Wood-folk comedies

by William J. Long

That is just like a wolf. He has room for only one notion or impulse at a time; when a new notion or a stronger impulse comes into his head, it drives out the other. Chasing his game and gaining on it at every jump, this wolf received some new, imperative summons and rushed to answer it. Following him, we find where another wolf joins his headlong rush; others come sweeping in from either side; the whole pack goes leaping alongside a fresh trail left by a running buck and a single big wolf.

We understand now the uproar that shattered last night’s stillness. It was the trail-cry of a wolf, followed by the pack’s terrifying answer. As a rule, wolves hunt in silence; when they run a deer there is seldom a yelp from beginning to end of the chase. Occasionally, however, when a solitary wolf starts big game and wants help, he utters a peculiar cry; and that cry, coming from the mother wolf who leads the pack or from the old dog wolf who hunts by himself, rouses up a wild impulse, electric, irresistible. At the tingling summons every wolf in the pack leaves his own affairs, even the food he has just caught, and darts away to join the hunt. As the scattered brutes draw together, there is confused, uproarious howling. The running game, thinking only of the wolf behind him, hears a threatening clamor on all sides; he wavers, halts, turns, and the chase is over. Such is the psychology of a wolf’s hunting, as one hears it in the night or reads it from the snowy trail next morning.

The buck is heading for the nearest lake, where running is easier and he has the advantage, since his sharp hoofs cling to the ice where the wolves’ feet slip and slither; but the lake is half a mile away, and he will never reach it. I have followed a score of just such trails as this, and whether in woods or on open ice I have not yet found one which said that a buck could keep ahead of these fleet brutes more than a few minutes.

That is an odd thing, too, since wolves trust to stealth rather than to speed. Though they have tremendous power of running and leaping, they refuse (in their hunting, at least) to keep up a fast clip for any length of time; and in witnessing one of their hunts I had the impression that any buck should be able to get away from them. In deep snow he seems to have quite as much speed as they have; on the ice he has more, and he might win in any kind of footing if he would only put his mind into his running. Unhappily, that is precisely what a white-tailed deer will not or cannot do when a wolf is after him. When a caribou sniffs a wolf he racks away at a slashing pace, keeping it up until he is out of danger, and no wolf on earth can catch him in a fair run; but a deer, after a magnificent burst of speed which shows his power, always stops to look around, to stamp, to threaten, to fidget. At times he gives the impression that, in a dazed sort of way, he is puzzling his head to know what the brutes behind him are doing or why they do not go about their own affairs. It is not the wolf’s extra speed, I think, but the deer’s mental paralysis which makes the chase so short. But enough of psychology! Here is a plain trail to follow.

At this point the buck and the big wolf that jumped him are running evenly, one behind the other, with no great exertion on either side. Farther on the buck slows down, his jumps shorten; then the wolf closes in, the buck turns to fight. See, as he turns, how the pack rolls in behind him, cutting off his escape, while the big wolf holds him in front. Though they have the buck at their mercy, the powerful brutes do not spring upon the game at bay, for that is not a wolf’s way; he watches his chance to kill by stealth, as he hunts by stealth. Here are depressions which show where two wolves crouched within easy-springing distance; behind them is a hole where the buck came down from a jump. He must have leaped clean over the crouching wolves as he broke away for the lake.

The trail is marvelously interesting now; it tells of things that happen in the night, things that few human eyes have ever seen. Some of the pack are racing on either side of the buck, while a single big wolf follows jump for jump at his heels. Here the buck is thrown fairly when the following wolf catches a flying foot; but he is up and away with the same motion that rolls him completely over. There is the story in the snow, as plain as English when you know how to read it. Though a few red drops mark the trail, the buck is hardly scratched; the big wolf has not yet had the chance for which he is watching. Again the buck is thrown, and this time he stays down. There he lies, just as he fell! He was not quick enough on his feet the second time, and the big wolf closed his jaws on the small of the back. That is one way of killing, but not the common way when the approach is from behind. The wolf was looking for a different chance, I think, but took this like a flash when he saw it.

We examine the wound carefully, cutting away the skin so as to see more clearly. Only the deep fang-marks show; the flesh is not eaten here, or even torn; yet under the muscles the bones grate like a broken hinge. The wolves eat a little from the hind quarters, and two of them lap a bit at the throat without tearing it. There is only a slight puncture, under which a few red drops are frozen in a hollow lapped by a wolf’s tongue. So far as we can discover, the only serious wound on the body is that broken back, with its mute testimony to the power of a timber wolf’s snap. The trail shows no sign of quarreling when the wolves feed or when they go off, their hunger satisfied, to roam the woods like lazy dogs.

There is a different kind of hunting ahead now, a hunt to save the deer by shooting their enemies; but the short winter day is almost done, and we must wait for the morrow. You will be told that it is vain to follow a wolf in this densely wooded region; that his senses are so much keener than yours that you will never find him by trailing; that your only chance of killing him is to go abroad at all hours and trust to a chance meeting. One can understand such counsel, born of repeated failure, without quite agreeing with it. Only yesterday I found the fresh kill of a wolf pack in the early morning, and before noon I had trailed the brutes to where they were resting for the day under a ledge. The fascinating thing was that they had no notion I was anywhere near them when the first massive gray head rose above the bushes to sniff suspiciously. Such a chase is out of the question to-day; the light fades, and camp is calling.

The snowshoe trail stretches far behind, giving a sense of comfort in these strange woods, because one cannot well be lost with his own snowshoe slots to guide him. But the back trail is weary miles long, and, judging by our course since morning (which was first southerly, you remember, then northeast), the home lake can hardly be more than an hour or so to westward. No need to look at your compass; there’s the sunset. So into the sunset we go, and after the sunset is the twilight, with one great star like a lamp hung over it.

It is dusk, and numberless stars are glittering in the frosty air, when we break out of the gloomy woods near the foot of the lake. As we move campward, more swiftly now over level going, a long howl rolls down from the hills over which our trail has just been drawn. There is a moment of quiet on nature’s part, of tense listening on ours; then the rally cry of the wolves goes shivering through the night.