The Department of Natural Resources has confirmed that an animal found dead in a ditch in Dodge County was a young wolf.

The animal was found Tuesday near Highway G and Hawk Road between Randolph and Beaver Dam.

Jana Hookstead, one of the people who found the wolf and whose husband, Jeff Hookstead, is a veterinarian, said the coloring of the animal was similar to a German shepherd.

"I can tell you one thing," Jeff Hookstead said. "It was not a coyote and it was not a dog. It had huge paws."

He said the animal appeared to be a male that weighed about 60 pounds. A hub cap found near the animal suggested the wolf may have been struck by a car. Hookstead said he determined the animal to be young, based on its teeth.

The carcass was sent to Madison, where officials there concurred that it was a wolf.

"I'm pretty well certain that it is 100 percent wolf," said Adrian Wydeven, a conservation specialist with the DNR.

Wydeven, a wolf specialist and a member of the Wisconsin Wolf Recovery Team, said that wolves are not common in this area, and that the animal found in Dodge County is probably a dispersed wolf from Northern Wisconsin or the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

The nearest known pack of wolves is in Adams County about 75 miles north of Madison, Wydeven said. There are more than 500 wolves in Wisconsin, most of them in northern and western Wisconsin.