Timber wolf

“ Finally I reached the great belt of pine and fir forest which, owing to its density, was already dark. Here no faint light of moon or star might penetrate and here, off to one side, I heard the abrupt and warning howl of a great timber wolf, disturbed in its quest, uttering the far-reaching call of the pack and of the hunt! No casual wail of protest to the moon, this, but the fierce call that comes in the early dusk when unexpected prey has been sighted and hunger lends desperate courage to attack. ”

“ And across from me, on the other side of the fire, a huge, tawny timber wolf stalked into the circle of fire and stood with its malevolent green eyes fixed unwinkingly upon me.
"The brute was larger than any timber wolf I had ever seen or heard of, and much darker in color. The lips were curled in a hellish caricature of a smile, and a low snarl came from its slavering mouth. For one long moment I eyed the brute and it eyed me back. And then, suddenly, through the leaping flames and the showering sparks, the monster sprang for me!
"Instinctively I crouched, protecting my throat. ”

“ Never in all his daredevil life had Babe Deveril made pretense at striking the angelic attitude. Now, in a rush of feeling, he grew black with anger and there came a look into his eyes which put the hottest flush of all her life into Lynette's cheeks, as he cried out:
"Tamed you, has he? So Timber-Wolf has taken a mate after the fashion of wolves! And I, fool that I was, let you slip through my fingers!"
She did not answer him. Had she answered she could have said: "You could have returned to fight with him; man to man and him wounded! ”

“ The great timber wolf of the central and northern chains of the Rockies and coast ranges is in every way a more formidable creature than the buffalo wolf of the plains, although they intergrade. The skins and skulls of the wolves of north-western Montana and Washington which I have seen were quite as large and showed quite as stout claws and teeth as the skins and skulls of Russian and Scandinavian wolves, and I believe that these great timber wolves are in every way as formidable as their Old World kinsfolk. ”

“ These timber wolves of the north are immensely interesting brutes, tireless, powerful, unbelievably cunning. To follow their trail is to have increasing respect for their keenness, their vim, their hair-trigger way of meeting any emergency. Once when I was tracking a solitary dog wolf, an uncommonly big brute, and lazy after eating his fill of venison, I came out of the woods to a frozen lake, and saw him ambling along near shore a few hundred yards ahead of me. He happened to be passing under an icy ledge, utterly unsuspicious of man or danger, when a bullet struck the ice, ping! ”

“ There is only a slight puncture, under which a few red drops are frozen in a hollow lapped by a wolf’s tongue. So far as we can discover, the only serious wound on the body is that broken back, with its mute testimony to the power of a timber wolf’s snap. ”

“ Standing is dead it's up to you to keep on the move! As for me, I never met up with a sweeter travelling companion, nor yet with a nervier, nor yet, by God, with a lovelier! Say the word, Lynette Brooke, and we strike on together, over the ridge and deeper into the wilderness, headed for the land beyond Buck Valley, beyond Big Bear Creek. For the wild lands beyond the last holdings of the late Timber-Wolf, to be on the ground when Mexicali Joe leads Taggart and Gallup and Shipton to his gold! ”

“ Though the timber-wolf is a fast traveller, it cannot out-distance the greyhound or wolf hound; but though it is seldom seen in water it is a good swimmer. Its weight may run from seventy-five to one hundred and fifty pounds, and an extra large wolf may stand close to thirty inches at the shoulder, and be over five feet in length. In colour they range from white to nearly black, but the ordinary colour is a light brownish gray. Usually they mate in February, but whether or not for life, it is hard to say. They breed in a hollow log, or tree or stump, or in a hole in the ground, or in a cave. ”

“ Our pioneers brought many harrowing wolf tales with them to the New World, and promptly applied them to the timber wolf, a more powerful beast than his European relative, but wholly guiltless, I think, of the charge of eating human flesh even in a season of famine. Neither in our own country nor in Canada, so far as I can learn by searching, is there a single trustworthy record to [69] indicate that our wolves have ever killed a man. ”

“ So hard had that blow been, so tremendous had been the crash against rock and earth when the [Pg 155] flung body struck, there appeared to be but a pale flame of life, flickering wanly, in Deveril's body. Timber-Wolf came and stood over him and over Lynette, gloating, mumbling; muttering while his great chest heaved: "Little rat that he is! A man to take advantage when he found me down; a man to cheat me of the she-cat that shot me. I could crush him into the dirt with my boot heel...." ”

“ The European wolf, if one may judge him by a slight acquaintance, is essentially like our timber wolf; but his natural timidity has been modified by frequent famines, and especially by dwelling near unarmed peasant folk who are mortally afraid of him. In the summer he lives shyly in the solitudes, where he finds enough mice, grubs, and such small deer to satisfy his appetite. In winter he is always hungry, and when hunger approaches the starvation point he descends from his stronghold to raid the farms. ”

“ He did not waste another good log on it, for his fear was dissipated now; a timber wolf was a timber wolf, and it might sit there as long as it pleased, provided it did not try to steal his catch. No alarm was in him any more. He knew that wolves were harmless in the summer and autumn, and even when “packed” in the winter, they would attack a man only when suffering desperate hunger. So he lay and watched the beast, threw bits of stick in its direction, even talked to it, wondering only that it never moved. ”

“ Two male and two female eastern timber wolves (Canis lupus lycaon) , live-trapped in Minnesota were released in March 1974 near Huron Mountain in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Their movements were monitored by aerial radio-telemetry. ”

“ For I don't know what sleight-of-hand you may have acquired these later years, and I don't trust you, my sweet kinsman! And shoot fast, as some one's coming."
For both had heard the rattle of hoofs in the road outside, as some horseman came racing up to the door.
"Name it, then," cried Deveril, and shot the coin, spinning, upward.
"Heads!" Timber-Wolf named it. "Always heads. My motto there, Kid!" ”

“ The Wolf belongs to the dog family and is found throughout the greater part of North America, also in Europe and Asia, and parts of South America. There are many varieties, varying greatly in size and color, but there are probably only two distinct species, namely, the timber wolf and the prairie wolf, commonly called the coyote. Of the timber wolves, we have in this country, the following varieties; the small dark grey or black wolf of Florida and southeastern United States, the red wolf or southern Texas; the brindled wolf of Mexico, the light grey wolf of the central plains region ”

“ What I'm thinking of is a real timber wolf, not one of the slinking coyotes you see every once in a while. There is no animal I'd go farther out of my way to avoid than a hungry timber wolf, and anybody else who knows anything at all about them will tell you the same thing. ”

“ You know...."
"By the living Lord," broke in Taggart. "That's right square in Bruce Standing's country!"
Again Joe cackled.
"You know whole lot; you don't know ever'thing! Timber-Wolf's lands run like this." (One could imagine a grimy forefinger set in a dirty palm.) "His line, here. My mine, she's just the other side. Nobody's land; gover'ment land." He chuckled. "An' ol' big Timber-Wolf, he goin' cry ... boo-hoo-hoo! ... when he find out we got gold not mile an' half from his line!"
Deveril was twitching at Lynette's sleeve. ”

“ The sense of isolation was intensified by frequently recurring incidents in which the dangers of pioneer life became manifest. The dark, mysterious forest might send forth from its depths at any moment the menace of savage beast or relentless man.
The big, grey, timber wolf still roamed the woods, although it soon disappeared before the oncoming wave of invading settlers. Generally quite shy, they required some unusual attraction to induce them to display their voices. ”

“ I mention this incident because our timber wolf, the great red-deer destroyer, may be poisoned or trapped, yet, owing to his keen smelling powers, hearing, and sneaking ability, very few sportsmen—yes, very few of even the most experienced trappers—have ever had the satisfaction of stinging him with a bullet. ”

“ The lighter and swifter grey hounds, as a rule, are the first to overtake the wolf and by coming up alongside and snapping at his flanks, force him to turn and face them, thus giving the heavier and fiercer wolf hounds a chance to close in and grapple with and kill the wolf. Unless the dogs are well trained and very courageous, a large timber wolf often proves more than a match for the bunch of four or five dogs. ”

“ Wolf movement is greatly hindered by deep, soft snow, so during winter travel, wolves frequently use areas where they sink into the snow the least. In our study area, frozen waterways are used extensively where possible, just as reported by Stenlund (1955) . Where few lakes or rivers exist, wolves follow railroad beds and logging roads, often soon after a plow or other vehicle has driven on them. In cutting cross country through deep snow, wolves travel single file and tend to stick to windblown ridges and to trails of deer and moose. ”

“ Wolves that have ranges small enough to cover in a few days form a network of their own trails, which they can maintain merely by traveling regularly over them. Packs on Isle Royale depended a great deal on such a system of trails (Mech 1966a) , and so did Pack No. 1059 in our study area.
Wolf packs can travel up to 45 miles in a day but it is usually larger packs that do so (Stenlund 1955, Burkholder 1959, Mech 1966a, Pimlott et al. 1969) . In our study area we sometimes saw evidence of long moves by large packs along strings of lakes and waterways. ”

“ Away they started, optimistic because of the bright, sunny day, and also because they had plenty of rest and were much refreshed.
“Look at that!” called Paul Bird before they had gone more than half the distance down the declivity to the valley below, pointing off to their right.
There, in plain view, with a little red spot marking [Page 57] its last resting place, lay a medium-sized timber wolf. ”

“ One animal in an apparent dispersal was tracked a straight line distance of 129 miles between extreme points.
A reddish male wolf was the leader of the pack of five and led two observed chases after alien wolves in the pack's territory. This animal was also most active during scent marking by the pack. Lone wolves were apparently indifferent to other wolves, and thus exclusive areas, or territories, were not observed among lone wolves.
Hunts involving a total of seven deer were observed and described, and two successful attacks on deer were interpreted from tracks in the snow. ”

“ During the winters of 1966-67, 1967-68, and 1968-69, aerial observations of timber wolves (Canis lupus) were made in the Superior National Forest in northeastern Minnesota, where the primary prey is white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) . In 480 hours of flying during the study, 77 sightings involving 323 wolves were made. In addition, during 1968-69, five radiotagged wolves and their associates were tracked via receivers in aircraft for a total of 570 "wolf-days." Visual observations were made during 65 percent of the times the wolves were located from December through April. ”

“ Where timber wolves are plentiful and very little stock is raised, as in the northern parts of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, sheep are not safe from the attacks of wolves, and for that reason few sheep are raised in those parts. It is probably the fact that the western range is very open and the sheep always carefully guarded by herders that they suffer so little from timber wolves in the Western States. ”

“ Well, as every hunter and trapper who is born and not made is always looking for taller timber and trying to get farther and farther from the ting-tong of the cow bells, so it was in my case. I had seen some whelp wolves that friends of ours (Harris and Leroy Lyman, who were noted hunters) had got. They had gone onto the waters of the Sinnemahoning and taken five pup wolves not much larger than kittens, from their den. The puppies were brought out alive but they killed the old mother wolf. ”

“ Our observations show that deer usually depend on their alertness and speed to escape approaching wolves (Mech 1966b, Mech et al., p. 1) . Any trait or condition that tended to interfere with either alertness or speed would decrease an individual's chance of escape.
It is more difficult to explain how dental abnormalities or pathological conditions of the mandible (figs. 8-10) would predispose an individual to wolf predation. ”

“ Wolves may also be taking a disproportionately high number of fawns, although our data do not show this. Nevertheless, there may be a bias against fawns in our method. It is not unusual to discover the remains of a wolf-killed deer so completely eaten that there is no indication left of the animal's age. Because fawns often are only about half the size of adult deer, and their skeletons have not yet completely ossified, the chances are better that fawns will be more completely eaten. Pimlott et al. ”