RedWolf_TheOnlyCloseup_Hollis_Buddy_NewtonTX_1March2008_Reel2431.wav

Buddy Hollis [00:00:00] You know, the red wolf was actually, I think, was the smallest of the wolves - weighed about 35 pounds.

Buddy Hollis [00:00:09] I remember when I was a kid, duck hunting down on the coastal prairie. I did not realize at the time, I realized years later, that that was - had to be - red wolves we were looking at, because these dogs - or they weren't dogs either - they had to be the red wolves - I thought at the time they were coyotes, were crossing a dike in the rice fields and doing their little yipping racket. And there was, oh, eight or 10 of them. And that was supposedly the last area where they looked for them. And they were estimating at the time there were about 3000 left and they found three. So that was a pretty bad guess.

Buddy Hollis [00:00:50] And then after I got out of the Navy, this was must have been in 1968. It was, I think it was, the year I went to work for Diamond Shamrock, I was up hunting north of Moss Hill in the Big Thicket. And we were trying a squirrel dog out. And I wasn't hunting, we were trying a squirrel dog. We didn't have any guns because it was April (didn't have a squirrel season in the spring back then) and one of the squirrel dogs came running back with his tail between his legs and this wolf-looking animal, which definitely wasn't a coyote, followed him up right in front of us, stood there and looked at us, and turned around, and ran off.

Buddy Hollis [00:01:29] And I'm pretty sure that was the only closeup that I ever got of what I think was a red wolf.