The mystery was fun while it lasted, but those curious wolflike creatures spotted on a western Illinois man’s trail cameras appear to be about as common as a critter that wanders suburban backyards.

“We’re basically talking about coyotes here,” said Doug Dufford, an Illinois Department of Natural Resources invasive wildlife manager. He coordinated DNA testing that was conducted by researchers with the Field Museum in Chicago, with assistance from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“We still have to talk about it a little bit in-house,” Dufford said of preliminary results he received in recent days. “But I’m not seeing very much to believe that these things are anything other than coyotes.”

The Field Museum’s lead researcher on the project, Tom Gnoske, confirmed in an email that all the results indicate the animals are coyotes.

Those conclusions have for the most part put to rest the possibility that a wolf pack is roaming in a region of west central Illinois known as Forgottonia, which hasn’t had a confirmed wolf sighting in decades.

Despite the results, the man who sparked interest in the curious canids — a family of carnivorous mammals that include wolves, coyotes, foxes and domestic dogs — remains convinced they are wolves.

“This is a textbook case of denial,” said Jay Smith, a farmer, musician and amateur naturalist from Industry, a tiny town about 235 miles southwest of Chicago. Smith, who started seeing the large, multicolored canids about seven years ago on farmland his wife’s family owns and has spotted them on trail cameras he’s set up, submitted several carcasses of the animals to the Field Museum early this year.

To bolster his contention in the face of the DNA results, Smith said the larger skulls and bone structures of the feet and toes of his animals are strong indicators that they are wolves or a hybrid. He also said the DNA testing is incomplete.

READ MORE: Could there be a wolf pack living in Illinois? Man’s trail camera footage prompts experts to conduct testing »

Dufford and other experts say the animals are still far smaller than a red wolf, which is smaller than other wolf species. Among those experts is David Mech, a senior scientist in biological resources with the U.S. Geological Survey who has studied wolves since 1958.

Dufford did acknowledge that “some indication of ancient wolf” was found in the animals’ DNA and that they have “a limited amount of hybridization with dog.”

Smith cited the ancient wolf DNA as more proof that the animals are wolves — perhaps the virtually extinct red wolf — and that they need legal protection from hunting.

Dufford said virtually all coyotes have small amounts of wolf DNA and that dogs and wolves share about 99 percent of the same DNA.

“The wolf element in the DNA suggests that at some point, a long time ago, a wolf bred with a coyote,” Dufford said, and that breeding might have occurred as far back as 100,000 years ago. “But this has been documented in other coyotes by other researchers.

“If Jay’s animals are red wolves,” Dufford added, “then every coyote in Illinois is a red wolf.”

Wolves, which once roamed throughout the U.S., took on a reputation as livestock thieves as European settlement spread. By the mid-1900s, they were nearly extinct through the help of government extermination programs.

Programs have restored gray wolf populations in western and northern U.S. since then, but they are seen in Illinois. Red wolves remain virtually extinct in the wild, although a restoration program in North Carolina has helped establish and maintain a population of about 50 in the U.S.

Smith believes the wolves never fully vacated Forgottonia, generally west of Springfield, east of the Mississippi River, north of St. Louis and south of Galesburg. He contends that the area is so remote that wildlife biologists have overlooked it.

Dufford said he expected Smith to remain undeterred by the results.

He’s right. Smith said he plans to continue his push to protect the canids roaming Forgottonia and elsewhere until their genetic composition can be subjected to more testing. He plans to reach out to the new governor, J.B. Pritzker, about the issue next year.

“It’s just now getting really fun,” Smith said.

tgregory@chicagotribune.com

Twitter @tgregoryreports