Distinctly Montana Magazine

56 D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA N A M A G A Z I N E • FA L L 2 0 2 3 The association with the legend of the shunka warak'in* might be a geographic stretch, since the Ioway Sioux never reached as far West as the Madison Valley. The twentieth century, too, saw plenty of rumors of large freak wolves throughout the Rockies and, indeed, America at large. In 1909 someone killed an enormous black wolf-like animal in Boi- se National Forest. The creature was examined by biologists in Washington D.C., who declared that they hadn't seen anything quite like it except for another anomalous sample also from Ida- ho. As late as 2020, a man in Pennsylvania reported seeing a "cow-sized" hyena-like creature in his headlights before it loped away at what the witness estimated was 30 to 40 mph. Then, in 2007, the "ringdocus", shunka warak'in, whatever it was, was found. Israel Ammon Hutchins's grandson Jack Kir- by discovered that all of Sherwood's taxidermied specimens had been donated to the Idaho Museum of Natural History. He found the beast under a sheet, awaiting its chance to terrify and surprise anew. A special dispensation was arranged to house the remains in the Madison Valley History Museum. You can still see the mon- ster there now. It is, we're told, the most popular exhibit at the museum. But what is it? An interesting but by no means definitive sequel to the 1886 event occurred in May of 2018, when a farmer near Denton shot a strange canid on his property. It had large, upright ears and smallish paws and fangs, and seemed to have a slope to its BEST TATTOO SHOP (406) 586-6404 eastmainink.com 1325 E. Main St. Bozeman, MT *Calling the beast a shunka warak'in is therefore not unlike calling every "Bigfoot" a Sas- quatch, originally a Sts'ailes word for a specific spiritual entity of the Harrison River Valley in British Columbia which has become a catch-all for large hairy men of any description. SURE, IT CO ULD BE AN UGLY WOLF. OR JUST THE RESULT OF OVERHEATED IMAGINATIONS AND IMPERFECT TAXIDERMY. A SIMPLE DNA TEST WOULD GIVE US THE ANSWER. OR AN ANSWER, ANYWAY.

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