Never Cry Wolf (10 page)

 

18

Family Life

I
N MID
-J
ULY
I decided it was time to give up my role as a static observer and to begin seriously studying the hunting activities of wolves.

This decision was hastened by the accidental uncovering of my long-neglected Operation Order from under a pile of dirty socks which had been accumulating on top of it for several weeks. I had almost forgotten, not only about the Order, but about Ottawa itself; but as I again leafed through the minutely detailed sheaf of instructions I realized I had been guilty of a dereliction of duty.

The orders plainly stated that my first task should have been to conduct a census and general survey of wolves, followed by an intensive study of “wolf-cari
bou-predator-prey relationships.” Studies of the nature and the social behavior of wolves were thus placed firmly outside the frame of reference of my work, and so one morning I struck my little tent, packed up the telescope, and closed down my observation post. The following day Ootek and I loaded a camping outfit aboard the canoe, and set out on a prolonged cruise through the tundra plains to the northward.

We covered a good many hundreds of miles during the succeeding weeks, and gathered much information concerning wolf population and wolf-caribou-predator-prey relationships; together with a lot of associated information which, though it was unrelated to the Department's aims, could not be entirely ignored.

A semiofficial estimate of the wolf population of Keewatin had already been made by the competent authorities on the basis of information received from the usual trapper-trader sources, and the given figure was thirty thousand wolves. Even with my sketchy grasp of mathematics I was able to work this out as an average of one wolf to every six square miles. If one then took into account the fact that about a third of the tundra plains lay under water, while another third consisted of barren rock hills and ridges
where neither caribou, wolf nor most other beasts could make a living, the density rose to one wolf for every two square miles, approximately.

This seemed pretty dense. Indeed, had it been true, Ootek and I might have had trouble making progress due to the sheer pressure of wolves.

Unhappily for the theoreticians we found the wolves widely scattered, in the usual family groups—each family occupying a territory of one to three hundred square miles, although this dispersal was by no means uniform. We located one site, for instance, where two families had denned within half-a-mile of each other; and Ootek told me he had once found three females, each with a litter of pups, denning within a few feet of one another on an esker near the Kazan River. On the other hand, we traveled for three days through what looked like good wolf country on the Thlewiaza River and never saw a footing, a scat, or a hair of a wolf. Reluctantly, and recognizing that it was not going to endear me to my employers, I was forced to revise the population estimate downward to three thousand, and at that I was probably guilty of gross exaggeration.

The families we encountered were of all sizes from a single pair of adults with three pups to a group of seven adults and ten pups. Since, in every case but
one, there were extra adults, and since I could learn nothing about their relative status in the family except by murdering them (which would have enabled me only to determine age and sex), I again resorted to Ootek for information.

Female wolves do not breed until they are two years old, and males not until they are three, he told me. Until they are of breeding age most of the adolescents remain with their parents; but even when they are of age to start a family they are often prevented from doing so by a shortage of homesteads. There is simply not enough hunting territory available to provide the wherewithal for every bitch to raise a litter. Since an overpopulation of wolves above the carrying capacity of the country to maintain would mean a rapid decline in the numbers of prey animals—with consequent starvation for the wolves themselves—they are forced to practice what amounts to birth control through continence. Some adult wolves may have to remain celibate for years before a territory becomes available. However, because the period of urgent amorous appetite is short—only about three weeks out of the year—these bachelors and spinsters probably do not suffer any great feeling of sexual deprivation. Moreover, their
desire for domesticity and the companionship of other adults, as well as pups, is apparently met by the communal nature of the family group. Indeed, Ootek believed some wolves actually preferred the “uncle” or “aunt” status, since it gave them the pleasures of being involved in rearing a family without incurring the full responsibilities of parenthood.

Old wolves, particularly those who had lost their mates, also tended to remain celibate. Ootek told me of a wolf he had encountered every year for sixteen years who, during the first six years of this period, fathered an annual litter. During the seventh winter his mate disappeared, possibly poisoned by bounty hunters in the south. The following spring he was back at his old den. But although a litter of pups was reared there that season, they belonged to another pair of wolves; perhaps, so Ootek thought, to the widower's son and daughter-in-law. In any event the old wolf remained supernumerary to the establishment for the rest of his life, although continuing to share in the task of providing for the pups.

Apart from the fact that there are only a fixed number of homesteads available to the wolves, their abundance is apparently further restricted by a built-in birth-control mechanism. Thus it happens that
when food species, are abundant (or the wolf population is scanty) bitches give birth to large litters—sometimes of as many as eight pups. But if the wolves are too numerous, or food is Scarce, the number of pups in a litter may fall to as few as one or two. This is also true of other arctic animals, such as rough-legged hawks. In a year when the small mammal population is high, roughlegs will lay five or six eggs in a clutch; but when mice and lemmings are scarce, they may lay a single egg or they may not breed at all.

Epidemic disease is the overriding factor which ensures that, even if other controlling factors fail to operate, the wolf population will not become too large for the capacity of the prey animals to maintain it. On those rare occasions when the general balance is upset (often as a result of man's interference ) and wolves become too abundant, they soon begin to weaken physically as food grows scarce and malnutrition grades into outright starvation. At times such as these devastating epidemics of rabies, distemper or mange invariably appear among the wolves, and their numbers are quickly reduced to a bare survival level.

In 1946 the lemmings (which in the Canadian arc
tic are a cyclic species whose peak of abundance occurs every four years followed by a population drop to near the zero mark) were at the low point in their cycle. Coincidentally, the drastically depleted caribou herds of Keewatin
^*4
chose that year to alter their age-old migration habits, and most of them bypassed southern central Keewatin entirely. It was a disastrous season for the Eskimos, foxes and wolves alike. Hunger lay heavy on the land. The latent rabies virus flared up among the starving foxes, and the wolves began to contract the disease too.

 

Now, animals stricken with rabies do not “go mad” in the usual sense of the word. Their nervous systems are affected so that they become erratic and unpredictable, and they lose the protection of a sense of fear. Rabid wolves sometimes walk blindly into speeding automobiles and trains; they have come stumbling in among entire teams of Huskies and have been torn to pieces as a result; and not infrequently they have wandered into village streets and have even entered tents or houses occupied by men. Such wolves, sick to the verge of death, are pitiable ob
jects; but the human reaction to them is usually one of unbridled terror—not of the disease, for it is seldom recognized as rabies, but of the wolves themselves. Grotesque incidents occur which help to sustain the general myth about the vicious and dangerous nature of the wolf.

One such sick and dying wolf appeared in Churchill during the 1946 epidemic. It was first encountered by a Canadian Army corporal wending his way back to barracks after a session at the Churchill beer hall. According to the corporal's account, a gigantic wolf leaped at him with murderous intent, and he barely escaped with his life by running a mile to the shelter of the guardhouse. He could exhibit no physical evidence of his ordeal, but his psychic scars were evidently deep. His warning sent the whole Army camp into a panic of near-hysterical proportions. American and Canadian contingents alike were mobilized, and squads of grim-faced men armed with rifles, carbines and spotlights were soon scouring the surrounding country intent on dealing with a menace which, in a matter of hours, had grown into several packs of starving wolves.

During the ensuing excitement eleven Husky dogs, one American Pfc, and a Chippewayan Indian com
ing home late became casualties—not of the wolf, but of the vigilantes.

For two days children and women stayed indoors. Foot soldiers all but vanished from the Army camp, and men on missions to distant buildings either went by jeep, well armed, or did not go at all.

A wolf was glimpsed on the second day by a light Army aircraft which had joined the hunt, and an intrepid detachment of Mounted Police sallied forth to deal with it. The wolf turned out to be a cocker spaniel belonging to the Hudson's Bay Company manager.

Not until the third day did the panic ease. Late that afternoon the driver of a six-ton Army truck, returning to the camp from the airport, suddenly saw a bundle of fur on the road ahead of him. He jammed on the brakes but was unable to stop in time, and the wolf—by then so sick it could no longer move—was mercifully killed.

The aftermath was interesting. To this day there are residents of Churchill (and no doubt also a number of soldiers scattered over the continent) who will, at the drop of a hat, describe the invasion of Churchill by wolves in 1946. They will tell you of desperate personal encounters; of women and chil
dren savaged; of dog teams torn to ribbons; and of an entire human community living in a state of siege. All that is lacking is the final dramatic description of the North American equivalent of a Russian troika fleeing across the frozen plains, inevitably to be overwhelmed by a wave of wolves, while the polar night resounds to the crunching sound of human bones being cracked by wolfish jaws.

 

19

Naked to the Wolves

T
HE WEEKS
which we spent cruising the tundra plains were idyllic. The weather was generally good, and the sensation of freedom which we derived from the limitless land was as invigorating as the wide-ranging life we led.

When we found ourselves in the territory of a new wolf family we would make camp and explore the surrounding plains for as long as was required in order to make the acquaintance of the group. We were never lonely, despite the immensity and solitude of the country, for the caribou were always with us. Together with their attendant flocks of herring gulls and ravens, they imparted a sense of animation to what might otherwise have seemed a stark enough landscape.

This country belonged to the deer, the wolves, the birds and the smaller beasts. We two were no more than casual and insignificant intruders. Man had never dominated the Barrens. Even the Eskimos, whose territory it had once been, had lived in harmony with it. Now these inland Eskimos had all but vanished. The little group of forty souls to which Ootek belonged was the last of the inland people, and they were all but swallowed up in this immensity of wilderness.

We encountered other human beings only on a single occasion. One morning, shortly after starting on our journey, we rounded a bend in a river and Ootek suddenly raised his paddle and gave a shout.

On the foreshore ahead of us was a squat skin tent. At the sound of Ootek's cry, two men, a woman and three half-grown boys piled out of the tent and ran to the water's edge to watch us approach.

We landed and Ootek introduced me to one of the families of his tribe. All that afternoon we sat about drinking tea, gossiping, laughing and singing, and eating mountains of boiled caribou meat. When we turned in for the night Ootek told me that the men of the family had pitched their camp at this spot so they could be in position to intercept the caribou who crossed the river at a narrows a few miles
farther downstream. Paddling one-man kayaks and armed with short stabbing spears, these men hoped to be able to kill enough fat animals at the crossing to last them through the winter. Ootek was anxious to join in their hunt, and he hoped I would not mind remaining here for a few days so that he could help his friends.

I had no objection, and the next morning the three Eskimo men departed, leaving me to bask in a magnificent August day.

The fly season was over. It was hot and there was no wind. I decided to take advantage of the weather to have a swim and get some sun on my pallid skin, so I went off a few hundred yards from the Eskimo camp ( modesty is the last of the civilized vices which a man sheds in the wilds), stripped, swam; and then climbed a nearby ridge and lay down to sun-bathe.

Wolflike, I occasionally raised my head and glanced around me, and about noon I saw a group of wolves crossing the crest of the next ridge to the north.

There were three wolves, one of them white, but the other two were almost black—a rare color phase. All were adults, but one of the black ones was smaller and lighter than the rest, and was probably a female.

I was in a quandary. My clothes lay by the shore some distance away and I had only my rubber shoes and my binoculars with me on the ridge. If I went back for my clothes, I knew I might lose track of these wolves. But, I thought, who needed clothes on a day like this? The wolves had by now disappeared over the next crest, so I seized my binoculars and hared off in pursuit.

The countryside was a maze of low ridges separated by small valleys which were carpeted with grassy swales where small groups of caribou slowly grazed their way southward. It was an ideal terrain for me, since I was able to keep watch from the crests while the wolves crossed each of these valleys in turn. When they dropped from view beyond a ridge I had only to sprint after them, with no danger of being seen, until I reached another elevated position from which I could watch them traverse the succeeding valley.

Sweating with excitement and exertion I breasted the first ridge to the north, expecting to see some frenzied action as the three wolves came suddenly down upon the unsuspecting caribou below. But I was disconcerted to find myself looking out over a completely peaceful scene. There were about fifty bucks in view, scattered in groups of three to ten
animals, and all were busy grazing. The wolves were sauntering across the valley as if they had no more interest in the deer than in the rocks. The caribou, on their part, seemed quite unaware of any threat. Three familiar dogs crossing a farm pasture would have produced as much of a reaction in a herd of domestic cattle as the wolves did among these caribou.

The scene was all wrong. Here was a band of wolves surrounded by numbers of deer; but although each species was obviously fully aware of the presence of the other, neither seemed perturbed, or even greatly interested.

Incredulously, I watched the three wolves trot by within fifty yards of a pair of young bucks who were lying down chewing their cuds. The bucks turned their heads to watch the wolves go by, but they did not rise to their feet, nor did their jaws stop working. Their disdain for the wolves seemed monumental.

The two wolves passed on between two small herds of grazing deer, ignoring them and being ignored in their turn. My bewilderment increased when, as the wolves swung up a slope and disappeared over the next crest, I jumped up to follow and the two bucks who had been so apathetic in
the presence of the wolves leaped to their feet, staring at me in wild-eyed astonishment. As I sprinted past them they thrust their heads forward, snorted unbelievingly, then spun on their heels and went galloping off as if pursued by devils. It seemed completely unjust that they should have been so terrified of
me
, while remaining so blasé about the wolves. However, I solaced myself with the thought that their panic might have resulted from unfamiliarity with the spectacle of a white man, slightly pink, and clad only in boots and binoculars, racing madly across the landscape.

I nearly ran right into the wolves over the next crest. They had assembled in a little group on the forward slope and were having a social interlude, with much nose smelling and tail wagging. I flung myself down behind some rocks and waited. After a few moments the white wolf started off again and the others followed. They were in no hurry, and there was considerable individual meandering as they went down the slopes toward the valley floor where scores of deer were grazing. Several times one or another of the wolves stopped to smell a clump of moss, or detoured to one side to investigate something on his own. When they reached the valley they were strung out in line abreast and about a hundred feet
apart, and in this formation they turned and trotted along the valley floor.

Only those deer immediately in front of the wolves showed any particular reaction. When a wolf approached to within fifty or sixty yards, the deer would snort, rise on their hind feet and then spring off to one side of the line of advance. After galloping a few yards some of them swung around again to watch with mild interest as the wolf went past, but most returned to their grazing without giving the wolf another glance.

Within the space of an hour the wolves and I had covered three or four miles and had passed within close range of perhaps four hundred caribou. In every case the reaction of the deer had been of a piece—no interest while the wolves remained at a reasonable distance; casual interest if the wolves came very close; and avoiding-tactics only when a collision seemed imminent. There had been no stampeding and no panic.

Up to this time most of the deer we had encountered had been bucks; but now we began to meet numbers of does and fawns, and the behavior of the wolves underwent a change.

One of them flushed a lone fawn from a hiding place in a willow clump. The fawn leaped into view
not twenty feet ahead of the wolf, who paused to watch it for an instant, then raced off in pursuit. My heart began to thud with excitement as I anticipated seeing a kill at last.

It was not to be. The wolf ran hard for fifty yards without gaining perceptibly on the fawn, then suddenly broke off the chase and trotted back to rejoin his fellows.

I could hardly believe my eyes. That fawn should have been doomed, and it certainly would have been if even a tenth of the wolfish reputation was in fact deserved; yet during the next hour at least twelve separate rushes were made by all three wolves against single fawns, a doe with a fawn, or groups of does and fawns,
and in every case the chase was broken off almost before it was well begun
.

I was becoming thoroughly exasperated. I had not run six miles across country and exhausted myself just to watch a pack of wolves playing the fool.

When the wolves left the next valley and wandered over the far crest, I went charging after them with blood in my eye. I'm not sure what I had in mind—possibly I may have intended to chase down a caribou fawn myself, just to show those incompetent beasts how it was done. In any event I shot
over the crest—and straight into the middle of the band.

They had probably halted for a breather, and I burst in among them like a bomb. The group exploded. Wolves went tearing off at top speed in all directions—ears back, tails stretching straight behind them. They ran scared, and as they fled through the dispersed caribou herds the deer finally reacted, and the stampede of frightened animals which I had been expecting to witness all that afternoon became something of a reality. Only, and I realized the fact with bitterness, it was not the wolves who had been responsible—it was I.

I gave it up then, and turned for home. When I was still some miles from camp I saw several figures running toward me and I recognized them as the Eskimo woman and her three youngsters. They seemed to be fearfully distrait about something. They were all screaming, and the woman was waving a two-foot-long snowknife while her three offspring were brandishing deer spears and skinning knives.

I stopped in some perplexity. For the first time I became uncomfortably aware of my condition. Not only was I unarmed, but I was stark naked. I was
in no condition to ward off an attack—and one seemed imminent, although I had not the slightest idea what had roused the Eskimos to such a mad endeavor. Discretion seemed the better part of valor, so I stretched my weary muscles and sprinted hard to bypass the Eskimos. I succeeded, but they were still game, and the chase continued most of the way back to the camp where I scrambled into my trousers, seized my rifle, and prepared to sell my life dearly. Fortunately Ootek and the men arrived back at the camp just as the woman and her crew of furies swept down upon me, and battle was averted.

Somewhat later, when things had quieted down, Ootek explained the situation. One of the children had been picking berries when he had seen me go galloping naked across the hills after the wolves. Round-eyed with wonder, he had hastened back to report this phenomenon to his mother. She, brave soul, assumed that I had gone out of my mind (Eskimos believe that no white man has very far to go in this direction), and was attempting to assault a pack of wolves bare-handed and bare everything else. Calling up the rest of her brood, and snatching what weapons were at hand, she had set out at top speed to rescue me.

During the remainder of our stay, this good woman treated me with such a wary mixture of solicitude and distrust that I was relieved beyond measure to say farewell to her. Nor was I much amused by Ootek's comment as we swept down the river and passed out of sight of the little camp.

“Too bad,” he said gravely, “that you take off your pants. I think she like you better if you left them on.”