She Boasted About Killing a Wolf. It Was a Husky

A Montana woman who boasted on Facebook about killing a wolf pup was told by outraged readers that she had actually killed a dog. "So this morning I set out for a solo predator hunt for a fall black bear. However, I got the opportunity to take another predator wolf pup," Amber Rose Barnes wrote Friday, sharing photos of herself posing with a dead, skinned Siberian husky. "2022 was a great feeling to text my man and say I just smoked a wolf pup." Fellow Facebook users said the animal was clearly a dog and some called for the 36-year-old's hunting license to be revoked, the Guardian reports.

The Flathead County Sheriff's Office said 19 husky and shepherd mixes were abandoned last week in the Doris Creek area of the Flathead National Forest, the same area where Barnes was hunting, NBC Montana reports. Officials said a local picked up 11 of the dogs Friday, and several more were found by animal control workers. "During this investigation, we were advised through Montana Fish Wildlife and Parks that one of the dogs may have been shot," the sheriff's office said. "The person who is believed to have shot the dog has been identified."

The sheriff's office said authorities are trying to identify the person or persons who abandoned the dogs. In subsequent Facebook posts, Barnes admitted mistaking the husky for a wolf but said she shot the the animal in self-defense because it was "growling howling and coming at me like it was going to eat me," Fox reports. She said she "would still have shot it because it was aggressive and coming directly for me." (More Montana stories.)