The wonderful part of it is that the American wolf has beaten man by his own efforts. And for an animal to beat man in that manner is a great achievement.
I have told you before that one animal has to use its gifts against another animal, to protect itself from danger; for instance, the fish has to look out for the jaguar, and the jaguar in his turn has to look out for the alligator. But in that competition of the jungle, the animal has generally to use its wits merely against another animal—not against man. But the American wolf had to use his wits against man; and he has beaten man, as I shall describe to you.
The American Wolf Learns to Evade the Gun
About a hundred years ago, when people began to go West, they shot many buffaloes, wolves, antelopes, and deer. They did that for sport or for profit; they made a profit, because they sold the skins and other parts of the animals' bodies. At that time the hunters did not want the animals to be killed off altogether, but they actually killed so many of these animals in a few years that the buffalo, the deer, and the antelope became scarce. These particular animals, of course, tried to use their wits to escape from the hunters. They did not succeed in doing so. They fell as victims of the gun.
But not so the wolf. He began to use his wits against man and his gun. He soon realized that man was his enemy and also that man could kill him from a considerable distance. A wolf saw a man at a distance; then the wolf heard a bang, and immediately felt a sharp pain in his body. That wolf fell and died. But another wolf saw his brother die like that. He set his wits to work. He concluded that the man had caused the bang which made his brother fall and die. Hence the wolf realized that man was dangerous to him, even at a distance. So after that the wolf resolved to run away from man. And other wolves learned to do the same.
Of course, the whole race of wolves did not learn this lesson so quickly. Many hundreds of wolves meanwhile fell victims to man's gun; but a few wolves escaped. These few wolves also saw repeatedly that if any of their brothers allowed a man to approach anywhere near him, he was killed. So after seeing that happen many times, the surviving wolves learned that they must always run away from the presence of man.
These few surviving wolves taught their children to do the same. Some of these wolf children did not heed that lesson when they grew up; so they too were killed. But a few of the wolf children remembered the lesson when they grew up; so they escaped getting killed.
In turn these wolves also taught their children to run away from the presence of man. So in a few generations a race of wolves grew up in the West that the hunter did not even get the chance to shoot.
That in itself was a great achievement for the wolf. Why? Because some species of animals as a race do not learn so quickly to run away from the mere presence of man; one or two animals personally may learn quickly to do that, but not all the animals of a species. That is why the buffaloes and some of the antelopes and deer in the West were wiped out; they did not learn in those same few years to run away from the presence of man. The wolves alone learned this, and they have survived as a race.