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New York has a bunch of hybrid swarms there so you could be looking at a coyote that has dog in it or wolf or maybe both who knows. Go kill it so we can get a closer look.
I haven't ever seen any hybrid swarms??? They pretty much all are BIG...
Are any of you familiar with
Bergmann's Rule ?
Consider a different animal altogether...
What makes a Northern whitetail bigger than a Texas whitetail? Hybrid swarming? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/crazy.gif
What did the Canadian whitetail have to 'hybridize' with to get so big? Doesn't it make more sense to subscribe to Bergmann's rule, rather than surmise that there is some wacky breeding going on to produce a larger subspecies?
Here's my two pennies on the subject, earned from trying to kill them that last ten years. $.02 is all I got...
The yotes here in the NE are BIG because they HAVE TO BE BIG to survive! They eat deer and our deer get BIG too. Ever seen a 170+lb. (live weight) doe? Me & friends kill them every year. See the logic here?
If there was in fact some red wolf/coyote interbreeding going on, it happened a looong time ago. There are no mutant wolves or large wild 'wolfdogs' running all over the NE impregnating the local coyotes these days. It just big coyotes breeding into each other, thereby making more big coyotes...
Now we have big coyotes here that kill big game and hunt in small packs often. They are more than happy to feast on the blossoming turkey populations and catch other small game, but day in/out venison is the meat that goes with their potatoes...
By trial & error, our NE yotes have figured out a winning combo to get food on the table and it just so happens to mirror how wolves operate out west. Team up and take advantage of the abundant big game available...
(Above info + a token will get you on the subway /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grinning-smiley-003.gif)