Yes, Wolverines Lived In Michigan

Wildlife authorities have claimed for years that the wolverine is Michigan's official state animal, yet the furbearer has never lived here. The "experts" are wrong on both counts. State Sen. John Toepp of Cadillac says that while Michigan is known as "The Wolverine State," the Michigan Legislature never did get around to officially adopting this largest member of the weasel family as the state animal. Several years ago, Sen. Oscar "Bud" Bouwsma of Muskegon pushed a bilí through the Senate to honor the timber wolf but the House of Representatives never got around to following up on it. What about scientific claims the animal never lived here? October 8, 1871, a week beI fore the famed Peshtigo fire killed 1,500 Wisconsin residents, a strange animal carne splashing across the Menominee River into Michigan. George Primo, a lad of 15, was watching a parade of wildlife fleeing ahead of one of the uncontrolled Wisconsin I fires. Though familiar with I nearly all forms of wildlife, he I saw one he couldn't identify. The peculiar animal carne I ashore, tired from its swim, I and wandered up behind a I French trapper's cabin where I the family dog was sleeping. I Dog and intruder were imI mediately battling and the I trapper's wife saw the dog I was getting f ar worst of it. I She and George both grabbed I clubs and went to the dog's I aid, finally killing the strange I animal. wnen the trapper returnedl a few days later, he told George it was a "carcajou," a word that meant nothing Uil years later when he entered a Marquette barbershop and saw an identical animal mounted on a shelf. It was a wolverine, said the barber. Primo, a trapper and hunter, related his story to Ford Kellum in 1945 when the men were neighbors in the little town of Amasa in Iron County of the Upper Península. A keen student of nature. Keilum wrote up an elabórate account of Primo 's story for his files. A retired wildlife biologist now living in Traverse City, Kellum also has an account in ■ his files of another wolverine I that was in Michigan. A MilI waukee newspaper, on March I 20, 1860, reported the taking I of a strange animal by a Gej; man trapper "at Marquette, near Lake Superior." Dr. VVilliam Burt, mammologist at the University of Michigan, obtaining a description of it, declared it could have been nothing but a wolverine. Wolverines are known wanderers. Prefering the wilds of jCanada, they have periodically shown up in northerly states in the past 10 or 15 years. One was killed in South Dakota in the mid-1960's while several were shot in " Minnesota, one as recently as March 1971. Lynx, a member of the wild cat family, were missing from Michigan for years but have infiltrated the U.P. wilds again. Since both lynx and wolverines inhabit similar áreas, there is little reason to believe that wolverines should not be back in Michigan, too. This reasoning was strengthened last montU when Jack Harvey of Traverse City reported he had seen a wolverine about 50 miles west of St. Ignace while deer hunting 15 years ago. He said he watched it cross US-2 and a railroad track. Harvey indicated the animal he saw was identical in size and shape to a mounted specimen owned by Dr. Gary Kaberle, a Traverse City dentist, although the coloring was slightly different. The Kaberle wolverine is well over 100 years old. It was purchased by his grandfather from Lansing's first mayor, I Charles J. Davis, as part of an "all-Michigan collection of I mounted wildlife." Davis, a I close friend of wildlife auI thority and painter John I James Audubon, had the verine and many other specimens on display at his home, then across from the present site of Sparrow Hospital. Kaberle believes his I rine may well have been one killed by Audubon in Michigan and used as a model for one of the famous paintings in I "Quadrupeds of North America" by Audubon and Bachman. Evidence is strong, therefore, that the wolverine not only once lived in Michigan years ago but may even be making a secretive comeback in portions of the wild Upper Península. But, it is still not the "official" state animal.