Wild, and sometimes true, stories from the wildlife department

Bridget Bese

Tue, May 13 2008

— By Bridget Bese
Staff Writer

In his working years, Woodward’s David Kirk has seen and heard a lot of things that could only be described as “wild.”
“I’ve been on (at the Department of Wildlife Conservation) almost 30 years . . . and you would not believe some of the calls,” said Capt. David Kirk, district chief. “And some of them were true!”
Kirk’s stories ranged from reports and sightings of wildlife slightly out of its home area to exotic wildlife foreign to North America.
In the 1980s Kirk received a report of a bull moose in eastern Beaver County.
“I didn’t believe it until I went and saw him,” said Kirk.
When Kirk answered the report by making a visit what graced his eyes was, indeed, a medium sized bull moose.
“We’re not for sure where exactly it came from,” said Kirk.
Kirk said the moose eventually meandered down into the Texas panhandle where it lived for a short time with a large herd of Hereford cattle. The moose then came back into Oklahoma, crossed Kansas and finally ended up in Colorado where, sadly, it was poached.
When the poachers were caught and the moose’s body was confiscated, the wardens discovered the moose had brain worms which may have been a factor in the moose’s wandering out of habitat.
According to Kirk another animal that wanders into Oklahoma occasionally is the elk, or wapiti.
Kirk said there were so many elk in Cimarron County several years ago, a short elk season was opened to hunters.
Black bears are not commonly associated with Oklahoma but, according to Kirk, they aren’t completely foreign to the state.
“In the panhandle we’ve got a pretty good resident population out there,” said Kirk.
Wolverines are a common reported sighting but a confirmed sighting has yet to be public knowledge.
Kirk said what many perceive as wolverines are usually badgers which are from the same family.
Wildlife sightings can be tricky, according to Kirk. Misidentification is very common as the human brain can easily misinterpret what the eye sees at a glance.
“The worst evidence of something being there is an eyewitness,” said Kirk. The presence of animals are better identified by tracks or other clues left by the animal itself.
Someone once reported sighting a kangaroo north of Beaver. A kangaroo was never found but there was a large population of mule deer in the area at the time. Kirk explained that mule deer have a springy, bouncing method of travel and a mule deer bounding along through a field of tall grass or other crop could look similar to the kangaroo, native to Australia.
There are times when a strange animal is reported and, though the animal is never found, the evidence is.
Kirk said he knew a warden who got a call from someone who reported seeing a python. When the warden answered the call he did not find a python in the area but he did find a track that appeared to have been made by a large, large snake.
Another python was reported by a fisherman who said he saw it in a pond south of Fargo.
“There’s always that few, kind of like a UFO,” said Kirk. “That few you can’t explain.”
While pythons are not native to this area of the world Kirk explained that many people who get large snakes for pets decide to let them go when they find out how difficult they are to care for.
In fact, according to Kirk, a lot of strange animal calls are linked to pet owners releasing, or losing track of, their exotic pets.
The Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation caught a piranha in Kaw Lake and another in a river near Sand Springs. The “toothy fish,” as Kirk called them, were most likely released by someone who owned piranhas and decided they no longer wanted to care for them.
People who reported spotting a Bighorn sheep in the Gloss Mountains were not far off track. An exotic barbary sheep, which could easily be mistaken for a Bighorn sheep, did spend some time living in the Gloss Mountains. The sheep, explained Kirk, most likely escaped from someone who raised the exotic species.
Kirk said the white deer that has been seen by many near Woodward is quite possibly a type of exotic deer, such as a fallow, that has escaped from someone raising them.
Piranhas, pythons and exotic deer are not the most commonly reported animals in Oklahoma.
“Most of the calls we’ve had have been cat related,” said Kirk.
Kirk said mountain lion calls are common but almost always refuted. The animals most commonly mistaken for mountain lions are coyotes and bobcats. Someone once reported a black panther that turned out to be a seven pound black house cat, said Kirk.
Larry Weimers of the Department of Wildlife Conservation said it is important to take every call seriously no matter how outlandish it may seem.
Weimers recalled a story of a woman in Hugo who called the police because there was an elephant in her garden. The dispatcher did not believe the caller but received a call a few minutes later from Carson and Barnes Circus. One of their elephants had escaped.

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