As a creative exercise I'm writing a little story about a dangerous animal, probably a wolf/chow hybrid, that terrorizes a rural community and kills a bunch of people. It's just a bit of fun to do while I'm between jobs.

Now here's the tricky part. I chose to have it take place in a real-world setting. What I need is an area, roughly 5000 to 10000 square miles with a bunch of rural towns and communities, with a decent sized population that has lots of densely forested, relatively impregnable areas. This is to make sure that after the first attack, this animal isn't just immediately found and culled. I need lots of places for it to be out of sight but also lots of opportunity for it to come in contact with humans.

After doing a little research of my own I'm leaning towards either Alberta or Saskatchewan in Canada or Washington State or Minnesota in the US - mostly because they're well-forested areas where humans and wolves sometimes interact and wolf attacks have taken place. However, I'm from neither areas, nor am I familiar with them. Spending a day looking at Google Maps will only tell you so much about the geography and terrain.

So here's where /out/ comes in, if you're willing. Any outdoorsy types know of a good area to set this story in? As long as it's relatively rural, has a wolf population, has a decent amount of unincorporated communities and has lots of areas for a predator to go missing in, it works for me.