Here is the "other" story that is circulating with this picture
Dan Sorg never expected to encounter a large carnivore while hunting in Susquehanna County on deer season's first day.
Deer, yes. Whitetails for his daughter and her aunt, of course.
But never a wolf. Not in Great Bend Township, near Hallstead.
"I lived in Wyoming (the state) for a while, and I've hunted coyotes, and when I saw this animal coming through the woods I knew it was no coyote," said Sorg, who is from Elk County.
The veteran hunter did not know what materialized in open timber 80 yards in front of him.
"I thought, 'What in the world is this thing?' It was twice as large as a 49-pound male coyote I killed."
Sorb looked for a collar; there was none. He looked for ear tags; nothing. He watched, attentively.
"It had a steady gait, an odd stride. I kept watching it wondering, 'What do I have here?"'
Just before thoughts of wolf flooded his mind, Sorg saw that the animal was injured.
Blood ran from a leg.
Sorg could not shake the outlandish thought - a wolf. In Pennsylvania. Where no wolves are known to roam.
"As a hunter I had the opportunity as well as responsibility to make a decision. I wondered if the injury would prove fatal. I wondered if the animal would become an opportunistic predator," he said.
Old or injured carnivores that can't catch their usual prey often resort to other species in an attempt to satisfy the gnawing hunger that would kill them.
"I wondered if it would eventually end up in town preying on cats, or dogs, or ..." There was a long pause. I knew what Sorg was thinking: "or maybe even children."
Sorg said the animal stretched 6 feet on the ground. On a certified scale it weighed 105 pounds.
"It was healthy; it had been eating well. Its paws were huge," he said. Later, in town, locals confessed they had seen massive tracks for two years, but never glimpsed the wild animal that left them.
Sorg immediately contacted the state Game Commission.
Two days later, agency biologist Tom Hardisky saw a photograph of the animal and spoke with Sorg.
Hardisky explained that coyotes don't achieve that kind of weight, and based on the photo, this animal was not a pure-bred wolf.
"It appears to be a hybrid, a cross between a dog and a wolf, or a dog and a coyote; probably a wolf. The nose on a coyote is elongated. The nose on this animal was kind of short, like you see in a husky or a wolf. It was probably a wolf hybrid," Hardisky said.
Hardisky was about to have DNA testing performed to determine the exact makeup of the beast when he found it was a male that had been neutered.
"It had been in captivity. It either escaped or had been released.
"When we found it had once been a captive animal, we called off the DNA test," Hardisky said.
Sorg wants no notoriety from this; his only intent was a pleasant deer hunt with his family.
Now, the mystery of the hybrid wolf roaming loose remains.
