Eleven years ago, Defenders of Wildlife put forth a wolf reintroduction proposal for the Adirondacks.

In response to that proposal, I started doing intensive library and field research, my curiosity heightened by the idea. Along the way, I learned a great deal, such as the then new scientific discovery that our coyotes are not coy dogs — coyote-dog hybrids — nor were they quite the same creatures as their western relatives, a smaller predator that subsisted on rabbits, rodents and sometimes domestic sheep.

Instead, geneticists such as Dr. Brad White of Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario found eastern coyotes had wolf genes in them, individual animals having varying percentages ranging from 10 percent to almost 50 percent.

These wolf genes were, many researchers believed, the reason for the eastern coyotes' increased size, which, in turn, altered their prey base, allowing them to take larger animals, with deer and beaver an important part of their diet.

Another bit of information uncovered by the geneticists was that the relatively small eastern Canadian wolf (scientific name Canis lycaon, now called the eastern wolf) was not a smaller version of the gray wolf (Canis lupus) but rather genetically almost identical to the red wolf, thought to be on the brink of extinction in the United States.

These smaller wolves (average weight 60 to 70 pounds), under the right circumstances, will breed with coyotes (usually a young male wolf with a female coyote), the offspring being hybrids.

Some of the earliest hybrids showed up in the Tweed area of southern Ontario, a logical melting pot where coyotes were moving eastward in the early 1900s and the small eastern wolf of Algonquin Park was stressed due to a number of factors.

So, the coyotes that arrived in St. Lawrence County in the 1930s were already an altered species.

Trappers back then called them coy-dogs, and the name stuck; however, today we know you really can't have a self-sustaining coyote-dog hybrid out there because, for one, dogs breed at all times of the year, and pups born in January or February would have little chance of surviving. Also, if dog genes were an important component, we would have coyotes of all shapes, sizes and colors.

That was the essence of my findings 10 years ago. Today, a lot of the earlier DNA research has been confirmed with more studies, and we have learned much more about the ever-changing world of wild canids in the east. One finding is that the wolf of northern Minnesota, and now in Michigan and Wisconsin, is not a pure gray wolf, but a hybrid of the large gray wolf, small eastern wolf and the coyote.

According to the Canadian Natural Resources DNA Profiling and Forensic Center, staffed by noted geneticists, including Dr. White, "In the Great Lakes Region, recent work "¦ suggests that the eastern wolf historically hybridized with both gray wolves and coyotes probably during the last glaciations, about 10,000 years ago.

"Further evidence suggests that eastern wolves have acted as a conduit for gene flow among gray-eastern wolf hybrids and eastern wolf-coyote hybrids."

It is the eastern wolf that now roams southern Quebec and Ontario, the defining line of its northern limit being the northern extent of deer. As deer give way to moose, the bigger gray wolves take over. This is only a natural response, since a healthy moose, when attacked, turns and faces its attackers, using its powerful front legs for defense. It takes a good-sized animal or pack of animals to take a moose down, and then there may even be some casualties among the aggressors.

Deer, on the other hand, run from an attack, making them easily hamstrung and then killed. Both eastern coyotes and eastern wolves rely on deer for food.

What does all this mean to the reader who, like me, is not a geneticist but interested in the mysteries surrounding wild canids in the Northeast? It could be simply this: The coyote-wolf mix is a constantly evolving gene pool where there are no easy answers or labels that can be put on these animals. What we have here in northern New York is a creature of wolf and coyote genetic makeup that has adapted in a 21st century way to modern human activity and is still a creature evolving.

E-mail Dennis Aprill at daprill2000@yahoo.com and check out our Web site at: www.pressrepublican.com/0105_outdoor_perspective for more photos and past articles.