The same phenomenon is apparent with these wolf tales. Some stories about famous wolves are outright lies. Seton claimed that Lobo died of a broken heart. But the skeleton of Lobo, which exists in a museum today, has a fresh bullet hole in the skull. Skeletal remains suggest that the size of renegade wolves was routinely exaggerated.
Some old photos prove that the sex of famous outlaws was improperly reported.
For many different reasons, the people who created these legends just weren't as careful with the facts as they should have been. Yet we should not totally dismiss all tales of outlaw wolves. It is not difficult to understand why so many stories ascribed strange behavior to the old outlaws. Many famous wolves were loners for the obvious reason that the campaign to eradicate wolves had almost been completed. A great many of these wolves operated in the first three decades of the last century, a time when trapping, and particularly poisoning, had almost eliminated all wolves.