INDIANAPOLIS -- The recent death of a wolf that wandered more than 400 miles from Wisconsin to Indiana has wildlife experts weighing whether more wild wolves might someday return to Indiana forests.

The discovery of the dead wolf was the first confirmed sighting since 1908, raising the prospect that other wolves could return to the state, where they once roamed widely.

"I think it's going to be a remote possibility, but I wouldn't say it was absolutely impossible," said Adrian Wydeven, a Wisconsin state biologist who monitors the population of wolves there.

The 1-year-old, male gray wolf was found dead in an east-central Indiana soybean field in late June. The ear-tagged wolf had traveled more than 400 miles from its pack in central Wisconsin, apparently looking for new territory. Officials said Monday the wolf had been shot to death. They have no leads in the case.

Biologists call such travel "dispersal," usually involving young males seeking out new territory and a mate.

"Once they get out of the heavily forested areas ... they become disoriented and travel great distances in a straight line," Wydeven said.

The wolf apparently traveled through the farmland of southern Wisconsin, skirted around Chicago through northern Illinois and crossed Indiana nearly to Ohio before dying.

Such lengthy journeys are not unheard of, said Ed Bangs, wolf-recovery coordinator for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

"It's a regular part of wolf behavior," Bangs told The Indianapolis Star for a story published Tuesday. "The fact that they head south that far, and through open country, is pretty unusual."

But he does not expect a wolf pack to get started in the fragmented forests of southern Indiana because many wolves that roam such distances die on the journey.

Wolves were hunted, shot and chased out of most of the United States as settlers moved west. By the 1960s, there were believed to be as few as 350 in the lower 48 states, all roaming the woods around the town of Ely in the northeast corner of Minnesota, said Andrea Lorek Strauss, education director for the International Wolf Center in that town.

Wolves were placed on the endangered species list in the 1970s, and their numbers have rebounded. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service downgraded their status to "threatened" in most of the country earlier this year.

If wolves in Wisconsin continue to disperse to the south in search of new territory, Indiana may not have seen the last of them.

"I'd be very surprised if ... a population is established in the state, but only time is going to tell that for sure," said Lori Pruitt, endangered species coordinator with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service office in Bloomington.

Kelle Reynolds, a biologist for the Hoosier National Forest, witnessed a quick spread of wolves through the Upper Peninsula of Michigan when she worked there.

"Personally, I think it would be incredible" if wolves were in the Hoosier National Forest, she said. But, she added, "I don't know what the public would think about it."

Gail Former of rural Spencer would not be pleased.

"I'm not particularly enthused about it because wolves will prey on sheep, which is what I raise," said Former, president of the Indiana Sheep Association. "We have enough of an issue in this state with coyotes and dog packs that run loose. It would be very alarming."