[pct-l] Wolves in the Sierra?

[Georgi Heitman]

I don't know...
Wolves in the southern Cascades?  I think yes...at least
there were in 1993 or 4, because FireWalker and I saw
an article(very small, maybe two lines total, down at the
bottom of a page) in our weekly Inter Mt. News stating
that seven mated pair had be released on and/or around
Badger Mt....think Badger Flats at the northern edge of
 Lassen Natl Pk. here, folks.
A year or two later a neighbor told us that he'd read that
three more pair had also been released in the same area.
Around that time, FireWalker and I saw a very large,
dun-colored critter grazing (or something) in the field next
to the driveway coming into the Hideaway (our home).
We stopped in the driveway, debated what it might be,
it was too early in the spring to be a returning deer, too big
to be one of our local coyotes or a neighbors dog but with
it's head down, it was impossible to tell, so I opened my
car door and slammed it hard.  Its head flew up... it was
the biggest canine either of us had ever seen, please
note, I didn't say 'dog'.  It took off, didn't run like a coyote,
with front legs that are/seem shorter than it's hind ones...it
ran more dog-like, but it wasn't any of our neighbors dogs.
Later, during the summer, as I was coming home after
dark on a bright moon-lit night, as I started to slow down
 to enter our driveway, I glanced in my rear-view mirror in
time to see a very large canine, very light colored in the
 moon light, run across the road behind me.  I got
goose-bumps, and it takes a lot for that to happen to me,
 but I think I knew what I saw was out of the ordinary.
A neighbor saw a similar colored creature run in front of
his pickup as he drove home after dark a few nights later.
He said it was NO dog!!  That was prior to 1997, because
I was coming home from work at the little store by the
Old Station P.O. and 1997 was the last year I worked there.

FireWalker and I got our hot tub in 1996 or so.  Almost
immediately after that, as we'd sit in it at night, F.W. began
asking me if I could hear the very low howl that something
was making.  I'm hard of hearing and didn't get hearing
aids til '98, so at that point, I had to say 'no'.  But what I
did hear after he'd ask me that question was total silence.
Very unusual, because coyotes were usually singing and
we had a neighbor with many loud dogs that barked
in tune with the coyotes.  Once I got my hearing aids I could
hear what F.W. was talking about, a very deep howl, off
toward the 1000 Lake Wilderness to our north.  From the
moment that howl was heard, every coyote and every dog
shut up, crawled back into it's den, dog house, whatever,
and was not heard from again that night.  Since the dogs
were close enough that even w/o hearing aids, they could
keep me awake at night, I wished whatever critter was
responsible for shutting them up would make itself known
more often than just once or twice a week.  We'd have
gotten a lot more sleep.  It was as if our local coyotes
and dogs knew that whatever made that sound was bigger
than they were, and maybe deadly.  Unfortunately, we haven't
heard that howl in years....tho in 2007, a hiker well-known on
the trail said that while hiking thru Lassen N.P. the hiker  looked
up a side trail and saw a huge canine, black, if I recall and sort
of scruffy looking, but definitely huge and definitely not a dog!
There was no doubt in that hiker's mind...that critter was a wolf.
They stared at each other and went their separate ways.
 Wolves in the southern Cascades?  I think so!
FireFly