Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Big Bad Wolf


The menacingly named Village of Wolves in Flint is weird enough, but what about an actual wolf of the large-ass variety allegedly shot near Flint?

Linda Godfrey on Absolute Michigan writes:

One consistently described feature of the Dog Man, an upright-walking canine many witnesses claim stalks the woods and roadsides of Michigan, is its size…usually six to seven feet tall on its hind legs. It stands to reason, then, that massive, wolfen creatures should be glimpsed or even bagged by hunters now and then. That is exactly what happened to a deer hunter named Eastman around noon on November 18, 1935, on the third day of deer hunting season. Eastman was hunting near Flint around Rhody Creek Trail, and despite good weather and a great layer of tracking snow, there were absolutely no deer to be seen.

Eastman soon found out why. He suddenly heard what sounded like “horses running,” and turned to see a massive timber wolf at a dead run. Eastman ended up shooting a wolf rather than a deer that day. He gutted it and dragged it into town to have it weighed and measured; it was 182 pounds even after gutting, and measured seven feet, 11 inches tall when measured hanging vertically. The creature stood 39 inches at the shoulder! It was considered such a magnificent specimen that the carcass was sent to the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh where it was mounted and displayed. The entire story of the great Flint Wolf was told in the Great Lakes Pilot, Vol. 3, No. 6, 2005.



11 comments:

  1. Where the hey is Rhody Creek Trail? That sure is one hella big canine. Hopefully it ate a few frontiersmen before it was kil... MURDERED!

    Okay, I don't mean to go off on a tangent, clearly this humungouus wolf is well documented but... uh, why the heck not?

    Cryptozoological Flint?

    Back in the late 80s an enormous 3 foot tall woodchuck was seen roaming around south Burton.

    Bigfoot is said to lurk the Thumb. Sasquatch hunter Art Capa kept a bigfoot poop sample in a glass case at his home in Millington. Examined by experts, MSU biologists were stymied. At least that was what I heard on WJRT. Used to have a videotape featuring Art and his turd circa 1987.

    Of course you have the zombies from the Village of Wolves... and who could forget Flint's strangest creatures Captain Bubblegum and Straight Bob.

    The Capitol Theater and Whaley House are haunted... of course.

    Devil's Lake is bottomless.

    A Black Bear ended up as roadkill a few years back on I-75 near Mackin Rd. Keep in mind the dead end part of Mackin Rd. was also home to a pack of mutant dobermans and a strange, hidden hovel filled with mannequins. Curses? If your foot fits in the stray shoe from the Crack The Whip statue at Sunset Hills you will DIE within one year!! UFOs? Well, the former heads of the Michigan branch of MUFON were pursued by black helicopters while driving on Flushing Rd near Linden. They even caught it on videotape... again, according to some "Unexplained Mysteries" knockoff broadcast on WJRT.

    The Mackin, Pasadena, Flushing, Linden quadrilateral was/is a veritable Bermuda Triangle of high weirdness.

    ReplyDelete
  2. what's wrong w/frontiersmen? that was a form of murder, none the less. I would've given my eye teeth to have seen Him in the bush. we were fortunate enough to see a wolf in da yoop a few years back. he spotted us, while we were doing the Grand Island Trail, He took 3-4 steps sideways, and vanished. those eyes. big yellow eyes went right thru the bullshit to the soul. been a few times I've felt that, once chased by a black bear, and another nose to jacobson's with a timber rattler. We have, or had a woodchuck damn near 3ft long living under the outhouse at the township hall. The matters of Windingowesh, aka Bigfoot, I'll refer ya to Tribal spokespersons. Right now, I can open my front door and watch and hear the coyotes out on the bay. Tribal po-lice have seen wolves and panthers here aboot for a long time. They've got scat from both at H.Q.'s. I've seen them. I'd be more afraid of Capt. Bubblegum and probably Strait Bob, and the Dupont St. bus than the cryptos...just 'cause we don't see 'em, don't mean they ain't there.

    ReplyDelete
  3. and...if the Wolfman turned back into Benicio Del Toro after it was shot, well, then that's another "tale"...

    ReplyDelete
  4. Following Warlørd off on the tangent, I saw the comment made about UFO's and MUFON on Mackin Road. I recently did a Web search that showed Flint has had several recorded UFO sightings including a UTUBE Video made in the 1990's. Maybe the Aliens wanted Saucer building advice from GM. Five decades ago I believe a UFO flew over my house on Garland St. when I was 5. When I googled Flint and US Airforce Project Blue Book on the Internet, I found two incidents listed to have occured in Flint between April 20and April 27, 1952. One was seen by many people at a Flint Drive-in. The Airforce dating the sightings around the time I remember seeing one makes me wonder if this was more than a kid's active imagination.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I know of no Rhody Creek near Flint. Rhody Creek Truck Trail is up by Grand Marais. Could it be that the guy who shot it was from Flint?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This wolf was shot in Grand Marais in the Upper Pennisula...the hunter Eastman was from Flint..get your facts and story right!

      Delete
  6. This story seemed questionable from the get go. The photo itself seems fake, regardless of where the "wolf" was allegedly shot. You just can't trust the internet.

    ReplyDelete
  7. The wolf was in the Smithsonion for a time - it was pretty well documented.

    ReplyDelete
  8. geewhy--I agree you have to have a BS filter for the internet. But I have found more accuracy on the internet than on the news. Mainstream media is owned, pastuerized and dumb-down to the point of hilarity.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Camera trick. Stand a ways behind an object, and it will appear larger than it is.

    In all likelyhood, this wolf was in the normal weight and height range of the species.

    ReplyDelete
  10. That's one big ass wolf.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for commenting. I moderate comments, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You might enjoy my book about Flint called "Teardown: Memoir of a Vanishing City," a Michigan Notable Book for 2014 and a finalist for the 33rd Annual Northern California Book Award for Creative NonFiction. Filmmaker Michael Moore described Teardown as "a brilliant chronicle of the Mad Maxization of a once-great American city." More information about Teardown is available at www.teardownbook.com.