By Heather Smith Thomas
An eastern Idaho ranch family was devastated in late summer this year when they discovered one of their favorite horses had been killed by a pack of wolves. “He was one of our top horses for many years, but he was getting older and we’d put him out for full retirement,” says Sydney Dowton (Ellis, Idaho). “We took him to a pasture on our upper place and he’d been doing really well. We saw him a few days earlier and he was fat as a seal and doing fine.”
After discovering the carcass, they called Eric Simonson (federal trapper). He came out to the ranch to examine the carcass and confirmed it was a wolf kill. “We don’t know if maybe the fires caused the wolves to move closer to us. We are right over the hill from that big fire that burned a lot of the region around Ketchum and Challis.”
His wife Karen was taking it hard. “She went back up there and took photos, and was pretty upset at what the wolves did to that horse,” says Sydney.<<<Read More>>>
