Prairie wolf

“ The prairie wolf is said to be wonderfully cunning and sagacious. Instances have been known of his burrowing under ground to procure the bait from a trap, rather than run the chance of being caught above. Many and curious are the devices prepared to ensnare this animal, but very few have succeeded. This variety of wolf is common in the prairies of the western country, where it hunts deer by running them down. Sometimes a large number associate together, and, forming a crescent, creep slowly towards a herd of deer, so as not to alarm them. ”

“ She came on uncertainly, but always running away from the howls of the wolves, and just before she reached the little creek, she stopped and looked back, as if for a sight of pursuers--and there were pursuers. Perhaps a hundred yards back of her I saw four or five slinking dark forms; for the cowardly prairie wolf becomes bold when fled from, and partly out of curiosity, and perhaps looking forward to a feast on some dead or dying animal, they were stalking the girl, silent, shadowy, evil, and maybe dangerous. ”

“ The connecting link between the prairie wolf and the domestic dog is the cur found among the Indians. The Indian cur, by a casual observer, could be easily mistaken for a prairie wolf. Near the Rocky Mountains, and in them, these animals are found of immense size; but, being cowardly, they are not dangerous. The first night a person sleeps on a prairie is ever afterwards vividly impressed upon his memory. The serenade of the wolves with which he is honored, is apt to be distinctly remembered. It is far from agreeable, and seldom fails to awaken unpleasant forebodings concerning the future ”

“ I have seen numbers of this species on the battle-field, tearing at corpses, as far south as the valley of Mexico itself. Its name of prairie-wolf is, therefore, in some respects inappropriate, the more so as the larger wolves are also inhabitants of the prairie. No doubt this name was given it, because the animal was first observed in the prairie country west of the Mississippi by the early explorers of that region. In the wooded countries east of the great river, the common large wolf only is known. ”

“ Although the wolves of America are the most daring of all the beasts of prey on that continent, they are by no means so courageous or ferocious as those of Europe, particularly in Spain or the south of France, in which countries they commit dreadful ravages both on man and beast; whereas a prairie wolf, except forced by desperation, will seldom or never attack a human being. ”

“ The Prairie Wolf has much resemblance to the Common Grey Wolf in colour; but differs from it so much in size, voice, and manners, that it is fully entitled to rank as a distinct species. It inhabits the plains of the Missouri and Saskatchewan, and also, though in smaller numbers, those of Columbia. On the banks of the Saskatchewan, these animals start from the earth in great numbers on hearing the report of a gun, and gather around the hunter in expectation of getting the offal of the animal he has slaughtered. They hunt in packs, and are much more fleet than the Common Wolf. ”

“ The locust is frequent; many varieties of oak, the red bud, cotton wood, and many other trees festooned with vines of every tint and variety.
I wished much to see a prairie wolf, and looked out eagerly among the forests in vain. Just now a man who was looking to the shore exclaimed ‘There’s a wolf!’ he pointed to the spot, where some dark animal was cowering under a log. My companion declared it was a pig, and some one else a dog, whatever it was, it soon run away into the forest. I declared it should be a wolf, and to please me, it was unanimously voted a prairie wolf. ”

“ Our situation indeed in respect to such visits was peculiar, for from the plain that lay on one side there came the gray or prairie wolf, and from the forest opposite, his fierce brother, the black or timber wolf. The first was a cowardly brute, hardly above a chicken in courage, and given to pilfering about the stables and hen-houses, though sometimes venturing as far as the kitchen if there was anything it could steal. The timber-wolf was larger, and when hungry would attack animals ten times its size. ”

“ There are several species of wolves in North America: one, a large, black animal, which inhabits the forests; and another, much smaller, which hunts the bison and deer in vast packs across the prairie, and is called the prairie-wolf. Like the wolf of Europe, the black wolf is a fierce, dangerous creature, and equally cowardly. When driven into the corner of a hut, as has sometimes occurred, or when caught in a trap, he will not attempt to defend himself against any person who may enter to destroy him. ”

“ The carcasses of the buffaloes killed in the vicinity of the camp had drawn about it an unusual number of wolves, who kept up the most forlorn concert of whining yells, prolonged into dismal cadences and inflexions, literally converting the surrounding waste into a howling wilderness. Nothing is more melancholy than the midnight howl of a wolf on a prairie. What rendered the gloom and wildness of the night and the savage concert of the neighboring waste the more dreary to us, was the idea of the lonely and exposed situation of our young and inexperienced comrade. ”

“ The wolf-traps are made of heavy steel and have two springs, each of one hundred pounds power. They are set in fours around a buried bait, and after being strongly fastened to concealed logs are carefully covered in cotton and in fine sand so as to be quite invisible. A prairie wolf was caught in one of these. I killed him with a club and throwing him aside proceeded to reset the trap as I had done so many hundred times before. ”

“ The prairie wolf is the most numerous and mischievous. Deer, as the Indians retire, grow more plenty, and are frequently seen in flocks feeding near the herds of cattle. There is a species of mole found here, and indeed in all the western and southern country, called gopher. These animals live in communities, and build small eminences of a circular form and about a foot high. They are mischievous in potatoe fields and gardens. ”

“ Old Ma Wolf a Jealous Mother.
“All my sheep, gather in a heap, for I spy the woolly, woolly wolf,” shouted an urchin standing in front of the wolf dens in the New York Zoölogical Park recently, when some of his playmates gathered in the park to watch the animals. The wolves he spied are Cherokee, Seneca, and Iroquois, latest arrivals in the prairie-wolf pack, and they are just as limber and wild as the Indians used to be on the plains of North Dakota, from which Minnehaha, the mother wolf, came to the park a few years ago. ”

“ The bounties supplied the wolvers with sustenance, and the capture of the brutes gave them sport for which they gave up their ambition to become men of substance and position in the community.
The trappers and hunters were wandering strangers in the lands where they had swept the wild life from the very horizons, so that the passing tourists could roll in automobiles from range to range of prairie, mountains, and, looking with all the eyes that they had, still fail to discover a sign of any life larger than prairie-dogs, save for an occasional lank, hungry, thirsty and fugitive jack-rabbit. ”

“ The waggon horses were in Denver, and when we tried to get the others to pull the dead beast away, they only kicked and plunged, so we managed to get it outside the shed, and according to Mr. Kavan's prediction, a pack of wolves came down, and before daylight nothing was left but the bones. They were so close to the cabin that their noise was most disturbing, and on looking out several times I could see them all in a heap wrangling and tumbling over each other. They are much larger than the prairie wolf, but equally cowardly, I believe. ”

“ The Black Father has often told me that among the southern men there are dogs who can follow the foot of a man by day or night, and will never leave the scent till they seize him. If an antelope is wounded, the wolf will hunt the track of her blood on the prairie till he finds her; if a bison is killed, turkey buzzards, many in number, fly from far to to the carcass, though there is no trail in the air for them to follow. ”

“ The feathered tribe, rabbits, prairie dogs and bob cats interested me for a while, but soon my thoughts became centered on wolves. Indeed, they are extremely interesting, and I was not long in discovering that it would be necessary to cope with animals of almost human intelligence. Too, they were quite plentiful — could be seen any day while riding over the plains — and night they made hideous with their howls. Would I hunt them with horse an gun, horse an dogs, or attempt to trap them? ”

“ They frequent the mountains, they gallop over the plains, they skulk through the valleys, they dwell everywhere—everywhere the wolf seems equally at home.
In North America two very different kinds are known. One is the “prairie” or “barking” wolf, which we have already met with and described. The other species is the “common” or “large” wolf; but it is not decided among naturalists that there are not several distinct species of the latter. At all events, there are several varieties of it—distinguished from each other in size, colour, and even to some extent in form. ”

“ When this wolf can not find a natural hollow to suit him, nor evict some unhappy hare, prairie-dog, or badger, he digs for himself a dry burrow, or perhaps a den among loose rocks. The butte districts of the upper Missouri and the lower Colorado valleys are, therefore, his strongholds. There the decay of sandstone strata, or the breakage due to volcanic eruptions and upheavals, give him the choice of a large number of crannies, while the desolation and remoteness of wide tracts, untenanted by men, afford him the seclusion he loves. ”

“ Were it valuable, thousands of hides might be saved that are annually left to the wolves upon the Prairies.
Although the buffalo is the largest, he has by no means the control among the prairie animals: the sceptre of authority has been lodged with the large gray wolf. Though but little larger than the wolf of the United States, he is much more ferocious. The same species abound throughout the north of Mexico, where they often kill horses, mules and cattle of all sizes; and on the Prairies they make considerable havoc among the buffalo. ”

“ The fellow went off at a limping gallop, and Bell after it, squatting whenever the Wolf stopped to look at him; but at last the rascal lost himself in a deep ravine, and a few minutes after we saw him emerge from the shrubs some distance off, and go across the prairie towards the river. Bell saw two others afterwards, and if ever there was a country where Wolves are surpassingly abundant, it is the one we now are in. Wolves are in the habit of often lying down on the prairies, where they form quite a bed, working at bones the while. We found a nest of the Prairie Lark, with four eggs. ”

“ Its food consists mainly of small rodents and birds, such as it can dig up from the ground, or waylay by cat-like maneuvers. Preferring to live on a diet of such animals as it is enabled to capture and kill, it resorts to many schemes and tricks to satisfy its desire for fresh meat. Field mice and gophers living in shallow burrows, fall an easy prey to its diggings. Prairie dogs and cotton tails are waylaid at their place of refuge, and grouse and small birds are pounced upon when they venture too near its place of ambush. ”

“ In the '70's, and even in the early '80's, many tens of thousands of wolves were killed by the wolfers in Montana and northern Wyoming and western Dakota. Nowadays the surviving wolves of the plains have learned caution; they no longer move abroad at midday, and still less do they dream of hanging on the footsteps of hunter and traveler. Instead of being one of the most common they have become one of the rarest sights of the plains. A hunter may wander far and wide through the plains for months nowadays and never see a wolf, though he will probably see many coyotes. ”

“ The wolves often crossed his snow-shoe trail, or followed it swiftly to see whither it led. For a wolf, like a farm dog, is never satisfied till he knows the ways of every living thing that crosses his range. Following the broad trail Wayeeses would find here a trapped animal, struggling desperately with the clog and the cruel gripping teeth, there the flayed carcass of a lynx or an otter, and yonder the leg of a dog or a piece of caribou meat hung by a cord over a runway, with the snow disturbed beneath it where the deadly trap was hidden. ”

“ His choice habitat is the sage-brush plain, and the grassy undulations of the great Columbia River basin. The mountains and their rough and sunless canyons are the habitat of the large dark-gray wolf. He also loves the depressions in the high mountain ranges where there exists usually an alternation of marsh and thick forest. His dismal howl may nearly always be heard amid the solemn stillness of these places. It was and still is dangerous to tether or hobble your horse in such a place, as the early immigrants learned to their sorrow. Many a fine animal was hamstrung or seriously wounded. ”

“ Large packs of these wolves often follow the deer, their usual prey, to the foothills and outlying settlements. While the wolf in this country is not considered an animal dangerous to man, yet, when driven from his mountain home by hunger, and he assembles in packs in the foothills and low grounds, he may be and probably is dangerous. An experienced hunting friend of mine of the name of Taylor lived on a ranch, in the early pioneer days, about a mile south of the now busy and prosperous town of North Bend, in King County. ”