Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV OF GOOD HUNTING, IN PURSUIT OF BIG GAME IN THE WEST For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. GOOD HUNTING, IN PURSUIT OF BIG GAME IN THE WEST BY THEODORE ROZEVELLT THE TIMBERWOLF
There are two kinds of wolves found in the United States. One is the little coyote, or prairie wolf, or barking wolf, which never was found in the eastern states, being an animal of the open country. The other is the big wolf, and sometimes the timber wolf or gray wolf, which was formerly found everywhere from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
In some districts, it runs to color varieties of different kinds, red, black, or white. The coyote is not at all a formidable beast, and holds its own quite persistently until civilization is well advanced in the country. Coyotes are not dangerous to either man or the larger domestic animals. Lambs, young pigs, hens, and cats often become their prey, and if very hungry, several of
them will combine to attack a young calf. In consequence, farmers and ranchers kill them whenever the chance offers. but they do not do damage which is even appreciable when compared with the ravages of their grim big brother, the gray wolf, which in many sections of the west is a veritable scourge of the stockmen. The big wolves shrink back before the growth of the thickly settled districts,
and in the eastern states they often tend to disappear even from districts that are uninhabited, save by a few wilderness hunters. They have thus disappeared almost entirely from Maine, the Adirondacks, and the Alleghenies, although here and there they are said to be returning to their old haunts. Their disappearance is rather mysterious in some instances, for they are certainly not all killed off.
The black bear is much more easily killed, yet the black bear holds its own in many parts of the land from which the wolf is vanished. No animal is quite so difficult to kill as the wolf, whether by poison or rifle or hound. Yet, after a comparatively few have been slain, the entire species will perhaps vanish from certain localities. But with all wild animals, it is a noticeable fact that a course of conduct with man continuing
over many generations of animal life causes a species so to adapt itself to its new surroundings that it ceases to diminish in numbers. When white men take up a new country, the game, and especially the big game, being entirely unused to contend with a new foe,
succumbs easily, and it is almost completely killed out. If any individuals survive at all, however, the succeeding generations are far more difficult to exterminate than were their ancestors, and they cling much more tenaciously to their old homes.
The game to be found in old and long-settled countries is much more wary and able to take care of itself than the game of an untrodden wilderness. It is a very difficult matter to kill a Swiss chamois, but it is a very easy matter to kill a white goat after a hunter has once penetrated among the most unknown peaks
of the mountains of British Columbia. When the ranchmen first drove their cattle to the Little Missouri, they found the deer tame and easy to kill, but the deer of Maine and the Adirondacks test to the full the highest skill of the hunter. In consequence, after a time, game may ever increase in certain districts where settlements are thin. This has been true of the wolves throughout the northern cattle country in Montana, Wyoming, and the western ends of the Dakotas.
In the old days, wolves were very plentiful throughout this region, closely following the huge herds of buffaloes. The white men who followed these herds as professional buffalo hunters were often accompanied by other men, known as wolfers, who poisoned these wolves for the sake of their furs. With the disappearance of the buffalo, the wolves seemed so to diminish in numbers that they also seemed to disappear. During the last ten years, their numbers have steadily increased,
and now they seem to be as numerous as they ever were in the region in question, and they are infinitely more wary and more difficult to kill. Along the Little Missouri, their ravages were so serious from 1893 to 1897 as to cause heavy damage to the stockmen. Not only colts and calves, but young trail stock,
and in midwinter even full-grown horses and steers are continually slain. And in some seasons their losses have been so serious as to more than eat up all the profits of the ranchman. The county authorities put a bounty on wolf scalps of $3 each, and in my own neighborhood the ranchmen of their own accord
put on a further bounty of $5. This made $8 for every wolf, and as the skin is also worth something, the business of killing wolves was quite profitable. Wolves are very shy and show extraordinary cunning both in hiding themselves and in slinking out of the way of the hunter.
They are rarely killed with the rifle. I have never shot but one myself. They are occasionally trapped, but after a very few have been procured in this way the survivors become so wary that it is almost impossible, even for a master of the art, to do much with them, while an ordinary man can never get one into a trap except by accident. More can be done with poison, but even in this case the animal speedily learns caution by experience. When poison is first
used in a district, wolves are very easily killed, and perhaps almost all of them will be slain, but nowadays it is difficult to catch any but young ones in this way. Occasionally, an old one will succumb but there are always some who cannot be persuaded to touch a bait. The old she-wolves teach their cubs as soon as they are able to walk, to avoid man's trace in every way and to look out for traps and poison.
In consequence, though most cow-punchers carry poison with them and are continually laying out baits, and though some men devote most of their time to poisoning for the sake of the bounty and the fur, the results are not very remunerative. The most successful wolf hunter on the Little Missouri in 1896 was a man who did not rely on poison at all, but on dogs. He was a hunter named Massengale, and he always had a pack of at least 20 hounds. The number varied,
for a wolf at bay is a terrible fighter, with jaws like those of a steel trap and teeth that cut like knives, so that the dogs were continually disabled and sometimes killed, and the hunter had always to be on watch to add animals to his pack. It was not a pack that would appeal, as far as looks go, to an old huntsman, but it was thoroughly fitted for its own work. Most of the dogs were greyhounds, either rough or smooth-haired, but many of them were big mongrels, and part some
other breed, such as a bulldog, mastiff, Newfoundland, bloodhound, or collie. The only two necessary requisites were that the dogs should
run fast and fight gamely. And in consequence, they formed as wicked, hard-biting a crew as ever ran down and throttled a wolf. They were usually taken
out ten at a time, and by their aid, Massingale killed 200 wolves in the course of the year. Of course, there were no pretense of giving the game fair play,
the wolves were killed as vermin, not for sport. The greatest havoc was in the springtime, when the she-wolves were followed to their dens, which were sometimes holes in the earth and sometimes natural caves. There were from three to nine whelps in each litter.
Some of the hounds were very fast, and they could usually overtake a young or weak wolf. But an old wolf dog with a good start, unless run into at once, would surely get away if he were in a running trim.
Frequently, however, he was caught when he was not in running trim, for the hunter was apt to find him when he had killed a calf or taken part in dragging down a horse or steer. Under these circumstances, he could not run long before the pack. If possible, as with all such packs,
the hunter himself would get up in time to end the worry by a stab of his hunting knife, but unless he was quick he would have nothing to do, for the pack was thoroughly competent to do its own killing. Grim fighter, though a great wolf dog is, he stands no show before the onslaught,
who rush on their antagonist in a body. They possessed great power in their jaws, and unless Massingale was up within two or three minutes after the wolf was taken, the dogs literally tore him to pieces,
though one or more of their number might be killed or crippled in the fight. Other hunters were striving to get together packs thoroughly organized, and the wolves maybe thinned out. They were certainly altogether too plentiful. During the fall of 1896, I saw a number myself, although I was not looking for them. I frequently came upon the remains of sheep and young stock which they had killed,
and once, on the top of a small plateau, I found the body of a large steer, while the torn and trodden ground showed me he had fought hard for his life before succumbing. There were apparently two wolves engaged in the work, and the cunning beasts had evidently acted in concert. While one attracted the steer's attention,
the other, according to the invariable wolf habit, attacked him from behind, hamstringing him and tearing out his flanks. His body was still warm when I came up, but his murderers had slunk off, either seeing or smelling me. Their handiwork was unmistakable, however, for unlike bears and
cougars, wolves invariably attack their victim at the hindquarters, and begin their feast on the hams or flanks, if the animal is of any size. End of chapter 4
