Distinctly Montana Magazine

55 w w w. d i s t i n c t l y m o n t a n a . c o m I N THE 1880S, THE MADISON VALLEY WAS STILL SPARSELY SETTLED BY WHITES. The hardy souls who made a go of liv- ing there learned to sleep lightly. They listened for the baying of distant wolves, and prayed they stayed distant. Something had been claiming livestock across the valley, and the loss of a cow or two opened the door to destitution. When Israel Ammon Hutchins, Mormon settler to the Val- ley, heard a howl, bark, or even a yip, he was used to grabbing the rifle off the wall and storming out of the house, prepared to defend his livestock. But in 1886, he began to hear cries that sounded less like a howl than a long, keening wail. Hutchins found himself less willing than usual to rush outside. No coward, he summoned the guts to run outside and saw something chas- ing his wife's geese. He leveled his rifle, aimed down the sights, and pulled the trigger. His shot missed the creature but fatally wounded one of his own cows. The snarling attacker ran into the night, unfazed. The next time he saw it, he was luckier. His shot hit the beast. According to Israel's son, the animal tried to attack the Hutchins family in its last moments, tearing through a half-inch rope in one champing bite. He said it bled to death trying to reach and attack the family. The strange thing was that the animal didn't look like a wolf so much as a strange hyena, with short legs and an odd, sloping back. The coat was nearly black, but a hint of stripes seemed to be visible on its flanks. As you can imagine, word circulated about the beast—the creature who had been menacing local livestock for months was dead. And it was weird—although they might have guessed as much from its terrifying, almost feminine scream. By chance, the body of the creature was viewed by amateur taxidermist Joseph Sherwood, who offered Hutchins a cow for the oddity. Along with a sawmill and post office, the entrepre- neurial Sherwood operated a combination grocery store and museum in Henrys Lake, Idaho, and he thought that the beast would make a fearsome exhibit. Using knowledge gleaned from a correspondence course in taxidermy, he mounted the creature on display, with a snarling expression still affixed to his now rig- id snout. There the creature, which Sherwood dubbed a "ringdocus," terrified and fascinated the curious until about 1980. When it disappeared. For years the only evidence that it had ever existed, outside the memory of those who had seen it, was a grainy photograph taken and published in a 1977 book entitled Trails to Nature's Mysteries: The Life of a Working Naturalist written by Hutchins's grandson. Yet even after the creature disappeared, its legend grew. Writer and cryptozoologist Loren Coleman speculated that perhaps the beast is related to the Ioway Sioux myth of the shun- ka warak'in, "carries off dogs" in English. The Sioux were scared of a creature that sometimes snatched unwary dogs and took them away, presumably to dine on them. by JOSEPH SHELTON photos by TOM RATH

• Cover