Among Indians wolf pets are common. At an Alaskan Indian encampment I was once greeted by a number of romping Indian children who had several black-faced wolf puppies with faces painted vermilion and yellow.
The puppies are born early in March. The number varies from six to twelve. For the first few weeks they are almost black, especially about the head. For a period after the young cease nursing the mother stays with them much of the time, while the father hunts and brings food to the entrance of the den or into it. At the age of a year the young wolf is still puppylike, and apparently he does not reach maturity until more than two years of age.
Young wolves are sometimes seized by eagles or foxes; and all wolves are subject to attacks from parasites and disease.
Old storybooks are full of tales of wolf ferocity. Wolves pursue the lone horseman, or even attack the occupants of a sleigh. A fiddler returning at night is forced to take refuge on top of a deserted building or in a treetop; or a mail carrier narrowly escapes with his life after losing his sack. All too frequently we still hear stories of wolves attacking a solitary traveller, but careful investigation of these stories shows them to be sheer fabrications.
The howl of the wolf is deep, while that of the coyote is shrill and high-pitched. It appears that wolves have a language and a system of signalling. These consist of howls, snarls, and barks of varying length, with varying spaces or accents. Wolves prowl and howl mostly at night; but it is not uncommon for them to hunt or to wander in the daytime.
The gray wolf is known also as the timber wolf. He may be gray, grayish yellow, or grayish black, occasionally reddish; and now and then he verges on cream colour. The colour varies greatly, even among the members of a single and perhaps related pack.
Formerly the gray wolf was distributed practically over all North America. Though classified into various sub-species, it really was the same wolf in Florida and Alaska, in Labrador and Arizona. In different localities he varied in size, colour, and minor characteristics; he necessarily adapted himself to the food supply of his locality and followed the necessary means of getting his food. But everywhere he was really the same gray wolf.
The present wolf population of the United States is not numerous; but it is active, aggressive, and destructive. The animal probably has been exterminated in most of the Eastern States and in California. The coyote probably is economically more beneficial to man than the gray wolf, and does less damage to man’s cattle.
In common with most animals, wolves live on a fixed or home range. They spend their life in one locality. This has a diameter of fifteen or twenty miles. To a certain extent its area and form are dependent on the food supply and the topography. One wolf that I knew of had a home range that measured forty by ten miles.
Much of the time wolves run in pairs; and, from both my own observation and that of others, I believe they commonly mate for life. Their home is a den. This most frequently is upon a southern slope. It may be of their own digging or a badger or a prairie-dog hole which the wolves have enlarged; or it may be a natural cave. In the woods it may be in a huge hollow tree. Almost invariably a pair has a den to themselves. I have heard of a few instances where two litters of wolf puppies were found in the same den; but probably the second litter, in an emergency, had been moved into the den for safety.