn’t believe it. A wolverine. I thought I was dreaming. I didn’t think of looking for tracks until it was too late. My dogs destroyed the ground with theirs. I’m pretty sure everyone thinks I’m crazy but I know what I saw. Take it for what it’s worth.
Hi Ali, thanks for the report. Intriguing! Definitely report this to Utah Fish and Wildlife department. I know that they are interested in hearing about sightings. Keep an eye out around your house, and have a camera nearby in case it comes back. If there’s snow on the ground, and if you have time, look for tracks beyond the edge of the yard – there must be a point beyond which your dogs didn’t trample the area, and where the animal kept going, so at some point there must be some tracks (if there’s snow….)
Also, if you have neighbors who have smaller pets (cats or dogs) please encourage them to keep their animals inside at night. Wolverines have been known to kill pets.
Definitely let us know if you see it again.
I’ll second that request. Get out the snowshoes if necessary, but circle the perimeter of your property and get some shots of the tracks. There’s another storm coming in (if it hasn’t already hit you) and you’ll lose out on the opportunity to make a significant discovery.
I missed my own opportunity to do this a few years back and you have no idea how much I’ve regretted not driving up the next day to look for tracks…
Mike – Harrisville, UT
months to a year ago i saw just one print on a nova scotia roadside. it had something like 4-5 long claws and a pad about 2 inches in diameter. there was no fleshy or furry marks around the claw prints, so they were very long and thin. i’ve been trying to find anyone among my friends that have any idea what that animal could have been, but no one has any idea. the pad seemed much too large for a large dog print. what could it have been? i just saw a documentary on wolverines, and i wonder if it could have been one of these?
Thanks for reporting this. You mention a pad – did you note whether there were toe marks? And what was the shape of the pad? Overall, did it look like a very large dog print? Or was it shaped quite differently from a canid track?
Historically, wolverines were present in Quebec/Labrador, and it wouldn’t have been too far for one to travel to Nova Scotia. We believe that this population has been extirpated, though, so I’d say it’s unlikely that it was a wolverine track that you saw, just based on what we know of the current range. I like to keep an open mind, though. If you see the tracks again, photograph them, and be SURE to include something for scale – a coin, a ruler, or some other standard-sized item.
In the meantime, a few alternatives: it could have been a black bear. These tracks are more oval than a dog’s, and larger, with five toes and claw marks. It might have been a mountain lion, although claw marks would be unlikely. Or, if it was shaped quite differently to a dog’s, with five very long extensions from a triangular pad, it could have been a beaver. In soft ground, their tracks can be pretty big, and they have long toes that might look like claw marks. Or it could have been a large dog. Again, in soft soil or snow, the tracks can appear much bigger than one might expect.
We had wolverines in the 1950s and 60s while growing up in Stradford, NY. We kept a gun on top of the stove as in the dead of the winter we had a few occasions were a wolverine jumped through a kitchen window at the smell of food. They were not friendly and had to be shot.
Since there is so much renewed interest in wolverines I will start searching old areas where they used to be and report back to this bologna.
Thanks for this interesting report. Did you mean to write “Stafford?” If I can inquire, why were the windows open in the dead of winter? Or do you mean that it actually broke through the glass? Any wolverine bold enough to do this was most likely habituated to people, which would suggest that they were released captives.
And what did you do with the carcasses? Certainly someone must have been interested in this unlikely occurrence of an extremely rare animal in a place where it shouldn’t have been? Did you report them to the Fish and Game department? Did any other people witness these break-ins?
Definitely let me know if you find any sign of them. Thanks again.
I just happened to watch the PBS Nature TV program tonight about wolverines. They mentioned the sightings of a wolverine north of Lake Tahoe CA in 2008 and said there hadn’t been a sighting in that area since the 1920s. I’m 64 now & have lived in the Tahoe/Reno area most of my life. When I was 14 (1962) my father & I went hiking/camping in the Desolation Wilderness area just south east of Lake Tahoe. We were on a steep part of the marked trail with a big drop off on the south edge of the trail. I looked down & saw an animal that I thought at first was a porcupine. My father looked & said that’s too big for a porcupine “it’s a bear”! As we watched we both realized that it was neither. The dark brown color with lighter “stripes” on the head & sides became apparent. It was a wolverine! We were excited to see it & watched for several minutes before it ran off into the woods. So we didn’t get a photo but my father & I know that there has been a sighting a lot later than the 1920s. Just had to tell someone. Thanks!
I meant to say – Desolation Wilderness area south west of Lake Tahoe not south east.
Thanks for the report, Dave. We’ll add it to the list of possible sightings. Glad you enjoyed the documentary, and that it prompted you to submit your sighting!
In 2010, we were driving from the Mirror Lake area (Utah) toward Kamas on Hwy 150. We saw a small animal lope across the road. It took me a long time to figure out what it was. A wolverine never really entered my mind. I knew it wasn’t a bear or a marten, or a badger. (I have seen all of them in the same mountains as well). When I saw a documentary on wolverines and saw the shape of young wolverines and how they ran I immediately knew that I had seen one.
This blog is over a year old and I don’t know if anyone reads it any longer but I too live in the Adirondacks near the Canadian border, and saw something that I could not name. It was March 2010 and I was driving near Chateaugay Lake on a back road. I saw this all white animal run across the road and up the bank. At the top of the bank it turned its head towards my car and I had never seen any animal like it. I searched the internet to find something that resembled what I saw and when I came upon the pictures of wolverines I found it. The one I saw was albino for certain but without a doubt in my mind, a Wolverine.
Even if I had a camera, this wolverine was so fast on the snow I would have never got the picture.
I just read a blog Oct.12,2010 on here by a person who says they also saw an albin wolverine . I am so happy to have read this blog.
Well, that’s an interesting report, especially in conjunction with the previous report. We’ll put it on the list of possible sightings.
Yes, people still read the blog! The last update I managed to post was a couple of weeks ago but I’m still maintaining it and still very much committed to wolverine research and conservation. Glad you found it useful. Let us know if you see any more wolverines. Photos of the tracks will be adequate evidence as long as you include something for scale and photos of the gait as well as individual tracks.
As I said on the other post about Chateuagay Lake, that is also only 20-25 miles as the crow flies from Rand Hill where I saw (reported above) what I am pretty sure was a wolverine back in the 1980s, Mine was definitely NOT albino.
My name is Mike Copeland I currenty live in Roxbury Vermont. I am a Norwich architect graduate I grew up survying high rise buildings and currently have a design build bussines. I am my addicted to the woods. I spend all of my free time hiking in the woods looking for wild life and mostly looking for the next hot spot to hang my hunting stands. My friends and I produce a deer hunting dvd called outdoors addiction. I see literally hundreds of deer while hunting thought the east coast each season. I have hundreds of pics of bears, moose, coy dogs and fishers cats that I have captured with my many game cams over the years. I have seen cougar, mountain lion, catamont or what ever you want to those kittys in vermont. Anyway I am here to tell about my super close incounter with a wolverine. I cant remember what exact year it was but I was about half way through college so that would be 2001 to 2002 ish. I was comming home from NORWICH college driving south on Rt 12a. when i saw what i first thought was a bear cub climbing up the melting snow bank. As it reached the top of the snow bank it jumped into the road. The snow was deep that year and it was to the top of the gard rail. IT jumped off the snow bank in front of my truck and i jamed on the brakes coming to a violent stop. It was only feet that i missed the critter by. Now at a complete stop I watched this dog bear fishercat with no tail looking thing cross the road and disapear into winch hill woods. The animal was soaking wet because the dog river is at the bottom of the snow bank it had climbed up. The color was a mix of browns hard to exactly because of being wet. I guessed the weight to 40 to 45lbs or so. The length of body about 40+something inches. The thing that alarmed me and i really noticed were the size of the teeth and claws. The jaw was opening and slightly closing the whole time i was watching it cross only feet from me. The gait was rather funny to watch as it huffed and puffed past me. The head looked like a dogs and the body like a bear cub. I was so shocked by the size of the white teeth i did not notice much of a tail. The body was stocky and it looked strong. It was broad day light and full sun. I think it was late march or early april not sure but snow was melting. I did not report it only because the life style of a architecture student has no free time. I will put my hand on the bible and swear this happened to me. Take a polygraghy test or what ever else test is out there this happened to me.
Hi Mike,
Thanks for the report. The absence of a visible tail and the presence of very visible claws suggests that this was actually a bear cub. A wolverine’s tail is fairly noticeable and their claws are relatively small. I certainly respect your experience in the outdoors and your knowledge of wildlife, so I could be wrong, but what you describe doesn’t sound like a wolverine.
Since it was near a river, the other suggestion might be an otter, but they also have a pretty visible tail.
All of that said, I’m increasingly intrigued by reports of wolverines in the northeast, and I wouldn’t put it past the bounds of possibility that one might have been here. But because of a lack of concrete evidence, we can’t really consider it a confirmed sighting.
Definitely let us know if you see anything similar again, though, and/or if you hear other reports of wolverines. If people are out there and see something interesting, please document it with photos, too!
Thanks again.
Hi it’s Mike Copeland again I bet my life I did not see a bear cub or an otter the day of my wolverine encounter. To tall to be an otter. I live 3 miles down a dirt road by mountains and streams with a few neighbors. We see countless bear from our house alone, let alone the very high number of cubs,mid sized and adults bear I have seen while on stand. I have seen so many bear i dont get exicted any more unless it is a giant. My collection of bear game cam picture is staggering. I have pictures of family of bears, large male or bore bear mid sized bears and up close cub shots. We see mink in the stream almost everyday from our livingroom. To me a fishercat is a mink on steriods. I see fishers all the time it is no big deal. In the winter i track them for fun. The animal i saw was 4 to 5 times bigger than the average fishercat. Even thought the event took place ten years ago the event is clear in my mind. I was so overwellmed by the size of the teeth and light colored claws that is where my eyes were drawn to. I did not mean that the animal did not have a tail but the tail is not clear in my not my mind. I Know it did not have a mink or fishercat type tail you know long and skinny type tail. Anyway the tail did not stand out to me. We ever so often see the small white and brown spotted ermine in our yard. I know a guy who swears about seeing a wolverine in this yard he lives a half mile from my incounter. He is a sportsmen but does not spent 4 to 5 months out of the year in a tree stand like me. The animal i saw had the snout of a germany shepard very large teeth and a totaly different head and ears than a bear cub. I have some of my bear cub picture as a screen savers. Again i am a semi-pro hunter with nothing to gain from this event. You have not met me and have no reason to believe me but i know i saw a wolverine i was 5 feet away. To me the animal was a combo of dog, fishercat and bear. At the time of the event i was so overwelled with school i did not even think of tracking or taking a photo of the tracks. Nor did i realize how rare the creature was at that time. If i ever get one on my trail cams i will send it your way. I really only target white tail deer. So it is not surprising that i have not gotten any pictures of wolverine. I guess they are looking for meat. So that is what i will give them. This past deer season i harvested 5 or 6 deer along the east coast i always bury the remains with my backhoe to avoid unwanted critters. Next season i will leave the remains deep in the woods with many game cams in hopes to capture a pic. What else can i say in my mind i am 100% sure what I saw and i smile ever time i think of the about the gait and the way the jaw was open and moving about.
Happy hunting Mike Copeland
As I said, I definitely don’t mean to discount your experience in the woods or your expertise. We simply can’t consider it a verified sighting without evidence.
If you are interested in setting up camera traps, that would be great. As I said, I’m increasingly intrigued by reported sightings in southern Canada, and it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that one might occasionally wander further south. If you do set up camera traps, you are correct in surmising that wolverines are drawn to meat. Camera-trapping around a post-hunting gut-and-bone pile would be a good strategy for drawing in a gulo if one is around. It would also be great to set up a gun brush or something near the camera to try to snag some hair for a DNA sample. If there are wolverines around, we would want to know their genetics. So yes, absolutely do this and DEFINITELY let us know what turns up.
Good luck!
Hello Mike. I believe I also saw a Wolverine in Brandon Vermont tonight.. Drop me an email I would like to discuss what I saw.
Hey Andy, if you think that you saw a wolverine tonight, the first order of business should be getting back to wherever you saw it and determining whether or not you can find tracks or other physical evidence of the sighting. If so, you should then report it to the Vermont wildlife agency.
I live near Columbus, Indiana on a large farm which is a half mile from a 6,000 acre State Wildlife area. There is also a major river nearby. Yesterday, April 5, 2012, I was on my ATV scouting out a farm field. I spotted a large animal about the size of a medium-sized dog walking across the field. It turned and looked at me and then ran off. I had never seem an animal like this before. I’ve hunted, fished, trapped, farmed, and been around wildlife for over 40 years. I am certain it was a wolverine. It was dark brown, with a slightly humped back and an unmistakable bushy tail. I know the animals native to this area and it was much too large to be a beaver, badger, weasel or fisher. I immediately checked the internet for pictures and videos of wolverines and how they look and move This matched what I saw. I also read that in 2003 an unknown baby animal was found in the Atterbury area. It was taken to a vet who identified it as a wolverine. It seems totally unlikely for a wolverine to be here but I know what I saw.
This is quite interesting. Any chance you could get me the contact info of the vet who took in the kit?
This isn’t where this goes but since the topic is “this is too weird” and I’m not allowed to start a topic yet I beg your indulgence. I’ve lived in north central Ohio for 50 of my 60 and I’ve seen every animal that lives around here, and although I’m not a hunter, if they qualified as a varmit I’ve shot them too.
This evening B/4 sundown an animal I don’t recognize crossed my path. It looked so strange to me that I had trouble even absorbing what I was seeing.
In the real world I’m regarded as steady and stable…
This thing was crossing a freshly plowed field and being careful to stay in the lowest channels (we’re pretty flat here so I had a full view most of the time. It was also careful to keep 50 yards away from my property line. It crossed behind my place from the tree line headed south for about 125 yard turned west and travelled 200 yards parallel to my property line to the road & crossed
into the brushy wood lot across from my home.
As I said it was b/4 sundown and it was in a full setting sun the whole way so visability was good.
I’m stalling because it’s hard to describe, it doesn’t fit in Ohio. First thought was a racoon because it’s haunches were higher than it’s shoulders but it’s haunches were way higher. It’s belly didnt touch the ground although it’s chest may have. This thing was much bigger than the biggest racoon I’ve seen. Medium dog size 40-45 lbs. The rear legs were really thick and heavy and it didn’t move like a racoon it walked with very deliberate steps, unhurried but shoulders and head low. Then I thought maybe that’s what a wolverine looks like but not in Ohio and I don’t really know what they look like anyway. It never even looked around or displayed any caution other than maintaining distance. the fur was medium long like a raccoon but the color was a uniform dark brown/sable color. It never turned it’s head so I didn’t see facial markings.
If I read in the paper that someone’s anteater or crawling wallaby escaped it wouldn’t suprise me at all. But I don’t think that happened.
Well, it’s interesting. It doesn’t strike me as completely wolverine-like but then again, who knows? The most important thing is to try to get either a photo or some other physical evidence – tracks, scat, whatever. That would help us determine what it was. If you have experience tracking, could you go out and take a look around and see if you can find anything?
Thanks for the report.
The statement I found about the baby wolverine being found in Atterbury Fish and Wildlife area was in a blog or forum. After I saw the animal, I scanned the internet for any information I could find about wolverines in Indiana. I’m scanning the ‘net to see if I can find it again in order to identify the author. I’ll let you know if I find it
.
Okay, thanks. Definitely let me know if you retrieve the information.
The first paragraph of my original post reads a little strange because it was a post I made to the hunters section of handloaders bench.com looking for opinions.
Im pretty sure i just saw a wolverine, around 3:45 am it came out of the ditch on the side of the road right by my house in stittsville. There is alot of forest area around and i definitely freaked out because it was 2 feet infront of me walking towards me. Anyways im not sure if it was a wolverine but it didnt have a colourations of one it was all dark brown and black, I thought it was a beaver at first because of its roundness but it had a long tail that was covered in fur (matted on the top and messy on the bottom) its face was a little more round then a wolverine’s but i think it may have been a baby. Theres alot of porcupines and squirrels near where i saw it walking in the street so im sure it could be using those as a food supply.
Hi Kane, thanks for the comment. Where is Stittsville? What state?
About how big was the animal that you saw, and how long was the tail in proportion to the rest of the body?
Let me know, and I’ll weigh in on what I think it might have been.
Thanks again!
I finally found the reference to the baby wolverine on the Indiana Gunowners forum:
http://ingunowners.com/forums/the_great_outdoors/18372-spotted_three_wolves_today_in_noblesville-4.html#post215092
The blogger starts by referring to badgers, then tells about the baby wolverine. Here is his quote:
“I know where a whole mess of those live(well they lived there 5-6 years ago).Just north west of Parkside school in Columbus.I used to run cross country and my brother and I stumbled upon a couple dens.I do not think the area has been disturbed to muc and would bet money they still live in that area. In 2003 my brother found a baby something in area 11 over at Atterbury…took it to the vet to have it id and they said it was a baby wolverine.”
This quote was provided by “Smokingman” but I have no idea who that is.
I saw a Fisher cat next to Sammons Pond near the Delaware/ Maryland border yesterday. It was 4:30 pm. The animal was approx. 3 to 4 ft longand dark brown in color. I have no doult it was a Fisher Cat. FYI for those who house cats in the area.
That’s great! If this is a rare species for the area, please report it to the state wildlife folks, and let people in the vicinity know so that they can keep their cats indoors at night.
On May 5th 2012 while turkey hunting,Saw a wolverine near Stratford ,New york . Animal was dark brown . look like a small bear with a big bushy tail. Was not a fisher!!!!! Walking fast almost stiff like. I would say was about 50lb. Needed to look it up first on the computer to be sure of what it was.
Thanks. Any chance the animal left footprints? We can’t count it as a confirmed sighting without documentary evidence, but the “stiff” walking sounds right. In these cases it’s critical that we have photos and/or some kind of DNA sample for proof. But otherwise, thanks for the report – we’ll add it to the map under “possible sighting.”
No foot prints. saw him crossing a grassy path. Will try to get picture of tracks this summer when I am up there again. Thanks for your reply
Okay, definitely let us know if you see it again, and ask any friends you have in the area to keep an eye out. If you do get pics of tracks, put something in the picture for scale and try to get a picture of anything that indicates the gait, as well as individual tracks.
Any chance you or anyone you know has a camera trap that they might be willing to set out in the area with some hanging bait? The location where you reported the animal is close enough to the Ontario border to give it some credence and I would be curious to see if you could actually document it. Please let me know if you think it might be feasible to deploy a camera. If not, that’s fine, I’m just intrigued.
I originally posted a description of an encounter with a possible wolverine on April 10, 2012 7:47 am. Today I spoke with my neighbor and asked him to keep an eye out. His face lit up and he pulled out his phone to show me pictures of tracks he found just yesterday. He also had a freind take castings. Neither of them could identify the prints and both are very familiar with the wildlife of Ohio. He said besides the tracks of an adult there were tracks of two kits. He also noted the rear feet were much larger than the front. I don’t know if that’s an indicator or not. He sent me pictures of the tracks but don’t see an obvious way to upload them here.
I will try and put a camera up near we saw it. What should we use for bait 🙂
Thanks for your interest in this!
I guess the general recommendation would be venison, but if that’s not available, some beef or even some bones with scraps of meat on them, which maybe you could get from a butcher….No need to spend a lot of money on really good meat. If there’s a wolverine around, s/he will probably find even some scraps on a bone. Don’t use chicken or goat or anything people might be keeping near where you’re living, lest the animal develop a taste for it.
In the next few days, I’ll try to send you a diagram of a good camera set-up, although at this point anything that might ID the animal would be sufficient.
I live about 3 hours away from where the wolverine was spotted . But when i get up there i will place my camera out . I will let you know 🙂
Hello, someone early in the thread here mentioned having seen a wolverine up Huntington Canyon, Utah in 2004. I believe I also spotted one in that area around the same time, 2005 or 2006, but at a slightly lower elevation…maybe 7000 feet.
One afternoon, in late Summer or early Fall, I was coming back down the mountain, with a friend, when the animal started to cross the road. I assumed at first it was a badger since I’d seen them, and their dens, in the area previously. However, as I stopped and was better able to observe the animal, I realized the animal I was watching was not a stocky little badger at all…it had longer legs and fur, had a black mask (without the white stripe of the badger) with a lighter ruff, a long tail, and appeared to have what we’d call a ‘roached back’ at a dog show.Most remarkably, instead of hurrying across the road as expected, it sauntered until it was in front of my SUV, then turned and lunged aggressively at my front bumper, before continuing on into the woods.
Although anecdotal, I hope this helps your research in some way. Thanks for the site and the information, I was just trying to figure out if the large tracks (sorry no photos) I saw in the desert today might be wolverine (same county as Huntington, but lower elevation & much different habitat) but I now see that’s unlikely.
Thanks for the report. A wolverine sighting in Utah is not at all unlikely, so it’s possible that’s what you saw. I believe that the Utah Wildlife folks have verified tracks in the state before. Definitely let us know if you see it again!
Every morning I walk, just before sunrise. I have counted 4 times seeing this creature, but I have no idea what it is. This one morning I smelled something like a skunk, but different, and thinking it was a skunk. About 100′ I saw this creature walking it cross the street in front of me, thinking it was a raccoon, but much larger. Kind of hump back, but it’s tail was different. I stopped, and stomped my feet on the pavement and it took off real fast. I know raccoons do not run, they wobble,but it was gone in a flash. As I approached the area where I saw it, there was this smell again. NOW I know we do not have Wolverines in New Jersey, but it sure looked like one. Is it possible?? Also last winter we had footprints in the snow, had no idea what they were, but they were different. Could it be???
Thanks for the report. As you mentioned, a wild wolverine in New Jersey would be unlikely. An escaped captive, however, is not beyond the realm of possibility. Did the animal have any markings? What did the tail look like? Can you describe the smell more precisely – did it smell a lot like a skunk, or was it just a smell that was musky but actually different from a skunk? (Wolverines, to me, smell like pungent gourmet goat cheese, not unpleasant like a skunk….) Are you absolutely certain it wasn’t a bear cub?
If you’ve been seeing these signs in an area that you visit often, start taking a camera with you and see if you can get a picture of the animal or of sign (footprints, etc.) If you come across tracks, be sure to put something in the photo for scale (your hand, or a standard-sized item like a pen) and take pictures of the set of tracks as well as of individual prints.
Thanks again for the report, and definitely let us know if you see it again, especially if you manage to get a photo!
I know it was not a bear cub. It had a tail longer than a raccoon. But the speed was something else. When I stomped my feet on the payment, it never looked at me it just. ran into the woods. The smell wast more like a skunk, but different, it didn’t linger like a skunk odor does. I could not tell if it had markings because it was early in the morning. But I will take my camera from now on, I want to know what is this creature. TU
The very long tail suggests that it wasn’t a wolverine – their tails are shorter than a raccoon’s in terms of tail-body ratio. I’d suggest a fisher, which have very long tails, but if it was larger than a raccoon, then a fisher is unlikely. In any case, definitely try to get a picture and let us know. I’m curious. Good luck!
i live in new london ohio 2 times in the last week and a half i have seen and animal that sounds exactly what jack pfieffer saw dark brown more black larger than a raccon creepy i walk every morning early with may dog
I saw a wolverine in Pittsburg, NH about 4 years ago while hunting deer. I had set up a ground blind right in front of huge boulder overlooking the swamp in the Perry stream area. It was probably around 7:00 am when heard a noise to my left, I looked out of a small window and saw it walking off, turning the corner to go behind the boulder. It appeared to be dragging a flat bushy tail, low to the ground with a wide stance, very powerful looking. DARK brown in color ( almost black ). Never seen anything like it before or since.
Interesting. Thanks for the report. What makes you sure it was a wolverine? Did you notice any markings?
Pittsburg is pretty close to the border, correct?
i have spotted a wolverine in mount washburn, in yellowstone, a little less than two weeks ago. when we saw it, we wrote down the location on my phone, and took a picture of it’s surroundings. i then observed it hunting yellow-bellied marmots, a common animal in the mountains of yellowstone. we were on our way to see bighorn sheep (we did not see any), but we did see the wolverine. after our climb, we immediately reported it to a nearby park biologist. i was happy to see the look on his face. i new it was a wolverine, as i saw faint yellow markings on it’s side, as well as the shape of it’s face and the way it moved.
another thing distinctive was its size, it was far larger and darker in color than the marmots, and i have seen wolverines in zoos, i know what they look like.
i also forgot to mention that me and my family were the only ones on the mountain at the time, it was 7:45 in the morning, and we were just at the treeline of the mountain. after we caught a glimpse of a wolverine, we heard an alarm call from one of the marmots, then it dashed behind us, and frantically hid there.
Thanks! This sounds accurate. How was the wolverine hunting? Was it stalking? Just chasing them flat out? And was it successful?
Hi Andrew. Exciting report. Jason Wilmot here. I work with Rebecca and was on the YNP wolverine study for a number of years and still have wolverine research going on. I collect sightings like these, and it is turning out that capturing the detail on these is very important. Any chance you could contact me directly or somehow get to me your contact information so we can talk on the phone?
Thanks!
Jason
Note: Rebecca will send you contact info….
probably not, as i have nothing else to say about this sighting. i literally spilled every detail on these three posts on the sighting. but, i do want to contact you directly, but ho do i do that? btw, Rebecca DID email me, and i am taking it into consideration.
Hi, I was exiting Rte 84 east in New York & getting on the Taconic Pkwy north on Thursday & spotted a dark animal with a big bushy tail & bushy fur. I stopped and watched it for a while. It looked up 2 trees and then sort of galloped through the grass where it went in a hole in the field. I watched many videos on fishers & martens & wolverines & Iam pretty sure what I saw was a wolverine.
no, it was not successful, due to the marmot hiding behind us. it may have been chasing or stalking the marmots (i think it was stalking, because of the way it moved), but we just don’t know.
What animal has thick longish reddish brown fur with some black, shorter legs, short to med very hairy tail and sort of jump-hops like an otter might? I’ve been looking online for photos of animals and the closest I’ve seen was one of a wolverine. I only saw him from behind as he made his getaway. I saw the same kind of animal last summer too. We are near Yellowstone, in Island Park on the Buffalo River. This guy’s body was thick and I could tell there was a lot of muscle under the massive amount of fur but didn’t see the sides to notice if there were white stripes along the sides. Any ideas? It’s driving me crazy.
Wolverine sighting on July 20, 2012 around 9:30 in Utah, Sanpete County, Skyline Drive between Fairview Canyon and Mt. Pleasant, around 10,200 ft.
I was riding mountain bikes with a small group and rounded a corner and saw an animal sitting about 35 yards off the road on an old dead-fall evergreen log looking over its left shoulder toward me. I could see the black face and snout and buff/tan coloring over the brow and down to the cheeks. The back was dark brown with a subtle buff/tan stipe circling from the base of the neck to the origin of the tail. The tail was underneath or tucked around the side and not initially visible.
When the other bikers caught up, the wolverine stood and ambled up the inclined log away from us. My position allowed for an almost perpendicular viewing angle. It appeared to be about 30-36 inches in length (including tail) and about 14 inches high at the front shoulder. The tail was bushy and had a frond like appearance with longer hair hanging from the underside and some buff/tan highlighting. The wolverine looked to weigh about 27-33lbs.
Unfortunately, no photos, just a wonderful and exciting lasting memory!
I was in a deerblind 2 yrs ago in So. Tx I thought I saw a badger. What I saw was spotted brown and black it was huge and a gait like it owned the place could it have been a Wolverine if not grey like the pictures of a badger?
On July 26th at 2 pm in the Southern Sierra Mountains my son and I saw what looked like a large male Wolverine. We were in the Cannell Meadows Ranger District riding our dirt bikes on Beck Meadow Trail about a 1/2 mile from the Wilderness Dead end. I only had a point and shoot camera in my back pack and did not stop to take it out and take a picture (ugh). I asked a ranger what I had seen and he had no idea. Looking on the internet and seeing the significance of seeing a wolverine so far south, I knew our sighting had to be reported. I only wish I had taken a picture now.
I am pretty sure I saw one at Old Army Pass a couple years ago. It was chasing something and I could not get to a camera quick enough. Hope someone gets a camera on one in the Southern Sierras soon.
I’m positive that my friend and I saw a wolverine while backpacking to Deadhorse Lake up the West Fork of Black’s Fork in the Uintas this Labor Day weekend. We had lost the main trail and wound up at coordinates 40deg 46min 49sec N 110deg 39min 44sec W. We were on the east side of the creek in a wooded area when I spotted the wolverine running south along the west side of the creek. It went to run across a downed tree to the east side of the stream. We started yelling to frighten it off, because we had a dog with us. The distance from us to the wolverine was about 10 yards, at the point that we began yelling as it tried to cross to the east side of the stream. It had a noticeable limp on his right front leg. Both my friend and I instantly thought it couldn’t be anything other than a wolverine, since we got a very close view. There was really no mistaking it. I got home Sunday night and did some research and it matched the photos and size descriptions to a T.
This area is excellent wolverine habitat. Not far from verified tracks.
In retrospect, I believe I probably saw a wolverine in or about November of 2011.
It was about 9:30 pm. I was driving East on CR G.
I was close to my ranch which is located at 5907 CR 18, the corner of CR G and CR 18…Antonito, Colorado, the San Luis Valley, 81120…elevation 7888.
When I first saw this animal, it was sitting in the middle of CR G, and my first impression was that I was seeing a bear cub. I switched to my bright lights and kept creeping towards it ( with my car) and it did not get up until I was very close…..maybe 15 feet away.
This animal was big. He was about three feet long and maybe 2 1/2 feet high and appeared to be very heavy. His fur was thick, heavy and abundant. …at least 3″ long.
When he finally got up and walked to the side of the road, I noticed that his legs were short and he ambled…..kinda waddled……..over to the side of the road and disappeared down into a ditch….and into the night.
I went back to the same location the following night and saw two marmots on the road in almost the same location.
I have studied and read and have come to the conclusion that it must have been a wolverine.
We have:rabbits, mice,coyotes, bears, elk, mule deer, cougar’s etc. We are located in Conejos County, about six miles from the New Mexico state line.
Nancy
Thanks, Nancy. Did you report this to Colorado department of wildlife? I think they are interested in hearing all wolverine reports.
My brother and I saw A wolverine cross in front of us on us 41 in baraga county MI. on sept. 9th. 2012 at 9:45 am. we were up there Bear hunting and bothof us know Animals very well. There is no Doubt in what we saw. I looked at video to confirm the gate of the animal and the thickness of the legs. Plus I worked where we had A mounted wolverine for many years I know what they look like. I am sure what we saw was A Wolverine.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knd2gl0oWsg Caught this on video earlier this week.
Hey, thanks, this is great! Was this up in the Yukon?
Yes this was in the Yukon. In 20 years of living up here I have not seen a wolverine. I was very excited to see this so close to my home. I check my camera trap by canoe so its a great hobby.
Is this typical Wolverine behavior? He seemed almost to be playing with camera and only half interested in it?
I know how unlikely this sounds, believe me! My husband and I have
both seen it. Neighbors have told us that there are Fisher cats, but
what I saw (on at least three occasions) is not a fisher cat. The tail
was long, and its coat was dark with white down the back and on its
tail. I have seen carcasses in the far back of my yard, which borders
conservation land. The last time I saw it was on September 30, and it
was the BEST sighting so far. I saw it bolt halfway through the yard(
close to the woods) then chase some kind of prey halfway up a tree.
Then it was gone. Incredibly fast!
The appearance of it is inconsistent with an American badger, I was
convinced that it was a honey badger at first- based upon its
markings. But that seems WAY too unlikely, geographically. So I deduce
it is a wolverine.
I think it has a dwelling near my yard, because there is scat in the
same area I’ve found (shredded) carcasses.
Sadly, I have been unable to get a picture. I’m flirting with the idea
of tying a roast or some kind of meat lure up a tree, and wrap the
base of the tree with duct tape, to gather a hair sample.
It makes sense that it would have settled near our yard, because there
is a pen way back in our yard where the previous owner had livestock-
some type of fowl I think.
I am so in love with wildlife, and it excites me to know that there is
a possible wolverine in the woods. EXCEPT that I have a toddler, who
also loves those woods! Obviously I do not let him go back there, that
animal was quite large. And FAST.
Once it is confirmed that what I saw is, we’ll, a wolverine, I hope no
harm comes to it. It has been getting along, doing its thing without
incident, and we are happy to leave it alone respectfully. I just
really want to speak to someone and get a positive confirmation.
Thank you so much for your time,
Rebecca Hickman
I failed to mention that I live in Sharon, Massachusetts.
Hi Rebecca, thanks for the report. My grandparents lived in Sharon and I’ve spent a lot of time there. If there’s a wolverine in the area, it’s almost certainly a released captive.
Could you give me a bit more information on the animal – about how big was it, in terms of estimated weight? (Or in terms of some other animal – ie, as big as a small dog? Bigger than your toddler?) How long was the tail in proportion to the body? When you say it was a “long” tail, was it as long as the body? What was the shape of the tail? You say it had white striping on its back – where exactly are the stripes positioned? On the back itself, on the flanks, or elsewhere? And what part of the tail was white?
Also, you mentioned shredded carcasses – what kind of carcasses, and how old?
Far more immediately useful than a hair sample at this point would be a photograph. I think it would be difficult to convince anyone to run the DNA from a sample without more conclusive evidence that there’s actually a wolverine involved. If you can get a picture and send it, that would be ideal. If you’re really gung-ho about figuring this out, there are relatively cheap automatic cameras that can be set up to take pictures of wildlife at bait stations, but that may be more involved than you were aiming for.
Thanks again for being in touch, and let me know about those details of the sighting if you have a chance.
Thanks for the quick response!
First, I have spoken with some wildlife
Experts at New England Environmental, and also Ma fish and game. The camera idea is the best idea, but times are a bit tight right now, so no camera right now.
However, I have reached out on freecycle for a camera someone may be willing to part with, and I am going to contact some folks I know who teach locally about hunting and gun safety. Maybe those friends have access to a trail camera I can borrow. Fingers crossed!
Ok, on to the critter. It was the size of a medium sized dog. Big, I know! Lends itself to the captive escapee theory.
It was fluffy, and dark. The lighter color was along the back of its tail, I think. And definitely light underneath, as I saw that angle when it went up the base of the tree. The animal reminded me of a skunk, except its legs were longer and it was fast and much less awkward than a skunk. The tail was fluffyish, and, err, maybe a bit longer than the paddle of a beaver, not as long as a raccoons, and shaped/ held differently.
It definitely had lighter fur on its side. I’ve seen fishers in our area, and when I used to live in southern RI, and although it might not be a wolverine, it was not a fisher. And it was not canine.
There was recently reports in Sharon (see Sharon police logs on the Sharon patch) of bear like sightings.
Bears do not have tails, though!
At any rate, I’ve intrigued a few locals, so hopefully I or we can figure this out. The carcass was a big bird, feathers everywhere, fresh carcass.
Sharon, Massachusetts. i know how unlikely this sounds, believe me! My husband and I have
both seen it. Neighbors have told us that there are Fisher cats, and there are, but
what I saw (on at least three occasions) is not a fisher cat. The tail
was long, and its coat was dark with white down the back and on its
tail. I have seen carcasses in the far back of my yard, which borders
conservation land. The last time I saw it was on September 30, and it
was the BEST sighting so far. I saw it bolt halfway through the yard(
close to the woods) then chase some kind of prey halfway up a tree.
Then it was gone. Incredibly fast!
The appearance of it is inconsistent with an American badger, I was
convinced that it was a honey badger at first- based upon its
markings. But that seems WAY too unlikely, geographically. So I deduce
it is a wolverine.
I think it has a dwelling near my yard, because there is scat in the
same area I’ve found (shredded) carcasses.
Sadly, I have been unable to get a picture. I’m flirting with the idea
of tying a roast or some kind of meat lure up a tree, and wrap the
base of the tree with duct tape, to gather a hair sample.
It makes sense that it would have settled near our yard, because there
is a pen way back in our yard where the previous owner had livestock-
some type of fowl I think.
I am so in love with wildlife, and it excites me to know that there is
a possible wolverine in the woods. EXCEPT that I have a toddler, who
also loves those woods! Obviously I do not let him go back there, that
animal was quite large. And FAST.
Once it is confirmed that what I saw is, we’ll, a wolverine, I hope no
harm comes to it. It has been getting along, doing its thing without
incident, and we are happy to leave it alone respectfully. I just
really want to speak to someone and get a positive confirmation.
Thank you so much for your time,
Rebecca Hickman
I Seen a wolverine in belmont county Ohio on a gravel road near my house I was sure about what it was as soon as I seen it
Not sure if you’re still interested, but I saw a wolverine in NY in 1994. I am 99.9% certain this is what I saw. I live in VT now and see fishers frequently. I have also seen a Martin in CO. This was clearly different. It was Halloween night (!) and we were driving through a secluded low lying area north of Ithaca with swampy areas and many beaver dams around. It approached the side of the road And walked slowly across in front of us while we stopped. My wife and I both got a good long look at less than 15′. We had no idea at the time what it was as we had never seen anything like it before. The best description I could come up with is that it looked like the mother of all raccoons, with larger light colored fur around its eyes sort of like an owl. It was larger by far than any fisher I have ever seen. I burned it into my memory and was shown a picture of a wolverine later and instantly recognized it.
So take this for what it’s worth, no photos or tracks. Believe it or not!
I spotted a wolverine in Richfield, UT during the ATV jamboree in the Fish Lake area on 9/18/12. I was sitting on the road by myself and waiting for help because my bike was broke down and it came up to a spring and got a drink and crossed the dirt trail. I asked the guy that lived in the area about it and he said there weren’t any there. I see badgers all the time and this wasn’t a badger. I believe it was near trail post 51 or 54 in the Fish Lake Forest.
Thanks, Cody. Could you describe what the animal looked like? Markings, size, etc?
If you are certain about this, I’d suggest you also contact the Utah wildlife department. They are interested in figuring out what is going on with wolverines in their state. This report is part of a trend of increasing numbers of sightings in Utah, so you should report it to them.
I know this isn’t a conclusive sighting, but I thought I’d add it to the mix. On October 10th, 2010, I was driving east on Highway 410 about 5 miles east of Lake Tipsoo by Mt. Rainier. It was about 8am. The terrain there is rugged and covered with pines and larches.
About 100 yards in front of me on the highway an animal came out of the forest and ran across the road. I am an amateur landscape photographer and have spent many afternoons amongst the marmots at Paradise photographing the flowers. This was not a marmot.
It had a loping gait; it was much sturdier than a marmot and for lack of a better term, looked fierce. It was a light brownish red color and had a creamy strip of fur kind of half way down its side. It’s face was lighter than much of its body, it’s legs were darkish and its tail was very bushy and kind of long – longer than a bears stubby tail but shorter than say a pine marten.
It looked pretty burly, like it was very well feed. However, what was absolutely unmistakable was its gait It ran (or loped to be more accurate) with its front legs working in unison, then it’s back legs working in unison. It reminded me somewhat of a greyhounds gait when it runs full tilt – though much, much, much slower.
I know the Mt. Rainier area isn’t known for having Wolverines, but then before the photographic evidence came in a few years ago North Cascades wasn’t known for having grizzly bears either – though there had been many unconfirmed sightings. Unfortunately, that morning my camera was safely secured to my tripod which was in my trunk. Ouch.
Thanks for the report! I wouldn’t put this beyond the scope of belief at all. I was just in the Cascades and there is a whole lot of wild country in the region, and we know that there are indeed wolverines in there somewhere. I’d report this to the Washington wildlife folks. They might not take you too seriously, but it would still be good to bring it to their attention. Thanks again!
In response to Pamela Gerber. We saw what we thought was a wolverine (and now are fairly certain) in the paradise area of Mt. Rainier on September 24th , 2010. Maybe the same one?? (If you scroll way back my comment is there). Interesting to have another sighting. (The rangers thought I was crazy). Thanks for posting !
It’s great when there are multiple sightings that reinforce each other. We are working on getting someone to compile and map all of the reports that we get, because I tend to lose track – but thanks for being back in touch, Karen. Hopefully if it was a wolverine, it’s still around and contributing to a more robust Cascades population…
Hello. I live in southern Connecticut and several years ago I found on the side of rt 80 in killingworth ct what I assumed was a dead fisher. It was about 3 ft long (4ft w tail), dark brown and had light colored markings on its rear and tail. I would estimate that it weighed about 25-30 lbs and had huge teeth and a very muscular jaw. Since I had never seen a fisher before, I left it there and though nothing of it. Since then I have seen stuffed fishers, and pictures online of male and female fishers. I am almost 100% positive that what I saw that day was NOT a fisher. I have never seen ANY pictures of a fisher with the sort of markings that this animal had, and the only thing I’ve seen that resembles what I saw that day is a wolverine. Im not sure if this information is helpful at all, and I know that its highly unlikely for a wolverine to be found that far south, but now knowing the range of these animals, I feel its worth looking into. That thing was huge, and
Could you describe the markings more clearly? What kind of markings on the face, and what kind on the tail? Also, do you recall anything about the feet?
Its feet were very wide… about 3- 3.5 inches with big claws. The tail was ringed almost like a raccoon (which I haven’t seen in wolverine pics) and it had circular blonde patches on either side of its rear end above the legs that were about 3 inches in diameter each. It had another blonde hair patch on its chest between its front legs that was star shaped. I don’t remember any markings on its head,but mind you I was on the side of a busy road and only examined the carcass for about 2 minutes. Like I said on the post, Ive seen numerous pictures of fishers, as well as several stuffed fishers since then and this thing was no fisher. Im also familiar with all the other mammal species native to the area and im 100% sure it wasn’t any local mammal species
Interesting. It doesn’t sound like a wolverine – the striped tail, the pale patches above the legs, and the blond patch on the chest suggest that it wasn’t. (Wolverine chest patches are very obviously white….) It sounds like some kind of exotic animal – maybe a civet. Or a raccoon dog. Or something I am unaware of. The only native animal I can think of would be a gray fox, or some dark morph of a red fox with strange markings – but I’m figuring you would have been able to id it as a canid in that case.
Do you happen to remember whether it smelled bad? And/or do you happen to remember exactly what year you found it?
It wasn’t a civit or gray fox for sure. Is it possible for there to be a hybrid wolverine/fisher? It was too big to be a fisher, but the markings were neither fisher nor wolverine. I have probably looked at hundreds of pictures of both on the internet since then and never seen a tail like that on either. What probably remember most was the size of the feet, and the big hooked claws. And the cannine teeth had to be 2 inches. Weird
Big hooked claws sounds more like a badger than a wolverine. Wolverine claws are actually relatively discreet and semi-retractable – they’re pretty visible because they’re white, but they aren’t that large. Do you remember how many toes it had?
I think it’s pretty unlikely that a fisher and a wolverine could hybridize, and the ringed tail suggests that it was not a mustelid. But at this point, it’s impossible to tell.
I guess the upshot is, in the day and age of the smartphone, anyone who sees something interesting should take a photo.
Hello,
I was Bow Hunting in Gorham Ny between Rochester an Syracuse say 5 yrs ago.
I told so many people of this experence i had just about a hour before dust in my tree stand
it was about 50lbs and creeping very very slow along floor of the forest you could see its sharp
nail and teath as it was right underneath my stand.it was moving very slow like it was stalking
something.it was no fisher way to big! I should of put a arrow in it to prove what it was
as no-one believes me.i know what i saw it was in early bow season.and this was a mean looking machine but moving so so slow whitch i dont understand everthing points out to a
wolverine..Thanks for reading Brian.I would not waste my time writing this if it wasnt true
Thanks for the report. 50 pounds is way too big for even a sizable wolverine, unless it was raised in captivity and was obese (our large males are 25 pounds.) That said, people do tend to over-estimate size. I can’t say that I don’t believe you, but without evidence, unfortunately, it doesn’t count for the scientific record. I guess the moral is, take a camera when you’re out hunting, and encourage your friends to do the same. Shooting the animal would offer sufficient proof, of course, but it would be pretty pointless from a scientific point of view. Far better to get a photo and then try to hair-snare later. Let us know if you see anything like it again.
well i was in a tree stand say its 25lbs is its actions to move very slow i mean slow.i know what i saw i should of just killed it and then there wouldnt of been any dispute.i havent hunted sinse that years do to a major accident and many back surjurys and cant carry my climmer anymore.should of just killed it..im not the only person who has seen this animal.i mite just go back and just hunt for it and end all this discushin
It’s not really a discussion, no one is doubting your credibility, it’s just that without proof, we can’t accept it into the scientific record.
If you go hunt it down and kill it, you basically make the proof irrelevant, because it doesn’t matter if you have proof if the only known specimen is dead. Whereas, on the other hand, if you showed us evidence of a living wolverine in New York, that would be major news, and would certainly inspire us to investigate what is going on. A single dead specimen offers no suggestion of a breeding population. A living animal, which we could follow and study, might. So if you’re thinking about adopting or advocating a particular approach, the science community is really only interested in live animals. I have nothing against hunting, by the way, but a dead animal isn’t useful to us.
If people have seen it, get together and get a strategy for photographing it, and then let us know immediately.
In the southern tier of New York. Oct 7th while scouting an area to hunt I noticed a large animal curled up on a old tree stand twenty feet up in an old pine tree about 75 yards away. Only had my camara phone to take a couple of pictures. The pictures arent the greatest but you can see a light brown head against a dark brown body. Anyways I tried to approach closer and the thing jumped head first out off the tree to the ground, I noticed it’s bushy tail, a low to the ground stock body that seemed to be all brown and wrote it off as a fisher. Now on Dec 1st while sitting in my blind in the same area I had a nervous deer come down over the hill into the swamp, two minutes later along the same trail a little less then a hundred yards away came what I first thought was a huge skunk because of it’s hide, then I thought maybe it’s short legged collie dog chasing deer, but finally in the 8 to 10 seconds I was observing the creature my brain finally focused on just observing what I saw. I grew up trapping and the hide and shape of the body is what I keyed in on. The six inch wide dirty white stripe along the side of its body, a dark brown hump back, bushy tail other dirty white markings on the face. I went home and got on the internet and typed in wolverine, I saw a wolverine with it’s winter coat and you cant convince me otherwise.
Any how tonight I’m going to climb up into that old deer stand and try to find a couple of hairs, if I find some does anybody know who could look at the hair to determine if its wolverine?
Hi Dane –
Thanks for the comment! You have pictures? Even if they are blurry, please send them. We will take a look. And if you find hairs, yes, absolutely, if there’s a good suspicion that they are wolverine, we will get them analyzed.
If you pick up hairs, please try not to handle them with your bare hands because you can contaminate the DNA. Tweezers are best. Keep them in a paper envelope in as dry an environment as possible. Let me know immediately if you do find hairs, and I will tell you where to send them. Also, if you think the animal is hanging out in the area, take a camera out there with you when you go.
well, I walked out to the old deer stand and immediatle noticed a few piles of scat around the old pine tree. Looks a little bigger then your average raccoon feces, lots of hair feathers and bones. climbed up into deer stand the floor has some old carpet so i used package tape to lift off any thing on the carpet. needless to say the tape is covered with hair a few white hairs are the most interesting, they appear very soft like wool or cotton, 2 inches long theres really no stiffness to the folical. the other hair looks similiar to raccoon hair lighter in color at the base and becoming darker in bands as you get to the tip. It obviously likes to hang out in this old tree stand. it appears by the staining on one branch near the stand that it may walk out onto it and take care of his business. A couple of the turds appear to be directly below this branch. How do I attach/ send the pictures I took.
I sent you an email at the address you used to register for making comments. You can attach the photos and send them to me, and after we take a look, I’ll get back to you about what to do regarding the hair and scat. Thanks so much!
Dane, is there any chance you were in Tioga county between Owego and Waverly? I spotted one West of Owego in 1979 while scouting for deer in that area.
I and a friend were fortunate enough to see a wolverine in the wild. It was 30 years ago, now. Not sure it’s relavent today from a scientific standpoint. We were fishing from a small boat on Moose lake in Langlade county, Wisconsin. It was chasing a deer. Definitely not a fisher or pine martin. We saw it from a distance of 30 yards or so. Awesome sight.
In regards to Brandy & albino wolverines – there are albino wolverines. I googled “albino
Wolverines” & found two different stuffed ones under”albino wolverine images.”Strange
Looking critters!
Pat Singletary
Funny, I was just emailing with some colleagues about ‘albino’ wolverines, since a white wolverine was recently killed in Alaska. The photos that are circulating, as well as the only photos I’ve seen online of white wolverines, are not true albinos – according to my colleague, they are ‘leucistic.’ He says that this is do a recessive allele, and is observed in other members of the mustelid family, although it seems less well known in wolverines. True albinos are pure white, with pink eyes. The photos I’ve seen of white wolverines tend to have dark eyes and at least a bit of dark marking around the feet and tail. If you have pics of true albino wolverines, send the links my way. And I’ll eventually do a post on albinism vs leucism, once I understand it better.
Thanks!
This morning at 8AM my wife spotted a dark brown/black mammel with a short fat fluffy tail and short legs. its body was stalky and the size of a medium dog. after she reported her sighting to me, we looked up the images of mammals in North America, and she claimed the animal she saw was a Wolverine. we live on a dirt road in Northern New Hampshire. We are not too far from the Canadian border. do Wolverines eat household cats and are they dangerous to dogs?…we are somewhat concerned about our pets safety. we have lost cats previously to Fishers. this was not a Fisher according to my wife.
Hi Earl –
Is there any way to get photos of tracks of this animal? Wolverines are not known to be found in New Hampshire and the closest population of wolverines in Canada is in Ontario, pretty far to the north of the Great Lakes. I would be very surprised if that was what it was – but am open to evidence proving that it was a gulo.
Yes, wolverines can be a danger to pets. I’d recommend keeping your cats inside, especially at night. This will help protect them from fishers, foxes, and so forth, too.
I want to report a wolverine sighting in Northeastern Wisconsin. On May 25th at 7 o’clock in the evening my son (who is 12), his friend, and I saw a wolverine. I realize that this is well out of their known range but there is no doubt in my mind that it was a wolverine. The location was in a rural area near Porterfield, Wisconsin about an hour north of Green Bay on a 600 acre farm that my father owns.
To give you a little background, I am a physician and avid hunter. I have hunted in 3 different Canadian provinces and the Western U.S. I have seen bobcats, badgers, bear, weasels, fox, coyotes, and raccoons. I majored in zoology and would consider myself to be very proficient at identifying animals. Likewise my son is excellent at animal identification.
On this particular day I was driving my son and his friend on an ATV to water some apple trees I had planted earlier and clean up some deer food plots. On the way out to the area my son noticed a dead turkey lying by the side of the ATV trail in the brush near a field edge. The turkey looked to be dead a week or so but had not been scavenged or eaten. I presumed it had been injured by another turkey during the spring mating ritual or perhaps wounded by a hunter. About and hour and a half later we were returning on the ATV when we came around a corner and I noticed an animal about 125 yards away walking along the edge of the woods and a cornfield that had not been plowed yet this spring. It was approximately 20 inches tall and about 3 feet long. It was dark brown in color and was about 50 yards from the dead turkey and, perhaps coincidentally, walking directly toward it. I estimate it would have been close to 40 pounds but it is always difficult to judge the weight of a fur-bearing animal. It had a fairly-lengthy tail and was walking at a slow but steady pace. I immediately stopped and asked my son “What is that?” Without hesitation he replied, “That’s a wolverine.” I agreed but obviously because of our location was very skeptical. I told my son lets try to get closer as the animal wasn’t aware of our presence. I started driving across the field and the animal heard us and looked. It then began running forward for several yards and then turned and angled away from us and into the woods. The thing that struck me the most was its loping gait. The best analogy I can give is that it reminded me of how a hyena lopes.
When one sees an animal like this well out of its range, you tend to doubt yourself and I began searching the internet to see if there have been any other reported sightings in the Midwest. Convinced it was a wolverine, I went back the next morning to look for sign. Unfortunately the soil was too firm and I could find no tracks. I thought of setting up a trail camera over the turkey but my cameras were at my house in Green Bay. I am aware that a fischer could be mistaken for a wolverine but this animal was much too large. I understand this can’t be considered a “verified sighting” due to a lack of photographic or physical evidence but I certainly would be interested to hear if anyone else reports any sightings in Wisconsin. It wasn’t long ago that mountain lions couldn’t be found in Wisconsin either but now are confirmed inhabitants. I told my son to appreciate the moment as we will likely never see another in the wild.
Hi Todd, thanks for the report. It sounds like you know what you’re talking about, and that you know the constraints on scientific evidence. All reports are useful, especially if they are as detailed as yours.
We get reports from all over the country (not all of them are listed on here, there are several places that collect sightings), including from Wisconsin. I am not currently in direct communication with my colleagues regarding recent reports, so I can’t tell you if anyone else in your region has seen a wolverine over the past few days. I am also aware of the widely-dispersing mountain lions in the Midwest, and am willing to consider the idea that a wild wolverine could make it from northern Canada or the Rockies to Wisconsin. I’d like proof, but I don’t think the idea is absurd or impossible. I do think it would be unlikely, however, that a breeding population could establish itself outside regions of deep spring snowpack.
Please let me know if you or anyone else in the neighborhood see it again. And thanks again for the report.
I have some HD footage from a Wolverine in Mongolia, won’t say where on public website.
Contact me!
Thomas
Saw a wolverine in Denali national park, AK. zone 27 north on the Sanctuary river 2-3 miles north of the park road on the west bank. I believe it has a den there, near the steepest cliffs on both sides of the river (West side.) Though I might be wrong on the den part, have pictures but havent uploaded yet. It was seen May 24th around dusk (maybe 9pm?) No doubt it was a wolverine, seen in the open from maybe 250 meters away. We watched it for around 3 minutes traveling along the bank and finally lost sight of it behind a snow bank higher on the ridge.
I believe it has a den there because around the snow bank was wide open and we would have seen it continue to travel if it left the drift.
Hi I found and photographed some tracks near Lake Tahoe, CA that I think are a possible wolverine. Would you be willing to have a look and verify?
I was on the Castle Point Carriage Road at Lake Minnewaska State Park today at 4 pm with two other people. We passed Kempton Ledge on our way back to Lake Minnewaska, and it started pouring rain. After a while a large animal, probably thinking no one was around, crossed the trail at about 40′ in front of us. We couldn’t get a picure. I was thrilled. “A fisher!” I said. I’ve never seen one. We guessed the weight at about 30-40 lbs.
When we returned, we learned the fisher’s weight is only about 13 lbs. They have a longer body & longer tail than what we saw. The animal we saw resembled wolverine pictures. We watched it in profile. It looked stocky from top to bottom, low to the ground, with the back hunched higher towards the rear like a bear. The tail was half-length and bushy. In the rain, the animal looked dark brown.
The wolverine’s range isn’t shown to be NY, but my uncle was a trapper in northern NY, and he got one. Do you know of any sightings? Thanks, I appreciate it.
I have also seen one in NY.upstate and it wasn’t a fisher..i don’t care what people say! I saw what I saw and it was a wolverine,two years ago or longer!
I also saw one in upstate NY near Chateaugay Lake. It was in the winter and the wolverine was white. I see it run across the road, it stopped on the snow bank and it looked like no other animal I had ever seen. It didn’t hang around long enough for me to get a picture on my phone. When I got home I looked for pictures online all the possibilities of what it was and when I saw a picture of a Wolverine, I was amazed ! Something I will never forget (but hope to see again)
awesome!!!!
I saw a wolverine about 2 weeks ago south of Odessa Mo where I live. It was brown with a light tip on its tail. My mother saw a black and white one last winter near the same location
Wolverine sightings here in western Indiana near Illinois border. Eye witnessed him twice, and yes I believe its a male. We have Fishers too and this wasn’t a Fisher. We have a unique bioda in that their are dozens of lakes and a creek running thru with very hilly terrain. Deciduous mixed forest with a lot of conifers. Badgers, Cougars, and Beaver are not uncommon. Could this be animals moving back into their historic niches due to global warming?
Thanks for the report. Please take a camera with you when you are in the area where you have seen this animal. Also, if there is any mud or sand around, take a look and see if you can see, and photograph, any tracks.
Illinois last had wolverines during the Pleistocene; the state never had a wolverine population in historical times and it’s unlikely that we would see wolverines moving southwards into flatter, warmer climes in response to climate change. They require deep snow through late spring in order to den, and can’t tolerate high summer temperatures, so if anything we would hypothesize that their range might shift north, and/or up in elevation. It’s remotely possible that a young wolverine might travel as far as the Midwest, since they disperse over very long distances, but this is unlikely, and they definitely would not be capable of establishing a breeding population there.
Please let me know if you get a photo. Thanks again.
I would like to report a wolverine sighting, but don’t know who to report it to. In addition we did not have a camera that could get a good enough picture. We were on the Park Butte hike in the North Cascades of Washington State. We were at approximately the 5,000 foot level. We saw a animal about the size of a medium dog looking at us from on top of a rock. It had coloring like a grizzly bear, light on the face and chest and dark in other places. It was wide and low to the ground. it was way to big for a marmot and too high up. The place were we were at had recently been covered in snow. We had a small dog with us, a Pomeranian and we think it may have been interested in it as prey. It wasn’t till we got home and looked up pictures of mammals in the cascades did we realize what we had seen. We both feel honored to have seen such a rare creature, it makes those high hikes so worth the effort!
Thanks for the report. A wolverine in the Cascades is certainly possible. Since there was snow on the ground, it’s too bad that you didn’t take photos of tracks, that would have offered us some definitive proof. You should report the sighting to Washington’s fish and game department
I wouldn’t jump to conclusions about the intent of an animal, especially a wolverine. They are very curious and bold, and although wolverines have occasionally preyed on people’s pets, we really want to be careful about creating an idea that they have malevolent intentions. It may have just been wondering what you were and what you were up to (and whether a meal might be available as a result of whatever you were doing in its territory.) That said, it’s always a good idea to keep your pets close when you are around wild carnivores.
Thanks again for the report, and let me know if you see one again!
Sorry we did not think he had malevolent intentions! Just natural ones! He watched us watching him for about 10 minutes till some other hikers came by, I think they took pictures, hopefully they will report it too!
Thanks! No worries, I just try to encourage people to be cautious because of the strong “carnivores are evil” cultural legacy that we all live with. I do hope the other hikers take the time to report the sighting and submit those photos.
Saw a wolverine yesterday, 12 August 2013. My son and I were on our return trip from Taylor Park Reservoir, near Gunnison, Colorado, through Cottonwood Pass on Gunnison County Road 209, traveling east, toward Chaffee County and the town of Buena Vista, in Gunnison National Forest. It was early evening, about 5 p.m. We were right at timberline, with heavy forest below, scattered trees at our level, and rocky terrain just above with low brush and vegetation. About 11,000 feet I’d guess.
The animal crossed the road directly in front of us. It was on the small size, I couldn’t tell you the weight but it was about a foot and a half tall, about three feet long, and a stubby tail of about eight inches in length. It had a dark brown coat, with darker (black?) fur towards it’s belly and legs.
I’d been on the look out for marmots, as my son has a fondness for them. The wolverine sprinted across the road and I said,”That is one huge marmot. . . and I’m pretty certain that’s not what it is.” We watched it as it climbed a little higher and it struck me what it was at about the same time that my son reminded me that I had my iPhone in the charger. By the time I got it unplugged and pointed, the animal had turn it’s back and ran up the hill, then ducked into some bushes, turned north, and was gone. I got a spectacular shot of a furry brown butt of unknown origin. Grrrrrr!
Thanks for the detailed report. This is entirely within the bounds of possibility – Colorado has one known wolverine, M56, and I would certainly believe that there might be others of which we’re unaware. If you habitually look for marmots, then that gives more credibility to your assertion that this was something else. It’s too bad that you didn’t get a good photo, but still, pretty good report. Keep your camera ready when you’re in the high country and maybe you’ll be able to get a picture next time.
I’d also phone this in to the Colorado Wildlife department – I think that they are still keeping tabs on M56, so if it turns out that he was at the opposite end of the state at the time of your sighting, that would be interesting.
Thanks for the report!
Thanks so much. I’ll give the CDW a call for sure. I appreciate your reply.
As a follow up, I made the report to the CDW, and they pretty much laughed at me. On the other hand, I showed the picture of the hind-end to a local wildlife artist who is familiar with wolverines, and he verified that it was, indeed, a pic of a wolverine butt.
I seen a wolverine about two weeks ago while i was bow hunting in liberty ny
Could you give some more details? What did the animal look like? Size, markings, gait, etc?
What was it doing? Do you have photos?
Sometime in the very early fall (I estimate it to be around September) of this year, I was walking on a bike/walking trail that cuts straight through woods heavy with lake and stream flow and is very nearby a main road in the western most part of Massachusetts. My companion and I were struck when we saw what we initially thought to be a duck diving under the surface of the water after a meal, but we were quickly confused when the duck seems to be slowly spinning almost, in a slightly downward circle. We watched for quite sometime, not understanding what we were seeing as the duck’s back legs slowly stopped kicking, but the circling and slightly downward motions continued.
Eventually, a brown, furry-looking head with not much to distinguish other than an open mouth, surfaced momentarily, then went back under, continuing to munch on the duck we had just watched it drown. We saw the head twice, and finally continued on with our walk, talking for a while about what the predator could have possibly been. We guessed fisher, which are known in our area, but I did some research and I haven’t found anything that says fisher hunt in the water, or even eat duck. We even thought perhaps a snapping turtle, which are also known in the area, but I’ve never heard of a snapping turtle killing and eating a duck.
So, we’re not sure what we saw. We resigned to not knowing what the mystery animal could have been. Recently, I saw a stuffed wolverine at a natural history museum and read that they were excellent swimmers and could eat duck. I know wolverines are incredibly unlikely in this part of North America, but it was just so strange and seemed to fit the description. I was still hesitant to post this, but I recalled how it was insisted by authorities that any mountain lions sightings in this area were mistaken up until the past five to ten years, when it was realized that the species had made their way here. Anyway, I thought this might be a good place to get information about what this animal could have been.
Interesting report! Oddly enough, one of my colleagues once found a mallard wing in a wolverine cache site at something like 10,000 feet with no ponds in the vicinity – we’ve always wondered about that.
That said, I doubt it was a wolverine. Could it have been an otter? They are making a comeback in Massachusetts and although they usually eat fish, they’re ferocious predators (a water wolverine, so to speak) and they have been known to eat ducks. Mink are also pretty ferocious and do kill ducks on occasion. The entire weasel family has a tendency to be fearless and capable of taking on prey larger than they are, so it could have been either of these species. If you find yourself back in that area after snowfall, or in an area with good mudflats, take a look around for tracks and/or otter slides. And take a camera with you when you go – I’d be happy to look at any photos.
Re: the mountain lion sightings, yes, the reluctance to acknowledge those could be due in part to the fact that once you have a lot of large carnivores around, you have a lot more management responsibility and people start getting crazy about their kids being eaten, etc. So the nonchalance about reports may have been a strategic move to allow the animals to reestablish before dealing with all the PR issues. Just a thought, no evidence. But the amount of wildlife that’s returned to Massachusetts since my childhood (I grew up in eastern MA) is astonishing and really wonderful.
Thanks for the report! Keep me posted if you find more evidence of any of these critters.
me and my girlfriend were driving on a backroad in vermont,we always saw alot of animals driven up n down the roads ect but this time was different…we pulled right up to it,withen 10 feet from it i would say,as soon as i saw its stance,and size i knew right away what it is! my girl had no clue what a wolverine was,untill i showed her pics online,wolverine typed in google,the first image was almost identical! she knew right away what it was…i have been in or around the woods for the last 25 years or more,seen everything there is to see in new england in terms of wild life,,,,this thing was somthing though,very intimadating! it was kinda moving sideways,thick and built for sure,weight had to have been over 60lbs,i still say 80! even in the car we were scared lol,,just the way it moved,froze us to our seats,the only other thing it could of been is a warewolf,no which do u think im first to see in vt? u guessed it,im not sure y or how they got here but i would think about slicing my neck if i was in the woods and one came at me,so viscous looking!
Thanks for the report.
Even if it was a wolverine, they are not dangerous to people, so you would be slitting your throat for nothing (though I’m sure the wolverine would appreciate the free carrion.)
A big wolverine would be about 40 pounds – out here our large males are about 25-30 pounds. So if you reliably estimated the weight of the animal that you saw, it was definitely not a wolverine. I would guess a bear, maybe a cub-of-the-year, at that size and weight. I know you have spent a lot of time in the woods and I figure you know what a bear looks like, but there haven’t been 60-80 pound gulos since the Pleistocene.
If you see this sort of animal again, please immediately stop the car, get out, and look for material proof – tracks, scat, etc. Take photos, too. Otherwise we cannot accept reports from so far outside of wolverine habitat as reliable. But it would be pretty amazing if someone actually did get some proof. In making your reports, too, please give identifying marks and characteristics from the encounter, ie, what you actually saw (rather than what you saw on google.) Were there markings? What was the animal doing? What time of day was it? What did you notice about its pelage, feet, tail, etc.
Thanks again.
hi again,it was 1am or so,dark as hell on the back road…but with the head lights on high beams we could see it all withen the 10 feet of the car,it was dark brown,to blackish fur,with a white stripe from neck to tail going down the side of the body,just like in every wolverine pic iv seen,just asked my girl about this again to see if she remebers ect,she remebers it all very clear,it was somthing u dnt see everyday or ever for that matter,the way this moved seemed like it was more rare to see then even a sasquatch! she still says no doubt about it 100% sure wolverine,without question….I say the same but..I believe in whats not seen,there could be hybrids? maybe? wolverines? fisher cats? mixes? idk but the only thing I cnt figure out is the weight,sure we couldnt weigh it but…it was way bigger then any wolverine iv seen in pics or on you tube..couldnt be less the 50lbs cause it is bigger then most medium sized dogs! she said it was 4feet long prolly,2 1/2 to 3 feet high,tail was kinda blended in with the body but looked just like wolverines tail also…now she says 50,i say over 60lbs..but who knows,if there thick furry fluffy haired theres no telling…what we do know is its legs were crazy,front legs were short but very stocky,seemed like they were inches bigger then my for arms..but again fluffy fur? who knows….the way it moved is what got me the most! it stood crouched down,but was side ways,moving this weird side ways gate,which i think iv seen b4 when i watch wolverine videos online,its hard to explain but it moved like it wasent a known animal cuz iv never seen anything do this in real life of online! the movement was what my girlfriend remebers the most,so odd…she revved her engine to get it to move n all it did was turn toward us sideways,u could tell how thick and wide it was…if it didnt have realy realy thick fur then the size would have to be closer to 80lbs,thats y im saying no less then 50-60lbs with the kinda fur wolverines have,u could see muscles i think,even in the dark,with just head lights,like I said I am 99 percent sure its a big wolverine! but…when I look up pics of warewolves on google,if they were dark and real I might add that would be the only other thing it could be besides a wolverine or wolverine hybrid….thanks for your comment,I imagine you know alot more about these animals then I do,but Im not one to say animals can only stay in certain parts or states ect,animals are always seen out of thier element,also remeber seeing a detailed report from maine about warewolves stalking ppl at there house,somthings for sure roaming the woods in new england…..
Well, people do frequently ask me what it’s like to study werewolves, so no doubt there’s some confusion out there….but I think it’s largely grammatical. I would be far more willing to bet it was a wolverine than a werewolf. Also, if if it had been a werewolf, it probably would have tried to attack you. Attacking people is standard werewolf behavior, as I understand it.
I honestly don’t know what you saw. I agree that wildlife is a lot more flexible than we think, and there are ways that a wolverine could end up in New England even if it didn’t disperse there naturally, ie, released/escaped captive. A captive animal would most likely be a lot larger than a wild wolverine, too, which would account for a bigger size….but still, I’m skeptical about anything more than 40 lbs, and four feet is also outside the size range. Wolverines do have a pretty distinctive gait and it does sometimes look like a sideways lope. I don’t know if you can discretely ask around and see if anyone had a recently-escaped captive wolverine, but if it was a wolverine, and your perception of the size was somehow distorted by the dark (that can happen….I once mistook a not-so-big rock for a full-grown bison in the moonlight) that’s probably your best bet.
I’ve never heard of hybridized mustelids and as wolverines are the biggest terrestrial weasel, there isn’t anything else that could lend it bulk, even hypothetically imagining that there was a cross of some sort.
If you see it again, take photos, find tracks, find some evidence, and let me know. Thanks for the report.
Thanks for your time:) For the last year Iv wondered where to send a report about what we saw,glad I found this lil place,u sound very knowlagable as well….
I just watched a documentery called wolverine’ chasing the phantom 2013,its a new one and pretty cool,I never knew how rare they actualy are! they even said that untill a few years ago they were right up the with bigfoot/sasquatch….that says alot…
at the end of the video,last 10-15 mins it shows a guy that raised wolverines,there is one at the end that he weighed at 39lbs…it looked like 60 pounds but Im begining to see that the fur is thick but very fluffy? right word? lol….thinking back,and seeing that 40lbs wolverine in the end of that movie made me think about it,when its running beside the guy the 3 of us sitting here said it looks like 50-60lbs,but as I said,it was 39lbs….so looks can be decieving:) I would still say the wolverine we saw was a lil bigger in terms of length,width ect…but still even 45lbs would look bigger im guessing,lol…and I know it wasent a warewolf ect…I just didnt know what else to compare it with if everyones saying it couldnt have been a wolverine ect,I am 100% certain now that we saw a wolverine,10 feet from us,for over a min we watched it,very weird,very very weird when we wernt exspecting to see anything lol…glad we had the chance to see what we did,sounds like its a once in a lifetime thing to see:) thanks again!
While driving up to my camp, a critter crossed the road in front of as I was coming around a corner. The animal looked like a wolverine, but I dismissed it as that because I never heard of wolverines being in upstate NY. This sighting happened in the the town of Osceola NY which is on the Tug hill plateau. Two things that you have mentioned in previous blogs, was the locations in relation to the ontario border and wolverines need for snow later into spring. Up there snow hangs around until May up on Tug Hill and we are only about 50 miles south of the Canadian border.
The other interesting thing about this sighting was that when I got up to the location, where the critter ran across I noticed a wild turkey that had been scared as well. My thoughts are I scared the critter when I came around the corner, while the wolverine was getting ready to kill that turkey.
Has anybody else reported wolverine sightings on Tug Hill?
Thanks for the report. We do definitely get reports of wolverines from upstate New York, but my geography of that area is a bit sketchy, so I’d have to go back and look. I don’t think it’s outside the bounds of possibility, but I’m waiting for a photo or tracks so that it’s definite. Let me know if you see it again!
The Tug Hill Region is pretty big and wild. There is really nothing but forest up there. The area where I seen this possible wolverine gets close to 300 inches of snow a year. If you google search Tug Hill Ny, you will be able to become familiar with the Topography of that area and exactly where in NY it is. Just west of the Adirondack park is the Tug Hill Region. The Tug hill region covers about of 150,000 acres of wilderness.
Michigan had its first wolverine in over 200 years so your information about wolverines not found in the Midwest is not factual
There is no naturally occurring population in Michigan. There’s a fair amount of debate about where that animal came from, I believe the autopsy showed that she had never borne kits, and unless a region has a breeding population, it is not considered occupied. Colorado recently had its first wolverine in 90 years, a male that dispersed from Wyoming. Likewise California had its first wolverine since the early 20th century, another male that may or may not have arrived there on its own. None of these states are considered to have wolverine populations. These are simply vagrant animals, maybe transported there by people (in the case of California and Michigan; Wyoming’s was a recorded natural dispersal.) By scientific standards, until there’s a breeding population, a region is not occupied. So my information is accurate.
Its been quite a few years back at the end of the road above Hillside Colorado at timberline I watched a Wolverine for ten or 15 minutes after picas in a rock slide It moved funny, fore ward and side ways at the same time in between a hop and lope
I have just found some wolverine tracks somewhere they have never been seen before northern Kentucky never the less I have taken pictures and in the process of getting pictures of the animal but I have done my research and I am positive that they are wolverine tracks no possible way that they could be made from any other animal I have also found dead deer and coyotes it seems it is following a very large pack of coyotes where I find coyote tracks I find wolverine tracks I have the pictures if any one wants me to send them to them please contact me thanks
tcarnes79@fuse.net
Thought I’d send this along. It’s the best shot I could get of this wolverine in the Colorado High Country. CDoW says it doesn’t exist . . . beg to differ.
Bret Wright
brrite@aol.com
Been very cold and snowy in Delaware this winter but no Wolverines yet, or the occasional Puma (lots of whitetails) Racoons and Foxes are increasing around Pike Creek valley.
My father in law is fairly certain he saw a wolverine in Epping NH last night March 16th 2014
I am not sure what I saw today, I will describe and you tell me. This was the river bottoms of the Embrass river in Crawford County Illinois. This is a very remote unpopulous area. It crossed in front far enough away couldn’t get a confirmation in my mind of what I saw. It was moving faster than any animal I have ever saw in these parts. It looked as it was like a lopping run. It was white on one side and black on other. It stop twice to check us out coming down the road. It looked quit large for any vermin around here. I would say knee high if not taller. The speed of this animal was amazing. I know this is not the habitat of these creatures but with such a cold long winter maybe it traveled for food. This is deer country.
Thanks for the report. I need some more information before I can make even an educated guess.
Could you clarify what you means when you say “black on one side and white on the other?” Do you mean that the animal was actually black on one side of its body and white when it turned the other side to you? Approximately how big was it, compared, say, to a particular breed of dog? What were the proportions of its legs? Tail? Ears?
What time of day was it?
Off the top of my head, black and white doesn’t sound like a wolverine, and although they can move quickly, I think the perception of speed as you describe it would be less wolverine-like and maybe more dog-like. I’m also not totally sure how you define “vermin,” but there are black-and-white morphs of red fox. That could have been what you saw.
Thought I’d send this along. It’s the best shot I could get of this wolverine in the Colorado High Country. CDoW says it doesn’t exist . . . beg to differ.
Bret Wright
brrite@aol.com
August 13, 2013: I saw a wolverine on a trail near the Alpine Visitor Center in Rocky Mountain National Park at an altitude of about 12,000 ft. I took a picture, but the mist was coming in fast and (s)he was moving away quickly. Based on the fur color and pattern, it definitely was a wolverine. I didn’t know they were in RMNP. I got lots of close-ups of a cute pika, also.
The wolverine that I seen was a couple hundred miles south of RMNP there must be more in CO being that far apart, Same thing with wolves clear back in !961 and 1963 I saw a pair of wolves near sleepy cat mtn.in northern CO. ,And two years ago saw three wolves along the Black canyon
I believe we saw a woverine a couple days ago. We live in central nebraska, between grand island and hastings. We saw him in our pasture just strolling along. There is water and trees for cover. We have never seen anything like this before. He was wet, so looked alittle different. Since that day, we have had rain,so cant see any tracks. We do have fox and coyots and possims, nothing that looked like that. Was a bit scary. Would love to hear your take on this. Thanks.
Hi! My mother and I just saw a wolverine crossing the road near our St. Paul, Nebraska farm today. We have farm pets (small dogs and cats) and do NOT want a wolverine living on the farm. What do you suggest that we do? As an aside, a large creature dug big holes and left big stinky scat inside a rarely used old barn with dirt floors this winter. We filled in the holes this spring. Unless someone can convince me that wolverines hunt gophers, I’m not keen on having a wolverine anywhere near the farm. What other creature looks like a wolverine (about 25 pounds) and lives in Central Nebraska? Thanks for any information!
Hi Judy,
If it IS a wolverine, that would be big news – they are generally not found in Nebraska. I imagine it’s more likely a badger or another mid-sized carnivore, or possibly a raccoon. But first things first: whatever it is, keep your pets inside, especially at night (this is a good idea anyway.) Second, if you have vulnerable ‘livestock’ like chickens, kids, lambs, ducks, whatever, make sure that they are secure. And I’d suggest making sure that you are not leaving garbage or other attractants in a place where a wild animal can access them. If it were, hypothetically, a wolverine, it would only stick around if it had access to a food source. Otherwise, wolverines are pretty mobile, and Nebraska is not suitable long-term habitat, so it would most likely move on.
IF, however, it is a wolverine, then we need to know, because that would be huge news. See if you can find tracks – photograph them with something in the photo for scale. Photograph single tracks and also any sets of tracks to show the gait. Do you still have the scat from this winter? That could be analyzed for DNA. If you really think it’s lingering around and you think you know where it is, and you have access to an automatic trail camera, set it up and see if you can get a photo. Finally, as a last resort, if it’s worrying you, you could report it to Fish and Game and they could come out and try to trap it (although most likely they won’t believe it’s a wolverine unless you have some evidence.) Don’t call animal control, they’ll most likely just kill it and might not even report it, even if it did turn out to be a wolverine.
Let me know if you find any evidence – I’ll be out of touch for roughly the next seven weeks, but would love to return to news of a confirmed wolverine in Nebraska! Thanks for the report.
My son an I were driving in Siawassee county Mi and saw an animal cross the road and are baffled because it looked just like a wolverine. It was big, maybe a male. There are a lot of coyotes in the area so at first glacé thought coyote but it had a humped back shape and bushy tail of a skunk, but it was brown and much bigger. He was fairly fast but crossed into open field of 20 yards before reaching the brush. We both got a good look at him.
This area of mid Michigan is severely over populated with deer. The coyotes are becoming more and more of a problem, which were unheard of when I was a kid (80s). So I can imagine why a wolverine could find his way this far south. Those corn fed whitetail are tasty.
I saw an animal that I believe might have been a wolverine about four miles outside of my hometown in Glasgow, Kentucky on Flint Knob Road. Don’t laugh. I know, there aren’t suppose to be any in Kentucky. It was in the spring about two years ago. It was lumbering across a large open field towards a wooded area with a stream bed and was coming from the direction of a large barn and silos. As I drove around the bend in the road I saw it. I slowed my car. It was mainly brown with possibly a touch of black with a black face. I did not see any stripes. At first glance, I thought I was looking at a brown coyote, but the closer I got I realized I was mistaken. It was low to the ground with it’s back a little higher than it’s head. It’s legs were not very long. It stood stock still, but as my car got closer, it then turned and began running back towards the deserted barn area. That’s when I noticed it had a long tail which kind of broadened out at the end and was low to the ground. But the most noticeable thing was it’s gait. It lumbered from side to side but moved quickly. It disappeared before I could get my camera out. It seemed fairly bulky. Because of the lumbering gait I knew it wasn’t a canine of any sort. I called my sister on my cell phone and we tried to figure out what I had seen. When I got home I looked up groundhogs, beavers, badgers, etc. But nothing matched until I saw a picture of a wolverine. The first picture I saw didn’t match because of the cream colored markings on it’s back and sides but then I saw a picture of a brown one with a black face and I knew that’s what I saw. But then I looked at the wolverines habitat and realized there are none in Kentucky. Well, there must be one, because I saw it! If anyone knows what else it might have been, I would like to know.
I came upon the most badass looking animal I’ve ever seen. Like Bill, who was driving from Saratoga Springs, NY to Corinth, I was driving from Saratoga Springs toward Wilton, NY at 12:30 at night on June 27th to pick up my daughter. In the middle of the road (probably about 10 miles from where Bill may have been on May 26), was a grey and black animal – very big – probably about 50 lbs if I had to guess – in the middle of the road. This is a country road, no lighting along the roadway and I came upon this creature with my very bright high beams on. It just looked up at me – very unconcerned that I was approaching at 30mph, in a car, with high beams on – it actually looked annoyed that I was disrupting it’s evening and just stayed where it was. It simply turned it’s head toward me, gave me what appeard to be a dirty look, and then kept going about it’s business.
I was so caught off guard and didn’t want to hurt or annoy the animal, so I skirted around it and unfortunately didn’t snap a photo. I had NO IDEA that when I did an image search on google, that it might turn up a wolverine, but I am very certain that the image I saw on google matched the animal I saw on the road…….wish I had taken a photo but sadly did not.
I posted earlier a sighting around Mortimer, Ohio by rail , tried to find a side by side comparison of a fishers and a wolverine , with pictures – profiles side by side including weight, ( in lbs. please ) , hair texture , color ect. , while flipping back and forth between the two images and info , it is easy to get confused . I did see this animal as I stated although it was more likly a fishers , hope this info helps .
Just saw a wolverine yesterday (7/20/14) by Cispus Pass WA above the Pacific Crest Trail. He/she was moving north pretty high up and had a deep redish brown fur with a black snout and legs. Pretty cool seeing one!
Hello, I live in Maine and I believe I spotted a wolverine this morning. I thought it was a bear cub at first. I have a picture but it is not very clear because it was taken from the top story of my house into the field across the street. But you can still tell the shape and if it is a fisher it is a very big fat one.
I recently sent (belatedly) sighting info to PA Game/Wildlife commission and was told we don’t have wolverines in PA. Well, many of the descriptions given in this blog are consistent with my sighting of June 2010 in southern Fulton county in Thompson township a few miles north of the Potomac River. It was loping downhill westerly as I was driving south. It turned it’s head and looked squarely at me and continued into the woods. It was good size with a erect, bushy tail, big paws, stocky build, bearish look in the head, and dark in color. Way too big for mink, fisher, or martin and not built the same. I used to trap in northwest Iowa many years ago never seeing a wolverine but was certainly familiar with it’s appearance from reading. Nothing will convince me that it was a fisher or marten—both too small of size and frame. It may be just a freak sighting but I’ve thought about setting out a game camera with hopes of another sighting.
Ottawa national forest, Michigan, Bob lake, 18 miles southeast of Ontonagon at the boat launch on a billboarded park sign.
We came up on it in the dark (11 pm on Sunday, July 20th, 2014, with red light headlamp on, didn’t/couldn’t see anything, but something from 40 ft away was huffing/chuffing at us in the pitch dark, turned on our white lights and didn’t see anything, then we heard it again (definitely a medium/good sized animal making the noise, sounded like a bear), so we quickly decided to walk back to our camp site down the road, we both had a strong feeling of “okay, it’s time to go now!” and we were actually frightened.
Then like 15 minutes later we took the car over there, turned the lights off and rolled down the windows to listen then we heard it again and moving. Then this 3 foot long thing starting climbing down this signage post, it stopped and looked at us, first thing I thought when I saw it’s face was that the face looked like a lemur, it was pitch black with silver around its face with little mouse ears, then it slid/crawled back to the ground, and walked off and had a round silver circle about its hindquarters that matched the silver in its face. It walked just like ones on YouTube. I know they lope, but this guy just walked off.
Didn’t think until 2 days later to have gone back to look for prints in the dirt, and we didn’t even have time to think to take a photo. It all happened really fast. We went over there almost hoping not to see anything, and didn’t have the camera ready (to which I’ve been beating myself up ever since).
But I’ve looked up stuff on YouTube and there is video of exactly what we saw and heard from this guy on a tree trunk.
3 to 3.5 feet in length. Face with much silver fluorescent. Tapered tail with silver fluorescent arch over bum on black fur. Small face with little round white outlined ears.
I informed the DNR at the Ottawa national forest ranger district, the gentleman entertained my tale but chalked it up to being a porcupine and dismissed me. I’ve seen and heard porcupine, and after more in depth analysis of wolverine sounds and behavior/descriptors, we are both heavily leaning towards wolverine.
If/when I hear a porcupine make that noise I heard, like bear telling us were too close (which sent shivers through us as if we were in imminent danger), then I’ll believe it wasn’t a legitimate wolverine sighting.
We say a wolverines near Parkers prairie mn last night 9/12/2014. Appeared to be a big male. This seems rare based on my research. Has anyone around the central mn area seen one?
We saw a wolverines last night 9.12.14
In central Minnesota. No doubt about it. On the side of the road at 30 feet
Hi Michael, thanks for the report. Could you provide some more detail about why you are certain this was a wolverine? We cannot count it as a definite sighting without documentary proof – either DNA or a photo. We can’t count simple sightings even if they’re made by wolverine biologists, and I’ve had plenty of very definite reports from people, accompanied by photographs or even video, that turn out to be badgers, marmots, or other creatures. A wolverine sighting in Minnesota would be unlikely. But it would be good to have some more information about what you saw (pelage, habitat, etc), some estimates on size (why do you think it was a “big male?” What are your estimates on weight, length, and height?), and what it was doing. Thanks!
ok glad to give more detail last night we were driving along a county road it was still light out and I saw what I thought to be a black dog or small bear cross the road as we got closer I crossed the center line look down into the ditch which was mowed short grass and I saw what was about the size of a large dog a Wolverine. It had a humpback short legs brown fur and a kind of a mask. I have seen them at three minnesota zoo. we couldn’t get our phone to take a picture as quickly as we wanted to as there was an oncoming car and I had to get back on the other side of the road. when that car passed I immediately got out of the car ran down in the ditch and watched the Wolverine undulate as it ran down a path for about a quarter of a mile and I could smell a skunky odor. it looked to be about three and a half feet long and 50_60lbs. we’ve been googled Wolverine images in both my son and I who saw it confirmed it was 100 without a doubt a wolverin!
Any thing else I can tell you?
From what I seen as I watched him crossed the neighbor yard ,right around dusk with walk like he was a bad ass.then he slowly walked down the middle of the dead end street as if he was smelling the air for a meal. A meighbor was comming down the deadend where he lived and said he didn’t get out of his car right away but seen it said it had big claws.He thought it was a fox . He also said his dog got to fighting with it over the dogs food and that the animal scratched his face and nose in the fight . His dog is big a has been known to kill opposum and foxes that get in his fenced back yard.we have spotted coyote in the area but this one looked like a wolverine. I find this hard to believe that they would this far south , especially in th Baltimore/Washibgton area.I will be watching for it again this evening. I think it is hanging around this area .There some woods for cover and a stream down passed the dead end street. It possible I may try to bait it as to get a picture of it. Till then
Hello I live in the foothills of the Berkshires. I have seen a beautiful wolverine near my home during the winter months years ago , as I had spoke to local hunters they quickly poo pood my siting stating theres no such thing. They stated that it had to be a fischer cat! Hahaha ! 30 lbs of flesh and mighty paws are a far cry from the weasely 10-14 lb little fisher cat. Recently I stared to speak about my siting again, realizing that i wanted to see some research data. Rick Yates video in montana really sent it home for me. I do realize that these phantoms as they are known are quite elusive. I have been searching for a site today where biologists are tracking these wonderful creatures. I am a huge fan of these guys. My first encounter led me to a biologists sarah szmud whos dad i worked with in the nearby middle school, she was tagging these wolverines in Alaska at the time. My location is Chester Massachusetts. Our elevation is around 1426. I can be reached almost anytime eastern standard. 413 539 8662.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Thank you,
Lynda
Looking for a little assistance. We have what we have fondly been calling, a “big black and ugly” residing on our small farm in western lower Michigan. It has been suspected up until recently due to sightings at a distance mostly during evening hours to be a black bear but tracks and scat and a recent, unfortunately deleted trail cam photo, we found are not matching up. We are home to an abundance of wildlife but this is something we are not familiar with in our families 80 years here and so far I’ve been struggling to find any GOOD photos of Wolverine scat to use as comparison to what we have found. If anyone has any photos or good resources PLEASE share with us at tonozar@yahoo.com
Wolverine scat and black bear scat can look quite similar, depending on what the animal has been eating. I do have photos but it would probably be difficult to tell what you’ve got just be looking at a picture (and those photos are currently in a different country, so I won’t have access to them for a while – but can send some when I’m back in range.) The best and most definitive thing to do would be to collect a scat sample and send it for genetic analysis – or get another photo. If the animal’s hanging around and has been photographed once, it could come back. DON’T put out bait, however – if it is a bear, you don’t want it to become food-conditioned. Another possible test of identity; if it’s a bear, it’ll go into hibernation soon. If it’s a wolverine it’ll stay up all winter. So if you’re still seeing this animal in, say, January, then things are looking interesting.
In any case, find a scat sample for DNA analysis, get a photo, and/or find some tracks and photograph them (with something for scale, and take pictures of the gait, too.) Let us know if you get any of these things.
I know I have a wolverine in my back yard. My wife and I have spotted it a few times, and it never stays out in the open long. Our neighbors house behind us sits on 5 acres on a small lake, and behind their property is a fairly large gravel pit, that is maybe 30 acres with a wide variety of wild life like deer and coyotes. I am planning on investing in a trail cam to get some pictures. It seems strange that a wolverine would be in our area (Springfield mi)
Yes, very strange. It’s also strange that a wolverine would stick in one place for very long. If you get a picture, let us know. Thanks for the comment.
I have seen a Wolverine on our farm in South Dakota many times. It has been here about 1 year. It is pure black. It hasn’t been bothering us, in fact it has been killing the Prairie Dogs in our fields. I haven’t been able to get any pictures because it isn’t in the open very long, its simply too dark, or its running. I’ll keep trying though!
Thanks for the report. Most wolverines have distinct pale stripes along their sides, a pale facial mask, and white markings on their chests. Some are darker, but they are not usually black. Also, the fact that it’s sticking in one relatively small place makes me suspicious, since wolverines have large territories (generally more than 500 square km) and roam widely through these territories. All of this leads me to think that it is probably not a wolverine. But it’s always a possibility, and I would love to be proved wrong, so do let me know if you get a photo. It would be big news. You can also keep your eyes open for tracks – they’d be five-toed and about as big as your hand. If you find any, take photos of those too, with something included for scale (a pen, a coin, something like that.) If you find tracks like these and also find scat associated with them, photograph everything, then pick up the scat (with gloves! Don’t touch it with your bare hands, of course) and put it in a paper bag to store for future DNA testing. Then let me know, and if the tracks look good, I can arrange to get it tested, in the event that you aren’t able to photograph the actual animal. Good luck, and thanks again for the report.
The one I was seeing was not jet black but more like a 2 tone darker on top. Had a distinct walk. And has not been around for a while or we haven’t seen it. After seeing it twice I looked it up and it’s a wolverine, not a fishercat or badger. It is weird that it would be in this area, but it’s not impossible. I’m still on the lookout.
I seen a wolverine in Malta New York this morning 7am running in the snow.
I believe I saw a wolverine about 5 weeks ago in northwest Missouri
About 3 1/2 years ago, I walked over to the local cemetery to visit my brother’s grave. I was in sneakers and moving quietly. When I got a view over the hill, I saw an animal running along the fence row at the back of the cemetery. It was dark brown and at first its gait reminded me of a bear, but it was definitely too small to be a bear unless it was a cub. Its tail appeared to be longer than a bear tail–maybe 8 inches or so. The animal was moving pretty quickly, and was only in my view for 20 or 25 seconds. When I saw it, I dismissed bear and my mind came up with wolverine.
This winter, in late January/early February, there was snow cover on–maybe 3 inches. The snow was originally 7 or 8 inches, but it had been melting. One night about 10:00 PM, I went outside and stepped around the north corner of my house and looked toward the back yard where I have some bird feeders (misc. seeds, sunflower, raisins, corn, and a suet block). I observed a fairly large animal in the back yard by the base of the tree where the feeders hang. As I watched the animal, he moved away from me, toward the north side of a large shed. Just as he reached the corner of the shed, he stopped and turned his head and looked at me. At this point, our security light was shining directly on his face, and he was beside the shed which has 4″ vinyl lap siding on it. I attempted to estimate the height of the animal, based upon how many siding runs were below the top of his back, remembering that he was standing in snow. My thought was that he was somewhere between 16 and 20 inches to the top of his back. One thing that struck me was that the animal didn’t seem to be afraid of me. When he stopped and looked back at me, I was considering whether I could get back in the front door before he could make it up from the back yard…
It was definitely not a raccoon. It wasn’t an opossum. It wasn’t a skunk. It wasn’t a muskrat. It wasn’t a beaver. It wasn’t a groundhog. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a badger. It wasn’t an otter. It was larger than all of those, and didn’t have facial markings like a raccoon or a badger. It didn’t move like a big cat. It was certainly not a canine (dog/wolf/coyote/fox). I suppose it could have been a small bear, but the tracks don’t look right.
So anyway, after a lot of consideration, and having watched hours and hours of videos of wolverines, as unlikely as it seems, I am fairly certain that that is what I observed. I was out of town the next day, so I didn’t get back there to photograph the tracks until the second day, and some melting had happened by then, but you could still clearly see the five large claw marks, and the overall shape of the prints. I put a ruler down by the tracks to illustrate the size–some were about 3 inches across, and some about 3.5 inches–far too large for most of the animals I mentioned above.
I have photos of the tracks (1024 x 768 hi-def) if anyone is interested in seeing them.
I used to do quite a bit of wilderness hiking, but I’ve only seen a wolverine once.
It was in Medicine Bow National Forest, Wyoming. This was in 1968, which probably doesn’t help much. The odd thing was that it was dead. I have no doubt that it was a wolverine, as i was able to examine it quite leisurely. I found it quite strange, as it showed no signs of wounds.
Perhaps it got into some poison bait intended for coyotes?
Unfortunately, i had no camera with me at the time, so this is purely anecdotal.
It did leave an impression on me for all these years.
Best wishes with your research.
A friend of mine saw a Wolverine near Cripple Creek Colorado just west of Gillette flats cross highway 67 right in front of his truck. This was back in about 2003. I questioned him repeatedly about his sighting. Asking him if he had maybe seen a marmot and not a Wolverine. He and his wife saw it, and he his wife said it was a wolverine for sure. His nick name is eagle eye, so I doubt it was a mistaken identity. He thought at the time that Colorado had Wolverines and thought nothing of it until I told him one day that Wolverines were supposedly extinct in Colorado. I’ve talked with others that claim to have seen Wolverines in the Pike National forest. I’ve also talked with a rancher in the San Juan’s that claims he has video footage of a Grizzly bear on his ranch. I believed him because he had hours of footage of black bears on his ranch, that I got to watch. Colorado is a vast wild place. So I believe Wolverines and Grizzlies still call it home.
Thanks for the comment.
There was definitely one wolverine in Colorado as of 2009, and I would not be surprised if there were more. The animal detected in 2009 was a male who was wearing a research collar and traveled south from Wyoming. I’d be surprised if the ONE wolverine to make it to Colorado in the past century was the one that the research community just happened to collar. There have probably been other dispersers coming south from occupied habitat in Montana and Wyoming. To date, however, there is no evidence of a breeding population, and we are pretty certain, from genetic evidence, that wolverines were entirely knocked out of the US Rockies, including Colorado, in the early 20th century. So Colorado is considered unoccupied until we can prove that there is a breeding population there – and the occasional sighting of solitary animals doesn’t indicate a breeding population.
I’ve never met a person reporting a wolverine who doesn’t assure me, up and down, that they have some qualification that makes them especially certain that the animal they saw was, in fact, a wolverine. Some of these people have subsequently sent me photos or videos of either the animal or the tracks, along with further assurances of their outdoor skills. The photos have always been of something other than a wolverine. Even I’ve been deceived a couple of times in the field, up high in the talus, by marmots. So as much as I respect people’s outdoor acumen, we simply can’t take it on faith that they saw a wolverine. We need documentation.
My hesitation about imagining a self-sustaining grizzly population in the San Juans is the same as the hesitation about a self-sustaining wolverine population in a single isolated mountain range. Both species require widespread and interconnected populations to persist over time. It’s marginally possible that there are remnant grizzlies in the San Juans, but not that they will remain over the long-term (say, the next several centuries) in the absence of connectivity to other populations. So if they are there, it’s imperative to start planning for connectivity to other populations to the north. If your friend really has videos, he should make those available for assessment. If they really show grizzlies, then he could play an important part in reconnecting a newly-discovered population to the populations further north. I remain, however, very skeptical of people who say, “I have this evidence, but I’m not going to show it to anyone.” That’s fine, but until it’s assessed, it might as well not exist, and for the purposes of science and wildlife management, it doesn’t. So please encourage your friend to share.
Thanks again for the report.
I respect your position on connectivity. Although I don’t believe it’s as critical as you claim it is. Because it’s really more about a political agenda then a wayto protect the genetic diversity of a population. He did indeed see a Grizzly on his ranch, I tested him and tried to trip him up. He passed the test. There’s no way he would provide the footage of the bear as it would ultimately hurt the area if an endangered Species was discovered there. I am very angry with the environmental community because they hurt themselves more then they help themselves with land management control policies. I love animals. Quite honesty I would love to see Wolverines and Grizzlies secretly released in the San Juans. Because when the government gets involved everyone loses. I’ve cataloged many possible Grizzly sightings in Colorado. There have been a half dozen or so that are credible. In fact there was a bear shot near Trinidad that biologists identified as a mystery bear. Because
I respect your position on connectivity. Although I don’t believe it’s as critical as you claim it is. Because it’s really more about a political agenda then a wayto protect the genetic diversity of a population. He did indeed see a Grizzly on his ranch, I tested him and tried to trip him up. He passed the test. There’s no way he would provide the footage of the bear as it would ultimately hurt the area if an endangered Species was discovered there. I am very angry with the environmental community because they hurt themselves more then they help themselves with land management control policies. I love animals. Quite honesty I would love to see Wolverines and Grizzlies secretly released in the San Juans. Because when the characteristicsets involved everyone loses. I’ve cataloged many possible Grizzly sightings in Colorado. There have been a half dozen or so that are credible. In fact there was a bear shot near Trinidad that biologists identified as a mystery bear. Because it had the characteristics of both a black and grizzly bear. They wisely deemed it a black bear. I saw the pictures and it wasn’t a black bear. Wolverines exist at such low densities that it’s tough to know if they even exist in any given area. My position is that they are here in Colorado at very low numbers. They have always been here, just at very low populations. The sightings indicate this to be true. The state should reintroduce them just as they did with the Lynx as a non essential population to protect private land owners and industry.
Thanks for the further comments.
Genetics aren’t a matter of politics. The way in which connectivity is advocated for and enacted is political. These are two different things. There are acres of research papers on the necessity of connectivity for island populations, as well as real world examples (Gobi bear, for one) of isolated populations declining towards extinction or going extinct, so that’s really not up for debate. A population in isolation within a small island of habitat will not persist. I understand your instinct on wolverines remaining at low densities in Colorado (wolverines always exist at low densities, by the way), but a sighting is not the equivalent of a verification of a *reproductive* population, even assuming that all those sightings actually were wolverines. Wolverines disperse over enormous distances, so it’s very likely that wolverines have made it back to Colorado and may even have been seen. But this does not mean that Colorado has a resident, reproductive population, let alone one that is self-sustaining.
Nothing is outside the realm of possibility where wolverines are concerned, but all of the evidence suggests that wolverines have not maintained an undetected presence in Colorado for the past century. I’m open to being pleasantly surprised on this, but until I or someone in the scientific or management community sees evidence, the only responsible stance is to say that they are not there. The fact that this is reinforced by genetics is pretty indicative. We had a hypothesis (“wolverines were wiped out of the US Rockies in the early 20th century”) and the evidence that has come into play since then supports this conclusion.
If they have been hanging out, though, there will be no way to reintroduce them as “experimental non-essential” (a designation, incidentally, that relies on listing under the ESA. Without listing, it reverts to state categorization. I don’t know for sure what the stance would be, but if CO undertakes a reintroduction at their expense, I’m betting they’ll be protected, period.) If there is an extant self-sustaining wolverine population, they’ll be protected under CO law as it is, and if they are federally listed, all protections will be in effect. So to safeguard ‘industry,’ it would be more to your advantage to argue that they have not been present. Likewise, to prevent a listing it would be helpful to know that the population IS actually present, which is why, if people have photographic evidence of a rare species in a place where that species is previously unknown,, they should share it. More of any animal makes it less endangered, hence less likely to incur troublesome protection measures.
As for the bear ID stuff, I’m not a bear person, so I leave that to you. But I just reiterate that none of it means anything without proof that’s in the public record.
Politically, the environmental community definitely messes up on a regular basis, but the idea that local non-experts can manage a continental scale population of species like bears or wolverines without some degree of coordination, expertise, and funding at a larger scale is questionable. I appreciate the feelings of local communities towards wildlife and that’s the major focus of my work in Mongolia, but I also cannot help but recall that it took European-Americans all of 200 years to wipe out nearly every native species of large mammal on the continent. The idea of wildlife as a national commons didn’t come into force until the 1970s, and even today the idea of wildlife as a public good remains highly contested. By contrast, Mongolians have coexisted with their wildlife for at least 5000 years, and I know from conversations with them that protecting wildlife is seen as a common value, despite a lack of technical management planning expertise and a lot of issues with overhunting. The situation in both places is tricky, but I’m really not going to get into a big debate about whether “the government” ruins wildlife conservation in the US. I will go on the record and say that wildlife conservation is by no means a shared value in this country, and that raises major questions about the viability of any efforts that are not coordinated at the scale at which the species lives (in the case of wolverines, the American population exists at the scale of the US Northern Rockies.) The point is, regardless of where you work, you need a commitment to notions of common good and management at an appropriate scale if you want wildlife to remain on the landscape. I do not see that here in the States. Instead I hear a lot of conspiracy theories about the government doing all kinds of nutty stuff, and a lot of proprietary claims over particular wildlife species. This comes from the environmental side as well as the anti-green side, but none of it is constructive. Till someone comes up with a better model, we’re stuck with what we’ve got, which is the federal government as the only agency capable of managing wildlife at the scale at which the wildlife actually exists.
Maybe we call all collaborate to come up with something more constructive. I certainly hope so. Keep enjoying your wildlife and advocating to protect it in the way that you feel is most helpful to the species.
I am pretty sure I saw one last week around Meadville PA. It was about 9am and kind of a drizzly day. It was running across a rural road. I was driving or would have gotten a picture. It was alongside a creek. I grew up in Canada and have never seen one. I did a lot of googling to figure out what this was. I thought maybe Fisher but the markings weren’t right for that. I am pretty sure it was a woverine. I was quite large and had a weird way of running.
Interesting. My great-grandmother lived in Meadville. Definitely not gulo country. Could you describe a bit more of your encounter – for example, what did the animal look like? What kind of markings did it have? How tall was it? What was the tail like? When you say it had a weird way of running, what do you mean? Please describe exactly what you saw and not anything that might have been influenced by pictures that you saw when you were online. Thanks for the report!
Some thoughts on griz, and other stuff:
The wild country of Colorado is vast compared to say, Rhode Island, but the history of our state (mining in particular) has left us with a nasty network of roads. Our largest roadless area, the Weminuche Wilderness and surrounding USFS lands, is only about 800,000 acres. Our “wildest” lands, the South San Juans, are only about a quarter million acres of roadless. Compare those to the Frank Church complex (3.2 million) or to the mighty wilderness including and surrounding “The Bob” (2.5 million acres, which is also fairly well connected to vast areas south, west, and north.)
Fortunately for wolverine, most of our high elevation stuff in Colorado is “locked up” as Wilderness, and few people simply hate them, so I like to think they’d do OK here (climate change not withstanding). Wolves have relatively high reproductive rate, Colorado still has lots of deer and elk, and we have a lot of mid-elevation lands with low human population density, so with a strong “regulatory mechanism” and a huge effort at enforcement, they might do well here too. But Grizzlies in Colorado? That’s a much tougher proposition. We live in the eastern San Juans. We see black bears regularly. (By that, I mean during a good streak we see bears more often than a lot of people see elk.) But we’ve never seen even a hint of evidence of a griz.
Back to my point about roads and size of our wild areas. Well, its simply not that easy to “hide” a population of grizzlies here, or for a small population to sort of “hide out”. Seems extremely likely to me that the agencies got it right: the Wiseman bear in 1979 was the last one. A sorrowful end.
And as for a secret introduction? Well, that’d be a “secret” for about an hour. Maybe two.
So I think its like she said: no photo, no video, no proof.
Saw a wolverine in No Oregon. He was crossing the street on the way to Longview, WA. It was in a wooded mountainess area. Early in the AM. Nothing else around. The year was about 2001 or 2. Had the unusual gait. Really long, tail too. Coarse fur. It was quite a sight. I heard you could go your whole life without seeing one. My husband & I felt very lucky to have seen one.
I’ve been in the woods of Southern Illinois all my life. Owned raccoons and coyotes as pets and so I’m VERY familiar with the animals of the area. Around the late ’90’s, early 2000’s, I saw an animal that stopped me in my tracks. Nothing like I’d EVER seen! I was driving around dusk in very hilly, brushy back roads of Iuka, IL. Came out of some bottoms up in the middle of 2 soy bean fields. After researching the internet I believe a wolverine walked across the road in front of me. Slowly and agressively he sauntered across the road with his tail fluffed up over his back. I stopped in disbelief and he walked through the beans (his back and tail about 6 inches above the beans) over to the treeline and disappeared. My brother claims to have seen one also between the Salem, Centralia area. After looking at wolverine videos I’m convinced that’s what it was. You can convince me it wasn’t a wolverine but you will never convince me it’s something native to Illinois because it WASN’T!
Just the other day I saw what I believe to be a wolverine in the Adirondacks of ny. I was hiking with my family when I heard a noise. Naturally I tried to find the source, because who doesn’t enjoy seeing wildlife? I look to my right, no further that 50′ from the trail, I see a large animal climbing down a tree. It had dark legs with a lighter colored body. At first I thought I was a bear or bear cub. I shouted to my wife and daughter, who were well behind us, and the animal calmly walked away. I’ve looked up photos of bears, fishers and wolverines and it was most definitely a wolverine
In early November 2014, I was on a pheasant hunting trip to Gregory, SD. On the second morning of the trip around 10 am, we were hunting in an area 20-30 minutes north of town. There were 5 of us hunting plus our guide and 2 dogs. We were driving when one of the guys spotted about 300 yards away what we thought was either a huge badger or a dog walking slowly through a field. We asked our guide if we could get closer and stop and shoot it if it was a badger and he said no because he didn’t have permission to be on that particular piece of property. We did however slow to a stop and position ourselves to observe this animal…at closest we were about 100 yards away. We quickly realized that it wasn’t a dog or a badger, but what really looked like a small funny looking bear with a long flat hairy tail. It was a dark reddish brown in color with sort of a lighter rusty brown through the belly to hind legs. We could clearly see it walking in a plowed corn field. If I had to guess the weight, would have said 100-125 lbs, but that could be misleading because of all the hair. Our guide could not believe what he was seeing and at the time we didn’t know anything about wolverines and whether or not they were common in the area. I have been quite interested in this since. Wish now I would have taken photos or shot it for proof since the sightings are so rare in the Midwest. I realize that there is no scientific proof of what we saw, but all 6 of us know exactly what it was. That evening, at the dinner hosted by the lodge, we spoke with some old timers who said that wolverine sightings are not as uncommon in the area as one would believe and nobody doubted our story. Interestingly, the lodge has a stuffed wolverine in the main hall, and it is similar in shape and color to what we all saw, just smaller. Our group is going back again this year…and although I realize our chances are slim to seeing anything like this again, my camera and rifle will be handy.
Thanks for the report.
If it was really as big as you say it was, it was possibly the ghost of the Pleistocene wolverine precursor, the gigantic plesiogulo. Or maybe a black bear. A large wolverine in the Lower 48 tops out at around 30 pounds, and while I can see mistaking that for 50 pounds, it’s hard to believe that hunters – who are usually good at estimating weight – would misconstrue that for 100+ pounds.
Regardless, if you do see it again, shoot it with your camera, not your rifle. If it’s really a wolverine, they are protected in many states and may be on the Endangered Species list by the time you’re out there again – and the last thing anyone wants is you being prosecuted for killing an endangered species. It would significantly mar the triumph of proving that there’s a wolverine in South Dakota.
All of that aside, I don’t think it’s outside the bounds of possibility that a dispersing wolverine could make it to the Dakotas. So do keep your eyes open.
I look forward to the photos. Good luck!
I think I saw a wolverine this morning in Sussex County NJ. I understand it was most likely a fisher cat but the hair seemed longer like a wolverine. I saw the animal for 6-10 seconds. It was dark brown with cream highlights. The hair was longer then the pictures I have seen of fishers. Just letting you know thank you very much.
Dennis DeMario
We live in west Texas Lamesa Texas! N we can swear we saw two wolverines all black . they look like they pictures on here. But their backs were arched like a cat. So dats why we are not positive that’s what they were but it sure did look like these animals on da web site.
Hiking with friends yesterday at Milarepa Buddhist Retreat outside Barnet, Vermont, south of St. Johnsbury near the New Hampshire border saw an animal lumbering away from us, about 50 feet away on a forested hillside above meadows around 5 in the evening. We could see it pretty well, but couldnt decide what it was. Didn’t have a camera. It was black, about 3 feet long, maybe 50 pounds. I thought it was a juvenile black bear at first, but had gray markings above its tail, and the tail was more pronounced than black bears. Wolverine or weird bear?
We are just home from a trip to Quebec and I have been trying to identify a creature I saw crossing the road as we came back to North Hatley after a meal out last week . I googled mammals in Quebec and was absolutely sure what I saw was a wolverine until I read how rare they are and that they are not usually seen as far South as the Townships . We are English but I have lived in the country all my life and have seen many badgers . I have also been on Grizzly and black bear watching trips and know it didn’t move like a bear and was a lot bigger than a marmot . Its rounded back end and the way it moved along were unlike anything else I have ever seen . Is it possible it was a wolverine ?
Hello. Just found your blog. Have you verified any reports of wolverine in Rio Blanco County Colorado in the Flattops WA vicinity. At least 3 people I know swear they have seen the unmistakable tracks and/or the animal – each being people who eat, sleep and breath the wild outdoors and Colorado’s wildlife. Thnx.
Thanks for the report. Offhand, I don’t recall the exact map of where M56, the male who went to Colorado from Wyoming in 2009, was traveling, but I know that he ranged widely across Colorado. Your friends should report their sightings directly to the Colorado department of wildlife. Those are the people who will know whether this was likely M56, or could be another animal – if there’s adequate evidence, which is always the big question. I cannot enumerate the reports that come in from people swearing up and down that they are wildlife experts and absolutely know that they’ve seen a wolverine. Unfortunately that’s not enough without photos or DNA. And sometimes when people submit photos, they turn out to be of a badger or a marmot or a coyote. So while I don’t want to question your friends’ expertise, “I know what I’m talking about” is inadequate evidence. They should still report it, but should not be upset if the reports are marked as “possible” rather than “definite.” Thanks again, and let us know if anyone does get photos or picks up a scat.
I was driving in a wooded area in woods hole cape cod and what I thought was a badger ran across the street..well I didn’t know badgers weren’t brown and this was too big to be a fisher..head to tail had to be atleast 38 inches and it was definitely heavier than 13 lbs..I’m in awe.
If wolverines aren’t in Massachusetts then someone needs to stop injecting fisher with growth hormone..what I saw was mid sized dog like. All brown and much bigger than 13 lbs that a fisher grows too
Thanks for the report, Mark. Can you describe with more precision the animal you saw? What were the dimensions in terms of the height, the length of the tail in comparison to the body, etc? Any markings? Size is really deceptive at a quick glance, by the way, especially in different lighting conditions, and fishers that I’ve seen in New England have always appeared substantially bigger than they really are (for that matter, wolverines generally appear larger than they are as well, which is how you end up with crazy reports of 60 pound wolverines.) Thanks!
And just for the record – no badgers in Massachusetts. I have to ask – how did you eliminate the possibility that what you saw was a raccoon? A coyote? Bobcat? Woodchuck? Just have to check, since we’ve had “absolutely positive” reports from people who have sent photos, and it turns out to be one of these animals. Thanks!
I was on a hunting trip up on Bald Face mt. and Debar mt. On our trip up to th top of bald face about half way up we spotted what at first I thought was a bear cub but it had a long tail and was moving not like a bear and it stop perfectly on a log and gave me a side view I wish I had a camera cause it was a wolverine clear as day I had 3 of my buddies with me who all seen it and we all confirm that it was a wolverine it was around 10 am he came out of or from under a old hollowed out log he was jet black with a little brown streaking and the size of mid size dog I’d say but lower to the ground leg wise so cool to see in the Adirondack region
Believe we sighted a wolverine while out whitetail hunting in the South West Corner of Minnesota this morning. Our property is in Heron Lake on wetlands that connect to Heron Lake. We have a very rough video of the beast running. We identified it’s tail and face to be what we belive to be a wolverine. It was running along our corn field that abuts a hay field. It was running right towards our hunting shack when it veered off across the hay field and dissappeared into the marsh cattails. We attempted to find prints but the ground was grassland and the swamp was too wet to hold a print. If more information is needed let us know. AWESOME moment!
My mother in law lives on an an area very dance on woods and she described that she saw something that looked like a little bear. Big enough to kill her dogs. I gotta check if they have seen it again. We live in Reading Pennsylvania, I know that they’re supposed to be extinct but what else could of be. She gave me a good description because she was staring at it for a while on close distance, yeap, she was scared, she says that she never have seen something like it before. There’s food sourses like trash and pet feed left outside.
Thanks, Jose. If she does see it again, ask her to try to get a picture of it, or of its tracks. I would not be surprised if this was actually a black bear, which are fairly common (I have one that regularly patrols the alley behind my house, in a pretty dense residential area.) A wolverine in Pennsylvania would be very surprising. But I’d certainly be interested in seeing pictures if you can get them. Thanks for the report!
I believe I encountered a wolverine yesterday (11-13-15) at dusk. It was too dark and too far away to see the face clearly. It was far too large to be a cat, definitely was not a racoon. I have never seen a fisher cat so I looked that up and find that my animal is too big, too stocky to be that. The animal was dark, probably black–or dark brown–had a bushy tail, short legs, and at first glance I thought the trash man had forgotten one of my black 30 gal trash bags. I walked toward it to retrieve the bag and the ‘bag’ started to walk away from me. He appeared to have a humped back. I continued to walk to get a better look and he turned back to a culvert, stopped and watched me, and then went into the culvert. I live in Canterbury NH. The weather was in the low 50s. No snow present. I took 2 pictures with my cell phone (not a tech person, so need to figure out how to get them onto my computer) but they are too dark to see clearly as they are. Except for the hump on the back (might just be the angle from which I saw him turning around) it appears to be a wolverine.
I saw a mostly black wolverine in Johnstown, CO on November 19th. I emailed the CO game fish and parks, but got no reply.
Can you provide some more information about this sighting? Time of day, habitat, what it looked like, what it was doing? Thanks.
By all means. I saw him at 5:45 AM in my neighborhood. He was at the corner of Brunner Blvd and Carson Blvd. I saw him coming toward me, so I stopped my car. He trotted out into the street right in front of my car. He was heading East on Brunner Blvd. I got a perfect look at him. He probably came as close as 20 feet in front of my car. He was likely 40 lbs or so. Black with a shade of white on his hind end, and a scraggly tail. The white on his hind end was not a distinct white stripe, but rather a vague shade of white. At the time i was not sure of what he was. I got to work and did some searching on the internet and found some pictures of dark colored Wolverines that hit the nail on the head. He looked like he had somewhere he wanted to be rather than in my neighborhood. He was not on a dead run, but a quick trot. I wish I could have had the time to snap a pic of him. Hope this helps. I would have thought that someone else around here would have seen him too. Hope this helps.
John
I also saw one again for the second year in a row. Saw it in Gregory, SD….sorry, was pheasant hunting, so didn’t have my camera handy….I know my animals and know what I saw. Guessing 40-60 lbs, arched back, running and a knife like tail. It was a wolverine 100%. The farmer whose land we were on said he sees them on a regular basis. They are there.
Yep, I am sure they are around much more than anyone knows. The one I saw had that knife like tail too. I it had long hair and was pretty scraggly looking. I grew up in Bennett County in SW SD and never saw any of them there, but I would bet that they pass through there too. Even if you have a camera phone on you it is hard to snap a picture because it is such an odd sighting. Hard to take your eyes off that!
I saw an extremely large, jet black fisher in mid December, at a site in Cortland County (Central NY). I was a surveyor for years, and am very accustomed to gauging size at a distance. This animal was easily 4′ long!. I spotted him not far from an area where I found the remains of a porcupine only a week earlier. The fisher paw print was very large – 3 1/2 to 4″ long, with an 18 – 20″ gait. I returned the next week and followed numerous tracks. Two individuals were traveling together, one smaller – probably a male and a female. I continue to see many fisher trails with each visit to this area.
The DEC had not reported any sightings of FIshers In Cortland County. Yet when I reported this, they seemed completely disinterested. So maybe the DEC has been ignoring reports of wolverines in the Adirondacks.
Thanks for the report. Fishers are so great. Wildlife departments are frequently strapped for money and time, and they probably get hundreds of crazy reports, so unfortunately, sometimes there’s a tendency for them to seem uninterested. Still, you did the right thing in reporting it. Any chance you have a camera trap? It’d be great to get some photos, and might make more of an impact when you report it. If not, no worries – but keep an eye out and see if you continue to see the tracks and/or the animals. And take a few pictures of the tracks with a regular camera too, with a ruler for scale, and with images that clearly show the gait, straddle, and stride. All of that is further proof in the face of skepticism. Good luck, and share any photos you might get here – I’d love to see them.
I thought I saw a badger, first ever in my life growing up in the sticks with nothing better to do than roam the woods. Never crossed my mind to think it might be a wolverine until I found out honey badgers do not live in Michigan. Or… anywhere in North America. Besides, the markings were similar, but not the same. The face had whitish around the head/face, and down the sides. It had shaggy fur. This animal was bigger than badgers are purported to be…. but it was stocky.
That was November 28the of last year…. I found tracks on Valentines day in the same area.
Pretty cool – but a little curious as to where it came from. I live under the bridge. 😄
Thanks for the report. Did you take photos of the tracks? If so, please send them along and we can assess what might have made them. Thanks!
I believe I saw a Wolverine last night in sterling, Massachusetts. I know that this would be highly unlikely however it is the only animal that I have been able to find that matches what I saw. I have seen fisher cats many times before and this was much larger than a fisher cat. The body was approximately 2 1/2′ feet long plus a shirt tail that looked more like a ball. It stood about 2′ high and I would estimate it weighed close to 30 lbs. I initially thought fisher cat but it was too big, I thought maybe a small bear but the body and movement didn’t match. Looking through animal descriptions on-line the wolverine matched and after watching a few videos the movement seemed correct. I grew up in these woods and have seen just about every animal that lives in them, but this was something I’ve never seen before.
A wolverine was sighted near Buncombe Illinois this afternoon 3/14/2016. Approximately 40 pounds, maybe more. Black and brown was the color. The terrain here is mostly wooded with some pastures and scattered farm fields around rocky hills. Will try to get a game cam out to get you verification. I have also seen cougars, bobcats and my neighbor has a lynx on game cam. I live next to the Shawnee national forest in the hills of southern Illinois and it appears that the wolverines are making a comeback!
thanks for the report. Please let us know if you do get a photo – that’s the only way we can consider this a verified sighting.
Technically, if wolverines started showing up in Illinois, that would not be a “comeback” – it would be colonization of new territory that has not been inhabited since the Ice Age. It’s highly unlikely that a wolverine population could establish itself in Illinois – the habitat is untenable – although it’s remotely possible that a young animal could disperse through there. So keep us posted. Thanks again!
Hi. Not sure what this animal is. Never seen one before. Have had fishers and mink around but tail and head are different. Have a game cam picture but don’t know where to send it for identification. Any help would be appreciated. I live in Chemung NY near PA northern border .
Yesterday morning (Easter Sunday 3/27/16) I saw a dog sized animal walking through my neighbors back yard into my back yard and go down out of sight towards some ledge and rocks. I was on the second story of my house looking out the window and got an excellent view of what I believe is a wolverine. It was dark brown in color and the size of a dog but with much shorter legs. It’s gait was similar to a bear but had a large bushy long tail. I would estimate it was around 3 feet or longer in length and maybe was like 30lbs. I watched it walk through our woods for about a minute. We are in the wooded area of northern York Maine, near Mt Agamenticus. I called the Maine Center for wildlife here in town and they told me that what I saw was a fisher cat, which are common in this area. I have been searching for and studying photos and videos of both a fisher and a wolverine and I definitely saw a wolverine. We will be setting up a game camera in our woods to hopefully catch some photos if he ever comes by again. Also my husband told me that while walking in the woods this winter he came across some strange tracks and noticed some small cave type cutouts in the ledge rocks that would be a perfect home for animals.
I feel like no one will ever truly believe me but I know what I saw was not a fisher, bear, dog, etc. I saw a wolverine!
Thanks for the report. Definitely let us know if you get it on camera. The description of a “long bushy tail” certainly makes me think fisher, as wolverine’s tails are not that long. For what it’s worth, too, someone recently sent us a photo of what she was sure was a wolverine, based on her examination of the photo and comparison to photos online…and it turned out to be a fisher, without a shadow of a doubt. I’ve also had people send me photos of marmots, which they say that they’ve compared to photos of wolverines, and remain absolutely convinced that what they’ve seen is a wolverine, despite the fact that the photo is clearly a marmot. So people’s convictions about a brief sighting are even less reliable, unfortunately. When even high-resolution, good quality photos deceive people, we have to take into account that people sometimes see what they want to see. We can’t consider anything confirmed without evidence. That said, we’re happy to look at any photos that you get. Thanks for the report!
Thanks for your reply! You’re probably right about it being a fisher but it was the size of a dog which is why I kept thinking maybe wolverine. Maybe it’s just a really well fed fisher. Hope we can catch it on a game camera. If so I’ll share it. Thanks again!!
Not sure if you’re still interested but I live in Ellsworth, Maine and I either saw a record-sized fisher (what some locals have said) or a wolverine back in late July/early August. It crossed Christian Ridge Road going west between Grant Street and Red Bridge Road. I was traveling south at about midnight (sober!) going about 40mph. I saw it lumbering across the road and it passed maybe ten feet in front of the car. I had to brake hard to let it cross. From the end of its tail to the tip of its nose it was almost as long as my car is wide. It was probably knee high at the shoulders. A month or so later a friend recanted a midnight sighting less than a mile from mine (on Red Bridge Road) where it passed his headlights in a driveway coming from across the road and along the woodline, stopping to look dead at him, and proceeded about its way. He described the same nonchalant, lumbering gait and same physique. I immediately shared my experience and we agree the critter was likely 30 pounds, give or take. It was dark colored, though being night we couldn’t see the exact color clearly. There’s no way it was the average fisher, if a fisher at all – although another lady who also lives near that area says a “fisher” ate all her chickens.
I’d assumed it was a wolverine and only a couple days ago learned there are no more wolverines in Maine (never really cared – just happened upon a magazine article), which prompted my curiosity.
Thanks! Hope you know something I don’t!
Thanks for the report. If you know of anyone else who has seen this animal and has photos of it, send them here.
I’ll definitely keep my eyes and ears open! Thanks!
Around last June my family and I were driving back roads at about 6500 feet in western Montana. An animal with calico markings ran across the road and stopped to look at us for 10 seconds before running into the brush. The head was marked with dark brown, reddish brown, and light tan. It was in a sage field at the edge of National Forest. Shedding light on the inaccuracy of eye witness reports, we disagreed on some of the characteristics. Some thought the ears were long enough to look like a fox. I thought it looked more like a wolverine. The most interesting part of the sighting was the distinctly calico-like markings. I’ve never seen wolverine before this but I’ve read that wolverine can occasionally have such markings. I’ve seen many fox and have never seen such patterns or variety of color on one fox. It was the size and elongated shape of a wolverine or fox. We disagreed on the length of the legs. I asked some rangers in the area who were not sure, but said the edge of forest, that time of year, in Montana mountains is the kind of place you might see a wolverine. If someone more knowledgeable than us could please shed light on this sighting, I would be grateful. For the record, this was no house cat!
In the Late 1970’s I saw a big family of wolverines the largest stood up and riped the top of a metal trash can that night I was very afraid.
Ohhhhh. Thought we had a wolverine here and was a bit freaked out when I read how mean they are. Thanks for suggesting it might be a Fisher. I showed my son the picture and he said YES this was what he had seen !
Wolverine sighting in South Bend Indiana. Animal was large 50-60 lbs. ran across the road and its run is indistinguishable. Dark colored body not multicolored but just one dark brown color. I cannot believe it could have been anything but a wolverine due to it size.
Thanks for the report. 50-60 pounds is far too large for a wolverine – a big wolverine in the Lower 48 would be around 30 pounds. Given that you saw no markings, it was most likely a black bear.
My wife and I saw a wolverine on our way home from the store,we live in Piedmont Alabama and it was 3:00 in the afternoon
I read a post concerning South Bend, In. I too saw a very large mammal mostly dark with lighter colored markings. Low to the ground and wide, my dog weighs 70 pounds so I’d guess this little guy was at least 50. Maybe just lots of hair, though certainly nothing you’d expect to to see in Indiana. Near Ireland, Locust, and US31 bypass. This is very near the other posters location. Whatever it is there is some large critter here.
50 pounds is gigantic for a wolverine. It was probably a small black bear.
A wolverine was killed by a car in northern Utah this week.
Thought you’d like to know…
http://www.ksl.com/?sid=40471215&nid=1288
Mike, thanks. This circulated through the various wolverine networks, but as you may have noted, I didn’t have a chance to post about it until yesterday. Thanks for the heads-up, much appreciated!
I found a skull near Laketown,UT that might be a wolverine. I’m no expert, and it could be something else, but I can send pictures if you’re interested.
Hi, I would like to report a probable wolverine sighting on 27 August from the Teton crest trail about half a mile south of fox creek pass.
I was trail running today, about 5:30 or so in some remote back trails in Norwicj, VT. I heard a loud rustling to my right and stopped turned and looked. I’ve seen Bobcats, fishers and foxes. I’ve never seen what I saw today. After looking at pictures I can’t help but say it was a wolverine. Particularly on the way it moved.
On August 28, 2016 (mid afternoon) at Gunsight Pass in Glacier National Park my family and I got a good look at a Wolverine coming towards us on the trail. I was able to get several photos that confirm the sighting. As it got within about 50 feet it climbed up off the trail and disappeared into the underbrush. We still can’t believe how lucky we were.
Twice this week, late September 2016, today and two days ago I saw an animal like I have never seen before in my densely wooded yard. S/he appeared to be taking advantage of the left overs from my garden and compost pile. At first I thought daytime raccoon, not good. But as I looked more closely I realized it was much too large, had more of a brown color fluffy fur with a whitish undercoat or striping and was very bear-like. It struck me that it resembled a bear. It also did not move like a raccoon and was more wide set. Also about the size of a medium dog.
This is in Northeastern Connecticut! Believe it or not, many may be unaware, but we have quite a variety of wild animals here. We have moose, bear, bobcats (I have seen them) mountain lions (we had one in our yard a year ago, after the one killed on the highway) deer, etc and many more. I looked up what I saw and I described the features of this animal. I seriously explored the possibility it might be something else (fisher cat). This was no fisher cat – way too large and not slightly wiry. I will be watching for him to come back, with my camera in hand.
Thanks for the report, and I’ll look forward to the pictures. It doesn’t really sound like a wolverine – the brindled fur that you’re describing sounds pretty raccoon-like to me, but you never know.
As far as the point about the recolonization of New England by wildlife species like bobcats, fishers, and so forth, there are a couple of reasons why the wolverine situation differs. First of all, those species were all originally native to New England at the time of European colonization (with the possible exception of coyotes); wolverines may have been present in northern Maine, but probably not in southern New England. Second, New England doesn’t have the kind of habitat that wolverines require – wolverines are cold-obligate animals, and it’s far too warm in places like Connecticut for a population to persist there. This does not, of course, exclude the remote possibility that a dispersing animal could make it to Connecticut from a Canadian or even Rocky Mountain US population. The nearest population is in Ontario, Canada, and a wolf from that region made it to Massachusetts about eight years ago. And the mountain lion that you mention traveled to Conecticut from South Dakota, so I’m sure a wolverine could make it. But the presence of a single mountain lion does not mean that CT “has” mountain lions, since there’s no evidence of a population… just a sole dispersing animal from very far afield. The same would be true of a single dispersing wolverine.
I grew up in Massachusetts and spent summers in New Hampshire, and I went to school in Connecticut, so believe me, I would like nothing better than to believe that New England could host a wolverine population. And I know that it can be a pretty wild place – 26 miles from Boston, my parents have fishers and bobcats in their backyard. But the presence of some wildlife species doesn’t make it a perfect place for all wildlife species. At this point, a wolverine population persisting in New England seems extremely far fetched. I give it only another five years, however, before we confirm that there are reproducing mountain lions. Ten at the very outside.
Definitely let me know if you get a photo, and thanks again for the report and for your enthusiasm for wildlife.
They said there we no coyotes in Connecticut until there were too many to deny it, they said there were no bobcats in CT until there were too many to deny it, they said there were no bear in CT until there were too many to deny it, they said there were no moose in CT until there were too many to deny it, they said there were no mountain ions in CT until they found one dead on the highway. . . Nothing surprises me anymore. Never say never.
From SW Missouri, Branson West area. I was driving on a rough road going about 10 mph when a strange animal trotted across the road about 50′ ahead of me. Could not believe what I was seeing, and it took me a while to figure out what it was. No, it was not a badger, I have had several encounters with badgers when I lived in Iowa. used to raise foxes, see coyotes all the time, and trap raccoons and groundhogs. It was dark brown and was not moving real fast had a long bushy tail and was maybe 20″ tall. It looked very sleek and healthy. It came out of an active (160 acre) gravel pit where animals seem to like to be. Saw the only bobcat I have ever seen at the same place on the road. I would swear on a stack of bibles that it was a wolverine
Thanks for the report, Ron. Bibles aren’t a particular measure of truth for me – I’m more interested in more details about what you saw.
You said it had a long, bushy tail and was dark brown. Did you notice any markings? Also, can you tell me how long the tail was in comparison to the body? And finally, what did the feet look like?
Thanks again, and looking forward to hearing more.
I saw a wolverine run across the road in front of me in Lake Villa, Illinois. July 2016, during the day in plain sight
Thanks for the report. Could you please give us some more details about this sighting – what did the animal look like? About how big do you think it was (height, length, weight)? Did you notice any markings? How long was the tail? What did the feet look like? Thanks.
There has been wolverines in illinois ask the people that work the rail yards in Galesburg illinois by the prison. They ride the trains in.
I sited a small wolverine in the fall of 2009 on the west side of Strawberry Reservoir in Wasatch Co. It was working its way up a narrow draw and I was able to watch it for about a minute. I would guess it was in the 25-30 lb. range.
Thanks for the report, Paul. Could you tell me a little more about the animal you saw – markings, length of tail, any other distinguishing features that you noted? Thanks!
I was above a small seasonal drainage ravine (dry at the time) and looking down, so I didn’t see more than a bit of fur on the animal’s rear, but no long tail like an otter (also bulkier and more furry than sleek). No markings on the back, just muscular with an arched back and very dark brown furry coat, with a lighter fringe below. Dark face. I was able to watch it for several seconds as it climbed up through rocks and brush. Its body was about the size of my smaller dog (~30lbs), but it was short. Main impressions were dark and muscular (I could see the musculature under the skin at the shoulders as it climbed). This was late fall and although there was no snow in the spot where we were, snow was present right up above us on the hillside and in the trees. It was late enough in the year that there were almost no people around (I was collecting the season’s last set of water sample for algal analysis). I’ve seen otters, black bears, badgers and marmots in the wild (and coyotes and raccoons almost weekly), and this was none of those. I had seen pictures of wolverines and some video, and although I was thrilled to see it I didn’t realize how unusual it was to sight one until I did a little research weeks later. As this was about 130 miles from the Idaho border and 60 miles from SW Wyoming, I would have been skeptical too, if I hadn’t gotten such a good long look at it.
I saw what I believe to be a dark brown wolverine near Russiaville Indiana about 4 years ago. It was hunkered over a dead raccoon in the middle of the road around 5:00am. I was on my way to work when I spotted it, and had to swerve to miss it. It was not scared of approaching vehicles. Sat there eating while I slowly passed by. Was really kind of creepy.
Thanks for the report. Could you give some more details? How big was it? Did you see the tail? If so, what was the length of the tail – both absolute, and relative to the body length? Did you notice any markings on the body or the face? Did you happen to see the face?
Thanks!
June 2014. Mid-Michigan, about 20 miles west of Flint, my son and I saw a wolverine cross the road into an open field (cut corn field). We both got a good look at it, and another car slowed down also to watch run off. It was very big, as big as a 50 lb lab, but stocky and rounded back more like a skunk shape than a dog shape. It wasn’t a sunny day, so it looked dark brown. The tail was fluffy but not long. It was not a fisher. I reported it to the DNR, but without a picture they would not report the sighting.
Thanks for the report, Sue. We also cannot accept it as verified without some evidence, but it’s still good to know that there are reports out there, so thanks for taking the time to be in touch.
50 pounds is about 20-25 pounds too heavy for a large wolverine in the Lower 48, so if it really was that large, it was either not a wolverine, or it was an escaped captive animal that had been overfed to extremes. Judging size and weight can be pretty difficult when looking at a moving animal against varying backdrops, though, so your estimate could have been off. In any case, thanks for letting us know.
I was deer hunting in Hornby NY in schuyler county and assumed I saw a fisher but it was alot bigger than all the google images of a fisher and was def. More sizeable too a wolverine.
Thanks for the report. It was likely a fisher. I can’t count the number of times people have reported something like this – “way too big to be a fisher” – and then sent me a photo, and it’s always a fisher. Size is the thing that people most consistently misjudge during wildlife sightings (my sister and I saw a bear while hiking this summer – same bear, we each gave wildly different estimates of its size). Given the location and the fact that your first thought was that it was a fisher, it probably was. But if you get evidence that it might have been something else, let me know. Thanks again.
I saw a wolverine in Montana while working as a glamping chef for the Resort at Paws Up in the summer of 2012. It was loping along the upper river bank of the Blackfoot River in Greenough, as the river crosses highway 200 from east to West just before the Paws Up saddle club. About a 1/2 mile west in from 200. It was magnificent looking, and I originally thought it was a honey badger until I looked it up and found out that’s all it could have been. Impressive animal – muscular. Wish I’d had a camera, but I was working.
Well, it definitely wasn’t a honey badger, as they’re only found in the Middle East and Africa. A wolverine in Montana would be pretty likely, but what makes you certain it wasn’t a regular badger? Thanks for the report.
This may be a pointless since this was about 20 years ago. But I saw a wolverine in Wilmot, NH. I remember I was driving and thought “WTF is that”?. In all my hiking and camping I never expected to see this. I remember I looked it up…exactly as described…50 pounds or so with the same coat markings. But supposedly they were only common further north. Regardless of the books to this day I know I saw a wolverine. I’d like to believe a few more are out there.
Thanks for the report. I don’t put it past wolverines to show up anywhere within several hundred miles of their normal range, but 50 pounds would be ENORMOUS for a wolverine – twice the size of a typical wolverine at the southern edge of its range. I’m pretty sure that you saw something else, maybe a small black bear. But who knows? Keep an eye out and let us know if you see anything else that might be a wolverine – preferably with a photo so we can assess what’s going on.
Last fall while visiting Clifton Gorge State Nature Preserve here in Ohio while walking the trails it was almost dusk time when our insodent occured, We heard a horrible growling noise. About 20 feet ahead of us in a brushy area was a wolverine. It was brown and black, kinda shaggy hair, had some white under its eyes and huge teeth. To be honest I thought it was some sort of bear. When we got home we did an internet search and descovered it was a wolverine. Sorry i don’t have a picture , at the time a picture was the last thing on my mind 🙂 .
Thanks for the report. Wolverines don’t have white markings under the eyes, and they are not black and brown – more brown and tan. So I’m not sure what you saw, but it doesn’t sound like a wolverine. I’d be more inclined to go with a bear, since that’s what you thought when you first saw it.
I know it is supposed to be impossible, I live in Southern Michigan, but this morning at about 7 AM I looked out the window and saw an animal running in our pasture only about 40 yards from the house. I yelled to my husband quick look, what in the world is that animal and as he looked out the window it disappeared into the tree line and then another one ran behind it so he saw it too. It had black and two different tones of brown, thick fur and a the tail. Subsequently I looked up mammals native to Michigan and then I Thought holy cow it sure looked like a wolverine to me. We looked up video of Wolverines running and they ran exactly the same. We looked at fishers, as many website suggested, and they simply were too big to be a fisher. I walked out into the pasture with my camera and looked around for about an hour but never saw them again. No proof, I don’t even think I’ll tell too many people because no one would believe me.
Yes I have had direct contact with a mating pair of Wolverine here in Indiana. Spring of 2015 a female ran across the gravel road I live on and I had to slam on my breaks to keep from hitting her. A few days later a male much larger ran across at the same place in the same direction. The following week I observed her digging a den in the side of a cliff over looking the lake that my cabin sets on. The den was approx. 10 feet below the cliff edge and 30 feet above the lake, I used my binauculars as I sat on my dock to view her digging and hunting in the forest above for several weeks. Im located in Southern Vigo county near Clay county border. We have thousands of acres of forest dotted with lakes and a creek. Lots of wildlife coyote beaver badger red wolf and the occasional puma.
Thanks for the report. Wolverines don’t den in the dirt, so I doubt that you were seeing wolverines, let alone that you were able to distinguish between males and females at a glance. I think it’s probable that if you went and investigated the site of the “den,” you’d find conclusive evidence that it was something other than a wolverine. I also have to ask – if you were so certain that a pair of such rare animals were living nearby, and if you were observing them for weeks, why not take a photo? Unfortunately, without that kind of evidence, we can’t consider this a reliable report. But if you do obtain some kind of evidence, do let me know, and we’d be happy to assess that evidence. Thanks!
Hello, I live in Central Massachusetts and there was just a wolverine in my backyard. The pictures I took were not very discernable, but this was an animal I have never seen in person prior to today. We have many fisher cats around here so I know what they look like.
This poor animal looked old and tried. Still scared the crap out of me and my dogs.
How do I send you pictures? There is no button to select to download them?
Spotted a wolverine on 8/11/17 at 6pm on the north shore on Ross Lake in the Wind River Range, Wy. My dog started barking at something as we swam in the lake. I got out to deter to dog from chasing around what I thought was a marmot or beaver. I quickly realized it was much bigger than any marmot or beaver i had ever seen. The dog thankfully suspected it was out matched and stopped its pursuit. Unphased by the commotion the wolverine continued its casual traverse over the large boulder field shoreline, staying in sight for serveral minutes. At its closest it passed within 50 feet of us. Looked to be 30-40 pounds, tan upper half, dark brown almost black lower half with large bushy tail. Unfortunately my pack/camera was not easily accessible so I did not get any pictures. It couldnt have picked a more inconvenient time to pass by. Still stoked to see such a rare animal. Hope this helps.
I saw a LARGE wolverine on a detour to Route 18, last night, August 22 near Wilson New York
I have looked at photographs of similar medium-sized mammals, and this was definitely a wolverine, not a fisher, or anything else.
Thanks for the report. I can’t, however, consider this a reliable sighting based on the fact that you looked at photos and decided it was the same species. I’ve had people send me crystal-clear photos of marmots that they swear up and down are wolverines because they’ve looked at images online and they KNOW it was a wolverine. The human mind plays incredible tricks on people who really want to have seen the rarest and most spectacular animal of all, even when the evidence in front of them clearly indicates that it’s something totally different. So….if you can actually describe what you saw, that would be a help. Please tell me the approximate size, height, weight, your impression of the gait, any markings you saw, anything about the relative lengths of tail and body, anything you noticed about the feet, the way it held its head, etc. What was it doing? What were the lighting conditions when you saw it? How long did you have it in view?
Thanks.
I sent the below to the wolverine foundations reporting page yesterday but after reading your blog something struck me.
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Ok, for what it’s worth, my buddy and I were hitchhiking cross country from Maine (my buddy) NH (me) to California in 1972 we ended up in Aspen Colorado ( you go where ever the ride takes you so long as it’s in the right direction) anyway, we camped at the base of a ski slope on the edge of town. The next morning we decided to go up the mountain just to the left of the ski slope and check out the old silver mines and what ever else that might be up there. We goofed off all the way up so I’m thinking it was about noon by the time we got to the top. We decided to walk to the right and then go back down the mountain using the ski slope. When we got to the gondolas there was a couple there with 2 or 3 kids playing around so we didn’t hang around long, we headed straight down the slope. Well we didn’t get much more than a 100 yards down when we spotted something to our left walking parallel to us at the woods edge, we stopped and it stopped and it didn’t take long to figure out what it was, it was only about 100 feet or so away with the sun making him glisten sometimes golden and sometimes reddish, it depended on the spot. We had no doubt it was a Wolverine. That darn Wolverine was fascinated with us, we walk he walks, we stop he stops,then about half way down we stopped once again but this time he climbed up on small rock and just stood there looking at us, I said to my buddy, I don’t like the way he’s looking at us, I was just kidding but my buddy got nervous and threw a rock at him and yelled get out of here, I told him to knock it off, he’s not going to bother us, he’s just curious. Anyway, the Wolverine backed off the rock when my buddy did that and we thought he was gone, nope! we didn’t get much more then 100 feet farther down and there he was right beside us so we just kept walking and looking over at him until we could see and hear people playing volleyball at the base of the slope, we stopped and looked down at the people then looked around for the Wolverine and he was gone, just gone. He was fine with two people but a whole pack was another story. We joked about that Wolverine for weeks, I remember that night as we were getting ready to go to sleep my buddy asked me if Wolverines come around at night and all I said was I’m not worried about it I’m not the one that threw a rock at him Ha!
This was the last week of June between noon and 2pm, the sun was out bright and it was kind of hot.
I had no idea until recently that Wolverines are rare in Aspen, I always thought Colorado had a lot of them so I never gave seeing one a second thought except for his unusual behavior of course. Plus it’s the first and only Wolverine I ever saw in my life. No Wolverines in New England. Anyway my sister said I had to report it so here I am.
For the record my father had a large beagle kennel, I was in the woods all the time growing up, getting hounds ready for trials or gun dogs for winter, so seeing animals in the woods doesn’t startle me.
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Do you think it’s possible that wolverine was domesticated in it’s early life then let go? That might explain why he wasn’t too afraid of us.
This is an interesting report. I didn’t receive it at the Wolverine Foundation, so I’m glad you reported it here, too. (Sometimes stuff gets lost in our spam filters.) It’s too long ago to tell for sure what it was, but the behavior sounds wolverine-like. I had a wolverine come into a campsite once, after a close encounter with my friend’s dog. The wolverine was undeterred by the dog or the two humans, and just hung out there, watching us, for quite a while. Then it went on its way. I’ve heard other stories of wolverines who are curious about people and behave playfully or fearlessly around humans. This is probably one of the reasons wolverines have a reputation for being aggressive, even though there are no reports of wolverines attacking humans – sometimes a wolverine will move towards a person instead of running away, which is the opposite of what we expect an animal to do. So while it’s possible that it was a released captive animal, it’s also normal to see wild wolverines behave in this way.
Note that I can’t consider this a verified report without physical evidence of some kind, but the behavior you describe IS consistent with other wolverine sightings.
Thanks for the report and I’m glad your sister encouraged you to report it.
I think it was around 1999 that I was at Pedro’s Mountain Biking Festival, riding with a friend on the grounds of the Brodie cross country ski area. I came across what I thought was a baby bear and when my friend stopped behind me she said ” a bear?”. The animal was facing us but it’s head was hung low. It turned and I saw a busy tail so it wasn’t a bear. When its head rose I saw its longish nose. At that point I was 40 years old and have seen plenty of raccoons and I know what fishers look like ( I have seen maybe 5 ). I looked for pictures of what it might have been and a wolverine is the only thing that matches what I saw. It was maybe 2 ft high, long bushy tail and a somewhat pointy nose. I’m not married to the idea that I saw a wolverine but nothing else matches.
I am not one to demand that I saw something preposterous, so I think I’m maybe posting for help identifying what looked like a wolverine in a spot that doesn’t have them? It wasn’t a fisher, as it was far too large (it was honestly almost too large for a wolverine, ~4 feet); it had a shaggy light brown stripe from its midsection to its tail but was otherwise dark. It was out at night during a big wind and rain storm a few months ago. I’m all for admitting when I’ve misidentified, but I can’t seem to identify what it actually is! This was in New England – central NH.
Thanks for the report.
At four feet long, it could be a wolverine, but that would be a pretty big wolverine, and, sadly, NH is not wolverine habitat.
Two things come to mind. The first is a black bear. Since you saw it at night, the light conditions could easily play tricks on your eyes as far as the strip was concerned – and even without tricks of light, bears sometimes do appear to have lighter flanks.
The second thing is a melanistic red fox. I’ve done double-takes on seeing these foxes from a distance, as they often have a lighter strip along the flank. Melanistic red foxes are relatively common, and with the tail included, they can easily be four feet long or more. The amount of light color on the flanks varies from individual to individual – some have pretty distinctive stripes. They also often appear to have face masks similar to wolverines’. In general, foxes have a lot of variability in coat color, so if you’re sure you saw a brown strip, even if it was in dark conditions, then look at the different variations in fox pelage.
More than coat color, though, ID-ing it really depends on the build of the animal. Was it long and lanky looking? How long was the tail relative to the body? Did its legs look thin, or bulky? How was it moving? Did you notice anything about its feet?
It could be either of these, or something else entirely. Other things that people regularly misidentify as wolverine and that you have in NH include beaver, raccoon, woodchuck, and porcupine. The description of a “shaggy” animal might indicate a porcupine, so check that out too.
Let me know if any of those sound likely, and also let me know if you have any further descriptions of the build of the animal. Thanks again!
Thanks so much for your thorough response! Melanistic foxes really do have some interesting markers, thanks for the info. As for further descriptions, it had shorter, thick legs, a bushy tail – longer than a bears but not very long, maybe 8-10 inches, walking low to the ground with its face down, almost like it was foraging. Very slow moving. Did not seem bothered by the highbeams on our car, took a little while for it to walk away and up the mountain above us. I just wish we had gotten an image, would have solved this personal mystery of mine!
Vermont, Rte 91 North, south of Montpelier at mile marker 55. It looked like a beaver with the bushy tail distinctly brown. Not a porcupine nor a fisher. Dead on the side of the road.
Thanks. Could you specify when you saw this? Also, is it possible to go back and get a picture of it?
I just seen one Monday and I’ve been seeing two of them within the last 6 weeks once about 30 lb and the other ones probably maybe 15 living in my garbage and they killed a couple rabbits abecean tracks and poop all around my yard look in the last month
Thanks for the report.
I am not a psychic – can you specify where you are? State/province, town, etc? If there are 15 of them and they are living in your trash, they are not wolverines; wolverines are solitary. Most probably they are raccoons.
I a sawwolve in cal city last year it had a black mask light color fur no lie
Thanks for the report, Virginia. A dark mask on lighter colored fur indicates a raccoon; a wolverine would be the reverse (a set of pale facial markings above the eyes, dark brown fur.)
We saw a wolverine early this morning at 1:35am in Coalville, Utah. I have the exact location, but do not want to post on an open forum. It was wandering around several neighborhood garbage cans for about 10 min before it headed up a hill. I worked at an animal park (NW Trek) for several years directly with mustelids so can confirm with 100% certainty that it was indeed a wolverine.
We thought we saw a wolverine near Strawberry Reservoir in Utah 5/26/18 at dusk. It was across a small creek but too close for comfort. Too dark and scary to look for footprints.
Thanks for the report. Can you describe the animal you saw? Approximate size, any markings you noted, how it was moving, what its feet looked like, proportionate length of tail to body, and so on? What kind of habitat was it in and what was it doing?
Wolverines are generally not dangerous, unless a human does something really stupid (like try to harm it). You were smart not to chase it, but pleased don’t be scared. I’ve had a fairly close encounter with a wolverine who came into my camp site and hung out for about 11 minutes, just watching us, before taking off. They have an overblown reputation for aggression but they’re pretty good at minding their own business.
Thanks again!
Just a brief word of caution: I posted about a Strawberry sighting that occurred several years ago, but was purposefully not specific about the location. Those of us who spend time in the backcountry of Utah know that these kind of public reports may lead to hunters trying to find and kill the sighted animals (ie., I keep my cougar sightings to myself and a few trusted friends). If you want to share a specific sighting location you can email RJW (rebecca@nrccooperative.org is listed above. I don’t know whether it is current.)
Yes, that email still works. And yes, it pays to be cautious. Detailed location info should only be sent via email, not posted. Especially if you have verifiable evidence that it was a wolverine.
But “near Strawberry Reservoir” covers a pretty big territory. And honestly, 95% of reported sightings turn out to be something other than wolverine, so anyone running out to shoot an animal on the basis of reports here is far more likely to end up with a marmot, a raccoon, or a porcupine than a wolverine. I’m genuinely more concerned about someone accidentally hitting one with a car (as happened with the last verified wolverine in Utah, last year) than someone shooting one on the basis of info on this blog.
Still – you’re right. No highly detailed location information.
I watched a young wolverine in Ohio tonight for 30 minutes in my very remote location. It appeared around 12:00 am it was not a fisher. It had all the markings and it was not very old. It had the white/creme color on the top of the head and two areas of a creme line down most of it’s lower half on each side. It had the short tail. I will try to get images ASAP. I am near rocky areas, running water, and a wetland.
I saw wolverine in Vermont. I looked up fisher coats and nothing could compare to what I saw. The shape, size and color matched a wolverine to a tee and not a fisher cat.
Cat* not coat.
I have at least one of these animals living underneath my motorhome at present. If anyone would like to venture to Moses Lake to study these critters by all means please do. I will happily give all the information I have. Two different people have now personally seen my resident wolverine. All I can say is there is at least one and possibly could be more. I’m not attempting to enrage it by getting to up close and personal anytime soon. I guarantee you that. It sounds capable of doing major damage and already lamed my very large male German Shepherd who sustained a very serious wound to his front leg in the process. I’m just very extremely grateful that my dog is still alive and looks to be recovering very well. He could very well have been killed and that would have been a terrible trajedy to befall my service dog.
I believe I saw a wolverine at 11:00am this morning, walked across my front lawn in Bedford NH. I got a picture of it from the back ( I thought I was video taping – darn!), it was bigger than raccoon, and fishercast, very furry, round face, wide body, thick legs, long tail, dark brown.
A very strange sighting but one that was found to be “intriguing” enough for our Environmental Police to investigate with bait traps. The sighting took place in rural Scituate, Rhode Island on a very quiet road late at night. I approached a large animal that I did not recognize. My first thought was that I was looking at an anteater. I came within 30 feet of an animal that I am sure was a Wolverine. I have seen many Fisher Cats on my trail cameras and in person. This was no Fisher Cat. It was unlike any animal I have ever seen before or since. I had to look up pictures to find out what I had seen.
That’s exactly what I said when I saw the animal, it looks like an ant eater! But it’s not an ant eater! Ha ha
I think I saw a wolverine near Detroit Michigan in my backyard. My backyard is pretty big and it connects to a field that is connected to woods. I was walking down my stairs when I saw something back in the field. I grabbed my binoculars and stared at it for a while. At first, I thought it was some shrubbery because it wasn’t moving but when it did, I immediately thought it was a bear. Bears aren’t really seen in southern Michigan so I thought it was weird. It was very big, much bigger than any animal I’ve seen out there. It was completely gray with only some markings on the top of its head. I thought it was a bear until it stood up and turned around to walk away. I saw its big fluffy tail that looked like it was really puffy and squished more near the end. It disappeared into the woods and I never saw it again. It looked nothing like a wolf or a coyote. It was WAY too big to be a cat or a racoon, and bears don’t have big puffy tails. I’m pretty sure I saw a wolverine.
Hi Summer, thanks for the report. Wolverines are dark brown, not grey. I’m guessing you probably saw a porcupine or a badger.
No one ever expects a porcupine, they’re very odd looking, they’re grey, they appear quite large, the transition from quills on the head to the dark fur of the face makes it look like they have markings on their heads, and they have puffy tails that taper at the end. Check out some pics and videos of American porcupines and see if that’s what you were looking at.
The other option is a badger. They’re grey, related to wolverines, and appear to be present in Michigan. They also have markings on their heads and faces, are relatively large, and have tapered tails. Usually their legs are noticeably black. So check out some pictures and videos of North American badgers as well (don’t confuse them with European badgers; those look completely different).
I guarantee it wasn’t a wolverine, based on your description.
I believe me and my husband saw a wolverine yesterday at about 8:45 AM. We saw a large dark colored animal with a long bushy tail and a long face come out of the weather line behind our house,. Then i I believe me and my husband saw wolverine yesterday at about 8:45 AM. We saw a large dark colored animal with a long bushy tail and a long face come out of the weather line behind our house. The animal walked around some of the trees, appeared to stop at one sniff it out, then appeared to get startled and run back into the woods. I was unable to get a picture. I went out and looked at the tracks a couple of hours later, the tracks are larger than my hand, and about the same as my husband‘s hand. Some people are indicating that this might it be a smaller type of weasel, But the animal that they are referring to only grows to about 15 pounds. I have a dog that is 10 pounds so I have a good idea of what that looks like. This animal was quite a bit larger. It’s something I’ve never seen before. I do have pictures of the princ, But the animal that they are referring to only grows to about 15 pounds. I have a dog that is 10 pounds so I have a good idea of what that looks like. This animal was quite a bit larger. It’s something I’ve never seen before. I do have pictures of the prints. I did try to submit a report but every time I tried to upload a photo it said the file was too large.
I forgot to say, that we live in Sauquoit New York up on a hill. We are surrounded by relatively dense words, but there are other houses nearby to us. Yesterday was a bit warmer than usual, the sun was out, and the snow has been melting a bit.
Also, the animal seemed to hold its head down towards the ground. I had assumed that it was sniffing around. I would say that the animal had to be at least 30 pounds when I consider my 10 pound dog. Also I believe it was probably about at least 3 feet in length, not counting the tail. The tail was very long, it seems like it was at least a foot to a foot and a half long. The tracks were partially melted when I went to go see them and take pictures. But again they were large, larger than my hand, and similar in size to my husband’s, although wider. The tracks were at least 4 inches apart I would say, maybe more. I did take a picture of multiple tracks in a row to show perspective. I would love to share the pictures with you. I was unable to get a picture of the animal. We were watching it from inside. We only saw it for about one full minute. And we were about 30 yards away.
Mwarner711@yahoo.com. I live near Westmoreland, New York. We live at the edge of woods and a small swamp. I watched an animal that I thought was a fisher, but my research makes me think that the animal saw wa much latget I would judge him to have been24 inches tall. Maybe 40 inches long. Perhaps weighing 35 pounds. He ran across an open field , across the road and into the woods.
Saw some wolverine prints in the snow last week.
I am pretty sure i saw a wolverine today in Concord. Not only did i just get a glimpse of a creature but i captured it on video and in several photos. It looks like a bear cub with long bushy black tail. Slightly more narrow but very similar face. Just more slender and streamlined. All black and brown with a much lighter muzzle. I was thinking brown badger but that isnot a thing. I have video of it fleeing. Fishers would be much faster and surer of foot. And then it treed. And in that picture of it in the tree u can see a distinct panda like face with a lighter muzzle.
Me and the wife saw a large dark mammal on the side of the road walking in Gilford NH. Was about the size of a beaver but didn’t have a beaver tail, didn’t have a rear end that resembled a black bear, i’d guess it was around 30 or so lbs, maybe more. I assumed it was a badger or something, looking at pictures it looked exactly like a wolverine, now i wish i’d actually stopped to take pictures.
I spotted one Bow hunting whitetail back in 2010. Came in and crossed about 12-15 yards behind me at first sunlight. I paced it of at 15 paces so pretty close to 25 yards . Had that hair pattern that stands out was way to big for a raccoon, skunk, ground hog, It was big. I just remember that hair kind of having a glow to it. At first I thought it was a baby bear. It was outside Perrysville, OH. It was close to lake Pleasant Hill. I would put my house and vehicles on it that it was a wolverine.
(*15 yards)
I saw a Wolverine on May 8, 2019 in Baraga County near Watton Mi. I was traveling down a gravel road when it ran across the road in front of me. I was about 50 feet in front of me. It was brown in color with two lite brown almost redish stripes running from each side of its head to its rump. It was about 36 in long with a tail that long and very bushy. I would estimate the weight to be 40 pounds. It was running very fast and very low to the ground. I researched Weasels, Fishers, Martins and Badgers and this was by far different and larger than any of those amimals. It was a true joy to see, I hope this helps you out. Jerry
My wife and I saw a creature near our house in the late afternoon early evening that moved like a bear, but was much, much smaller, about the size of a golden retriever, but it had black coloring and a tail that seemed more like an otter tail. It crossed the road in front of our car in kind of a galloping Lope, then disappeared into a drainage pipe across the street. We couldn’t find any tracks but it’s been spotted and heard by our teenage children as well. We live in the corner of Southeast Michigan oh, right on the Ohio border in a mostly rural area with a lot of woods. Could we have spotted a wolverine? If not what else could it be in this area? Let us know what you think, thank you.
Just saw a wolverine in Ogemaw county a month ago and another a couple years back
I had a sighting of a wolverine on 16A in the Black Hills National forest between Custer State Park and Mount Rushmore today 7-4-2019 at around 6:15 in the evening. He was about 50 yards from a young white tail buck still in velvet. I didn’t get a picture as we were driving down the road. I made my husband turn around and go back but several vehicles and motorcycles had passed and we could not find him again although we did see the buck. He had his head down and appeared to be digging in the grass. The road was up higher than where they were so I got a good look at his back and tail. He looked like he was in good condition. Didn’t appear to be underweight or sickly looking.
I spotted what I now believe was a wolverine, last year driving from Shushan NY to Bennington VT. It ran across the road out about 200 feet ahead. I remember being really shaken because I could not process what the heck I’d seen. I’ve lived in upstate NY all my life and have never seen or encountered any animal like it. The head: cat/bear like shape with a short muzzle. Wide flat head and rounded ears. (I could not see any facial details) The body: Appeared cat like with Long legs & large feet. It’s fur was dark brown/black and I could see muscles move under the fur as it ran. The tail: It had a bushy half tail. The only person I told about this sighting was my husband. I thought people would think I was nuts. He googled up an image of a fisher cat to show me. It resembles what I saw, though it lacks visual height & meatiness of what I saw. It traveled across the road, up a moderate hilly incline and was gone into the woods before I could fully brake to a stop. I only came to realize that what I’d seen was not a delusion of a cryptid, or an animal completely sickened beyond recognition when I happened upon a YouTube video about wolverines while searching for information on red fox. (We had a fox den up nearby & we were trying to figure out what all the screeching was about). I’m relieved to be able to finally put a name to what I saw. For over a year I’ve been driving that route and used to tense up going through that spot every day. Now I am hopeful for a second sighting, rather than anxiety ridden.
Hello I am emailing you because I just spotted what I believe was a wolverine eating some pizza out of a trash bag in my neighborhood in chesterfield twp. michigan around 10:30pm May 18th 2020 near 23 mile and sass. After doing a little google searching it seems that the accepted narrative is that there are no wolverines in Michigan. It was dark out and raining lightly but i was less than 10 ft away. It was all black it didnt have any light brown on it and the body was around the same size as the trash bag without its tail. The tail was bushy and I wish i could get someone out here right now but idk who to contact to investigate this. Anyways I was watching it for around 5 minutes total i even walked closer to get a better look and it finally noticed me and it froze it wasnt scared of me and it seemed to me like it was deciding to fight or leave and so i slowly walked backwards a couple feet and stopped and then it got up and slowly walked off the opposite way and i cant think of anything else this animal couldve been. I looked to see if there was any fur (it was laying on the concrete tearing through the trash and pizza box with pizza in it) but i didnt see any and its raining and dark but i will check again in the morning and see if there is anything the rain didnt wash away. I will also glance around the area for some prints where i saw it come from and where it went after it left.. maybe ill get lucky. Anyways please lmk what i should do if i see it again and where can i send any evidence i might find of it. I feel like i just saw bigfoot and am trying to report it lol. It wasnt a fisher fox coon coyote skunk opossom beaver muskrat groundhog dog or cat but im not 100% sure that it was a wolverine but idk what else it could be maybe its the lockdown bringing out animals from seclusion with people staying home more using the roads less.. I will post an update if i find any tracks or fur.
It was most likely a raccoon or a black bear, but if you see it again, take a photo and send it my way, and I’ll assess it and let you know.
Can there be Wolverines in oklahoma
Unlikely. They are confined to areas with late spring snowpack. If there is a wolverine in Oklahoma, it’s either a disperser or an escaped captive. There is no possibility that they could establish a resident, reproductive population there. It’s far too hot.
I believe I saw one in Oklahoma. Was walking dogs on a gravel noise and heard a ruckus of growling and screaming. Dogs ran toward it, I topped the hill and it had a fawn with the dam defending it. The dogs startled everyone, it went left, the fawn and die went right, dogs thankfully chased the deer. Whatever it was had that weird gate they have, a sort of hunched posture and a short brushy tail
I have a video but don’t know how to attach to this comment. It was in eastern Oklahoma.
I realize that it doesn’t make much sense, but I believe that I saw a wolverine in Southern Illinois last night (12/18/20) about 5:00 pm. Ground was dry, so no tracks were evident. No photos available. Initial impression was that it might be a large beaver, but the head shape, body shape, ears and tail were wrong. The animal I saw was about 3 foot long with a 1 foot long tail and weighed an estimated 50-70 lbs. Head was shaped very much like a wolverine, but snout may have been slightly shorter than expected. Ears were rounded, larger than a beavers, and were on the side of the head. Tail was rounded and hairy, black in color. Body was thick (not long and narrow as in a fisher), and slightly thicker towards the rear. Body was not flattened vertically (ie wider side-to-side, as in a badger). Animal appeared to be about 18-24 inches tall. Coloring was dark brown with black streaking. Animal had short legs (no visible space between body and grass, mowed at about 6-8 inches), and lumbered as it walked. We have a 70 lb mature Belgian Mallinois, and this animal was as big, or maybe even slightly larger, than the dog (dog ran to same place were wolverine was, so size comparison was easy). Animal did not seem concerned that a 70 lb dog was running towards it. Animal was seen at the bottom of a grass-covered dam headed into the woods (we abut Shawnee National Forest near Pomona) at a distance of approximately 250 feet at dusk. Adequate light to see the animal clearly, but no shadows for contrast. Animal was visible about 15 seconds. I am a veterinarian and hunter, so am familiar with a large number of species, including mink, smaller weasels, otters, and beaver. Never seen a fisher, but this animal was much larger than reports of fishers on the internet.
Thanks for the report. The largest wolverines in the Lower 48 top out at around 35 pounds; a gigantic wolverine in Alaska might hit 45. So if it was as large as a 70 pound Malinois, it wasn’t a wolverine. Having spent time with several Malinois and a number of wolverines, I can say with a great deal of certainty that a wolverine next to a Malinois would appear, at max, about half the size of the dog. Personally, I think that weight and size are the things that people most consistently get wrong when they talk about animal sightings, but since the dog was there for comparison, it sounds like the size rules out a wolverine.
The coloration also sounds wrong; we’d expect some cream-colored markings on the flanks and face of a wolverine, and also a white chest patch. The chest patch might not be easily seen, but in good light, the side stripes and facial markings should have been. And people tend to think that wolverines are flat to the ground, but their legs are long enough that they appear much more upright than badgers or otters, for example.
All that said, based on your description, I don’t have an easy answer for what it actually was. Lumbering gait, low-slung body, and description of the coloration would potentially fit with a porcupine, which is one of the animals that people most frequently confuse with a wolverine – mostly because people don’t often see them. They appear to have thicker back ends and “hairy” tails, although the tails appear to be flat from side-to-side (note your mention of thinking it was a beaver….), with fine, spiky extensions on the sides that could appear hairy, as opposed to the conical, bushy appearance of a wolverine tail. They also tend to appear larger than they are, because of the quills. And porcupines are relatively nonchalant around dogs, because they know they have a built-in self-defense system that a dog can’t defeat. Of course, a porcupine the size of a Malinois would be a step beyond “appearing larger than they are,” so who knows. Keep an eye out and a camera handy and let us know if you see it again. Maybe we can figure out what it was.
Thanks for the reply. We have many porcupines around here, and the animal I saw was about 3-4X the size of our local porcupines. While one cannot rule out that a porky found a stash of steroids in the woods, the haircoat on the mystery animal was much denser and shorter than porcupine quills appear from a distance. The head and ear shape/prominence were also not those of a porcupine. While this animal was shorter than the dog, it was every bit as long and had a body that appeared denser/weightier than the dog. Hard to say how much to discount the size for haircoat “fluff”, but I’d be surprised if this animal wasn’t substantially heavier than 35 lbs. I agree that it probably was not a wolverine, but am also at a loss for what it might have been. Short of a small bigfoot, a wolverine was the most likely candidate that I could come up with. The tail was initially not visible (buried in grass), but was round when it became visible. I did not see the chest, the head was a lighter color than the body, and the white flank markings may have been mostly obscured by the grass. Based on the behavior of other critters around here, I can guarantee that I won’t see it again until I forget my phone when I take the dog out for a walk!
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In late May of 2016 in Valparaiso Indiana, a 60+ pound Wolverine was waddling along the Teuschme Pipeline. This pipeline goes into northern Michigan and deep into Canada. A veterinarian of 40 years show me pictures of a Fisher. This was the size of a small Florida bear, which I also saw in 2008. Small tail brown as big as a lazy boy chair. I know what I saw, it is irrefutable to me. Sorry no pictures I was shocked and stunned by the chance meeting. I was inside my house looking directly at the wolverine.
The largest wolverines on record top out at c. 40 pounds. If it was a 60 pound animal, it was not a wolverine. I would venture to guess that it was actually a bear, especially given your description of it having a “small tail.”
I think I saw a wolverine. I was coming home at 11 at night when I saw something black alone side of the road .i slowed down to look at it good with the head lights on it .it had long black hair when got about 5 to 10 feet to it then it picked its head up looked at the car that when I seen it had white udder the neck a long face short ears .when it lifted its head to see the car at instant showed its teeth then preceded 2 charge after the car then at that point I stepped on and went home which was about 2 minutes away how told my brother about it that a Fisher cat had tried to attack my car is the fisher cats are not black with white it will not attack a car we live in Broome County New York town of Windsor
Thanks for the report. Fishers can actually have white markings on the throat – most mustelids show this kind of marking pattern, and they often have lighter guard hairs that would reflect as white in high-contrast lighting. Neither wolverines nor fishers habitually charge cars, but all mustelids will sometimes display this sort of behavior in the face of threat or something they’re curious about. Badgers are probably the most notorious for attacking cars, but weasels in general often move towards something they perceive as a potential threat – I’ve had this happen when I’ve come across small weasels and they rush at me instead of running away. So moving towards the car isn’t indicative of any particular species of mustelid, though it does definitely sound like a weasel-y behavior.
One other option is the American marten. There’s a population in New York, although it’s generally been documented further north than Windsor. But mustelids can disperse widely, and martens almost always have white on the chest. They’re lighter in color than fishers, but then again so are wolverines, and at night, in the sharp contrast of car headlights, color perception is often skewed. I also think that had it been a wolverine, you would have seen markings on the face if you had the headlights on it. Wolverines have a pretty distinctive mask.
More info on NY martens here: https://www.dec.ny.gov/animals/45531.html
The last option is an otter. If you were near a river, this is a possibility, although you mention “long hair,” which makes it less likely. But otters are pretty fearless, they have paler chests, and they are present in the area.
In short, it’s far more likely that it was a fisher, marten, or otter than a wolverine, since wolverines are not present in New York, and especially not in southern New York. I’m guessing it was actually a fisher.
Thanks again for the report, and let me know if you have other questions.
Between 1-2pm today I believe to have seen a wolverine in Vermont. I have lives here my whole like and spend the majority of my time in the woods and tracking various prints. Since I spend so much time outdoors I do my research on various animals native to this area. I say this because this was not something I had seen before. I’ve seen fisher cats, weasels, skunks, raccoons and what not. This was a color unlike anything I could link it to. Very rich dark brown with a hint of red in the light. I was walking my dog in the orchard behind our house. The orchard sits slope side of a mountain. It was actually a little nicer out today, not too sunny but warmer than it’s been. At first I thought it was a fisher but it was way too big. I thought maybe fox but again, too big and I just know for sure it had a completely different stride and movement than a fox. It had a wide back, long thick fur coat and long back. It was headed uphill into denser wooded area. I know this area is heavy in wildlife. Black bears, tons of deer, rabbit, fox, coyote, anything you can think of travels through that orchards. And it’s heavy traffic. I know they say the Wolverine isn’t in New England but looking at photos and videos I am 90% sure this is what I saw.
Thanks for the report. It’s always possible that a wolverine might show up there from some other source population – they can travel extremely long distances. I don’t suppose there were any tracks for you to photograph? Or that you took a picture with your phone?
Did you see the tail? You mention a “long back” – did you mean tail? If so, how long in comparison to the body? And did you see any other markings on the animal at all?
I have been researching for hours tonight about what I saw….I live in northern Maine and was bird hunting I had gotten out of my pickup to look at a wash out to see if I could still continue, as I was looking at the washout, what I believe to be a wolverine came out of thickets about 15 to 20 yards in front of me it paid to attention to me and trotted up the dirt road it was very big perhaps 40 to 50 lbs….I have seen fishers before and this was NOT a fisher. I must admit I am very confused. Anyhow that is what I witnessed.
Thanks for the report. 40-50 pounds is far too large to be a wolverine. Could you describe the animal you saw? What color was it, how was it moving, what were the relative proportions of its tail/body/feet/head/ears? That might help get to an ID.
I saw a Wolverine in Sharon MA today. It was the size of a german shepherd, so I’m pretty sure it was not a fisher cat.
Thanks for the report. If it was the size of a German shepherd, it definitely wasn’t a wolverine. They are substantially smaller than that, topping out at about 30 pounds in the Lower 48. MA is also not part of their typical range. An animal of that size with a profile resembling a wolverine would most likely be a black bear, although Sharon (where my grandparents lived, so I’m quite familiar with it) probably only has a limited number of bears, too. Not sure what it was that you saw, but at that size, definitely not a wolverine.
I’m located in sw north dakota and last summer by the river me and my family saw what we believe was a Wolverine about 50 years away. We ruled out all other possibilities of what it could have been. It was shorter bit similar in size to our 80 lb husky. Now yesterday I seen it again in the cut cornfield across the road from our house. This time it was about 30 yards and I got a pretty good look at it. It both times it had a very distinct trot with its back arched an real dark brownish red almost black long fur with a mask like face. I am from Minnesota and have been out here for 2 years so I’ve never seen one until now. We checked for tracks this morning but the soil is sandy and hard so only a few not very distinct tracks but they were about the size of my fist
Thanks for the report. Could you please photograph the tracks, and include something standard sized in the photo for scale – a ruler is best but it could be a pen or a coin or something like that. Also, please photograph the individual tracks and also take a few long shots that might show the gait. Doesn’t matter if they’re indistinct.
Out of curiosity, could you describe the tail and the feet, if you happened to see them?
Also, have you considered a badger, and if so, what made you rule that out as a possibility? They are widespread in the Dakotas, have masks, and their fur often appears dark brownish, depending on the light. They are related to wolverines, have that distinctive arched back, and their tracks are about the same size. It’s always more likely that an unidentified animal is something common to the area rather than something that doesn’t have a population in that region.
That said, of course, wolverines are long-distance travelers, so you never know. If you see it again, try to grab a picture, even if it’s on a phone and from a distance. Any piece of evidence is worthwhile.
Thanks again!
I believe I saw a dead wolverine on the white river near Spencer IN
Thanks for the report. Do you have a photo or a tissue sample?
Hey, im not really sure if anyone moderates this page anymore, but I’m convinced that I’ve spotted a wolverine near where I live (Twin Lakes, Wisconsin). Now I will admit that I did not get a look at it’s full body, but I did notice that it had a very distinct short but fluffy tail, dark brown fur, an was roughly the size of a very large cat. I was unsure of what I saw at first, but after a little searching of animals of wisconsin, I found a picture of a wolverine (which had the same type of tail). I also found that they were very rarely seen in wisconsin anymore. I’m not sure if you guys would want more information (or if I could provide any of real use, i saw it briefly from the window of a car), but feel free to email me and I will see what I can provide.
Thanks for the report, Nathaniel. I do still moderate this page, I just don’t write for it anymore because of the issues around AI scraping of blogs and other publicly available written content.
But as for wolverines, sure, any additional info you can send would be great. I’d ask what makes you think it wasn’t a badger, which are found throughout Wisconsin, are fairly common, and resemble wolverines, including that short, fluffy tail. They often appear quite dark and brownish despite looking black and white in the photos. My instinct is always to go for a common animal when there’s a questionable sighting, as it’s statistically much more likely to have been an animal with an abundant population in the area than an animal that is extremely rare. But who knows. Wolverines do get around.
If you do have any additional information, or if you hear anyone else in the area talking about having seen an animal that matches the description, definitely send it along! Thanks again for the report.