The Prison Mirror

Timber Wolves,
the Scourge of
the North

By A. H.

Under the star-studded skies of a moon-drenched wintery night, a big, grey shadowy figure moves lithely across the snow-barren wastes of a lake. He follows the shoreline like a big, dark arrow, trotting against the breeze with his twitching, black nozzle held high in the cold air. Smoke seems to pour forth from his mouth as his hot breath contacts the chilled night air. This alone makes him look formidable and fierce. But his hazel-grey eyes are slightly Jap-like and fiery. His long, red tongue lolls out of the side of his mouth behind long, sharp, ivory-sabered fangs. Slimy froth foams and runs over the corners of his black, velvet-lined lips, dripping in the cold freeze and immediately freezing into an icy crust of beads over the dark grey fur on his massive throat and shoulders, glittering like a silvery bib. He is a thing of beauty in motion. Presently he comes to a stop on the ridge of a drifted snowbank. His big body is tense, he sniffs the air and gazes about: his soul is wild and his brain is slightly demented. his heart has no fear. He takes a step forward and stands with his legs braced apart, and his body trembles as he raises his head and sends forth a long, lonesome howl that echoes and re-echoes from point to point and island to island in the still night. He stands listening momentarily. his big pointed ears cocked forward, but he hears only the echoes of his own howl dying in the far distance. Then he turns and leaves the shoreline and disappears into the dark shadows of the thick pine forests that border the lake.

He is the Timber Wolf and a very dangerous animal to meet at this time of winter. During February the big packs break up. The males and females run off alone in pairs for a day or so and then they in turn separate and the males travel alone in search of other mates. This separation accounts for the wolves howling more during this month than any other to try to locate one another. As a result, they become very bold; they know no fear; they are keen of scent and sight and they will approach any dark object on the ice that moves in a moonlight night. Some hunters have taken advantage of the wolves then, with much success at this time of season: by lying on the ice and rolling and moving about, they have shot them at close range. But some hunters have equally met disaster, too, by shooting a female and packing it home through the forests, only to have a big male catch the scent and stalk the hunter, unaware, and pull him down from behind.

Many hair-raising stories can be heard told by white residents and Indian guides and trappers living in the Lake-of-the-Woods and Kenora districts. about hunters', trappers. and mushers' encounters with the big Timber Wolf packs.

Even the best of experienced woodsmen fear the big packs, as do the northern sled dogs. the dogs more so, for some reason beyond my experience and comprehension. The dogs can detect the presence of a pack of wolves at a great distance. They stop and look in their direction, and later

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TIMBER WOLVES, THE SCOURGE OF THE NORTH
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they will mush along all the faster without urging. But when they stop and whine and refuse to mush, the musher knows then that the pack is nearby. The little dogs become pitiful; they tangle in their harness and look to their master for protection.

That the Timber Wolf is a ferocious and powerful animal is evident by his own accomplishments. His size makes him a thing to fear. His jaws are powerful and his body is all sinew. He weighs one hundred to one hundred and twenty-five pounds. When trapped he'll gnaw in two a good-sized drag stake of oak or ash where the chain of the trap is secured, or chew off his paw, or do whatever he chooses to free himself. If snared, which isn't often, he'll chew and tug at a strong cable till the steel strands kink and snap.

When a pack of wolves travel they walk or trot in single file. They step in the same tracks made by the leader. There are usually nineteen or twenty of them in a pack: sometimes they number more. And only when they bed down for some rest, or when they pursue a deer, or when they are on the verge of attacking some trapper, hunter or traveling musher, do they break formation.

The deer is the wolf's staple diet. Though the deer is a strategist of escape, alert, swift and fleet of foot in the forests, it is only a matter of time until the swiftest of the pack will catch up with it and pull it down. During the winter a deer has no chance at all of escaping wolves. When a pack pursues it, it is marked for certain death. In the summer the deer can head for water; the wolf is a slow swimmer, but the deer is fast in the water and it can swim from island to island and escape.

The wolves have a system for catching a deer. Three of the pack work together. Two flank the deer at a distance to keep it in a straight course of flight, the third pursues it directly and pulls it down. Then the closely following pack closes in for the feast. Without first killing the animal, they began eating on it alive, tearing at its flanks, back, front shoulders or neck in wolf fashion of eating. In some instances, after having killed two or three deer and not quite having eaten enough, they have pulled down a large deer and eaten only a small part of it, enough to cripple the animal, and left it to its fate to die a lingering death. But with the tender and choice fawns and yearlings even the bones are crunched up. Nothing is left. If one were to view the spot afterward where a killing was made, one would be awed to see only the evidence of bloody snow and hunks of fur scattered about.

The moose may be considered the monarch of the forests, but they are no exception for the wolves to pull down. The big bulls with their enormous size and weight and mighty antlers, will fall to a pack of wolves as easily as does a deer. The bear is the only animal not molested by the wolves. When they meet, the bear and wolves go on their respective ways. But the little Brush Wolves the big Timbers have virtually killed off wherever they are present. Somehow they dislike their smaller cousins.

During the past decade a darker colored wolf has appeared in the Kenora and Lake-of-the-Woods regions. They are very noticeable with the packs in that they are almost black. The trappers and hunters and Indian guides say they are much bolder than the grays, and, as a result, they consider them very dangerous. They believe these wolves have made their way southward from the Arctic.

The wolf has added much to the romance of the North. To hear them howl at night is a sound that sends shivers up the spines of even seasoned woodsmen. To actually see them is a fearful sight. They neither slink away nor approach, but they stand together motionless, and it is hard to reason what they will do, just as it is hard to reason what a dog will do that does not wag its tail.

Along in April or the first part of May, the female wolf selects an abandoned bear's den at the edge of a swamp or under the upturned sod and roots of a wind-felled tree deep in the forests, to have her cubs - sixty-three days after mating. She does not bother to line her den with grass or foliage, but on the contrary, she cleans everything out. The bare earth is the nest of the new-born cubs, which number up to six or seven in a big litter. Here she cares for them tenderly and carefully as any domesticated dog does her pups. Occasionally she leaves them alone to hunt and feed herself. Never venturing too far, she hunts in the direction the wind is blowing to keep a watchful scent over her litter. She'll attack any animal that dares to venture near her den. But oddly, against man she'll slink away and flee till it is safe to return.

The cubs at first look pretty much like domesticated puppies in form. Their bodies are round and chubby and their faces are short and blunt. But they grow fast and in a few weeks change to their true characteristic type. When they are big and strong enough and began to venture out of their den and follow their mother about, she weans and starves them till they are very thirsty. Then she leads them to water, to a nearby creek or lake, to drink. There she watches them very closely, and if she sees one or two or the whole litter lapping the water, she kills them immediately, because a true wolf sucks water when it drinks, like a horse or cow. Only the true Timber Wolves grow up.