Hind track
Except under unusually severe weather conditions, wolves generally kill only the weakest of range stock and big game animals, and I doubt if their so-called depredations in this respect are anything but a benefit to the survivors, as weaklings among any species of animals are always inimical to the general health and condition of the respective variety. The wolf in this regard does only what the sensible warden of a well-conducted game preserve does; i. e., weeds out undesirable specimens. In Yellowstone Park, for example, since the cougars there are systematically hunted with hounds, wolves and coyotes ought to be protected to a certain extent or else the result will undoubtedly be a general degeneration among the game animals in that region.
Before the warfare against lions was started, there were already many scabby elks in that great preserve, and if the slaughter of scavengers is kept up indiscriminately—well, a reasonable person can only await results with misgivings. Nature always works out her course best if left alone, and I believe that in the case of the Yellowstone Park the Nation in the course of time will be willing to pay ten times the amount it now pays for their extermination to have the "varmints" alive in that great preserve. Where weaklings are not abundant, game animals naturally suffer from an abundance of wolves, and where the stock-raiser has enough sense to dispose of sick or weak stock himself, Old Gray has no business.
(1) Wolf (slow trot). (2) Dog (trot). (3) Wolf (quick trot). (4) Wolf (gallop). (5) Dog walking slowly; a motion never seen in the wolf trail.
In hunting wolves the quickest results are obtained in calling by imitating the cries of a jack-rabbit. Wolves evidently think one of their tribe has caught a bunny, and, as Wildenbruch fittingly says: "Each and everyone would eat him." This trait is shared by most other marauders. The wolf is a poor runner, and is easily run down with the aid of an ordinary horse in open country.
The surest and most effective way apart from calling, is by trapping, which is the most extensively practiced, and he who says that trapping is not great sport has surely never tried to outwit an old wolf. I always measure sport by the amount of skill required.
The keeper of a game preserve, who is not acquainted with the use of traps and other devices designed to decrease predatory animals, will never succeed in showing first-class results to the owner or owners so far as abundance of game is concerned; and what holds good in the case of the shooting-preserves holds good also for the open hunting grounds.
The track of an old full-grown wolf, although similar to that of a dog, differs from the latter, inasmuch as it shows that the foot is less fleshy, the soles of the various toes appearing more sharply divided than in the dog's track. The latter has a comparatively big foot but also a soft foot which, being plainly visible in the ordinary gait, becomes much more apparent where the animal adopts a quicker motion. The toes are then spread out to an extent never found in the wolf, except when the latter is running very fast, and consequently the nail marks of the two middle toes of the dog are about twice as far apart as those of his wild relative. A wolf trail shows the individual tracks ordinarily about eighteen inches apart, while the dog, making the same size or a slightly bigger track, steps at the same gait less than fourteen inches; and if, in trotting, he should equal the length of wolf-steps, the spread of the middle toes makes his tracks easily recognizable. A good-stepping dog steps about as near the center line as the wolf, but as his steps are shorter, they appear more out of line to the eye. This is an optical illusion, but it serves the tracker's purpose.
A young wolf, say less than one year old, has as soft a foot as a dog's. However, as young wolves go mostly in packs, following the trail will generally reveal the identity of the animal. Usually wolves do not track continuously, one animal investigating here and another there, while the main trail leads on. Dogs, two or more, show no clear-cut single trail even for so short a space as ten feet, while a number of wolves often travel several hundred yards with the trail showing as though only one animal had made it. If one sees a wolf trail, and without following it concludes that it was made by a single specimen, he is liable to make the same mistake "Liver-eating" Johnson made with a bunch of horse-stealing Indians. He was stopping with a friend, Eugene Irvin, also an old Indian fighter, and one morning noticed about fifty horse-tracks, of which he concluded only about half-a-dozen were made by horses mounted by redskins. Instead of following out on the prairies and deciding there from the comparative absence of dust in the tracks—a rider is not mixed up with the herd he is driving, and consequently in his mount's tracks less dust is to be found—he hurried back to induce Irvin to join him in the pursuit of the Indians. Now that old scout was not as eager for the horses as "Liver-eating," and not at all for a fight, but for old friendship's sake said he would come along if a couple more fellows could be found, which, by the way, he did not believe possible, for the country was not settled then as it is now. But it happened that two men did come along just at that moment, and Johnson soon convinced them that profitable business was ahead if they joined in the pursuit. So the four went, taking a straight cut toward Horsethief, a section of the country southeast of the Big Snowy Mountains, where they thought the Indians would make a halt.