By Marcia Love
When Dave Napper spotted a timber wolf near the edge of his property on Feb. 27, the rancher said his first thought was to protect his calves.
Napper, who ranches north of Cabri, quickly grabbed his gun and shot and killed the animal.
Despite the oddity of finding a wolf in the area, he said he wasn’t too surprised when he saw it roaming around.
“I knew there was something wrong, because people’s animals had been acting strange for the past few days,” Napper explained.
A few days after killing the wolf, Napper contacted the Swift Current Conservation Office.
The Saskatchewan Wildlife Regulation allows a landowner the authority to kill any carnivore, other than the black-footed ferret and swift fox, without a licence if the landowner is protecting his livestock or property.
If the wildlife is killed under the agreement of the Wildlife Regualtions, it must be turned over to the Ministry of Environment, where the Director of Fish and Wildlife will determine the disposal of the animal.
It was determined Napper had acted in accordance with the legislation, and the wolf was turned over to Leader conservation officers.
Michael Banks, a conservation officer in Leader,  said the animal has been sent to Canadian Co-operative Wildlife Health Centre at Saskatoon, where a necropsy is being completed.
The necropsy will look into the overall health of the animal and also examine stomach content.
Banks said wolves are not typically seen in this area, although there is a population of moose, which is one of the wolf’s main food sources.
“With the number of (moose and deer) we have in this area and from where the wolf was found near the South Saskatchewan River, there’s some pretty good cover-up area along the river, so he coud have just ventured out of there and got caught out in the open,” Banks said.
Although it isn’t common to see wolves now, Banks said the plains wolf was not an unusual sight in the area in the early 1900s.
“There were plains wolves all throughout here,” he said. “So maybe to some degree they’re coming back to their natural habitat.”
Napper said this was the first time he had seen a wolf in the area, but knew of timber wolves being spotted by Gull Lake last winter.
The necropsy of the wolf may be able to determine its age, as well as possibly shedding some light on why the animal was wandering outside its natural habitat.