Fatal wolf attack

[Cliffy]

There it is: mutual respect between the top predators. I'd have been a good deal less sanguine with a bear, bears are unpredictable and stupid and unsociable, but that wolf seemed to be smart enough to give me a message: we're watching you, don't mess with us.

Dexter,

I lived in the forest for ten years in northern BC. I lived with bears on a daily basis and from my experience with them, I would have to say they are quite intelligent. I have shared my fishing hole with them, have talked to them and they were quite curious. One just sat opposite to me in a small clearing and as I talked, he would make light grunting sounds and lean his head from one side to another. At times he acted as if he understood the drift of what I was saying.

But like all wild animals, bears need to be respected for the shear speed and power they have. Intentionally angering a bear could be fatal but talking gently to them usually solicits an similar response. Out of close to a hundred encounters I have never felt threatened by one.

 

[Unforgiven]

Unforgiven, I'm going to argue with some of that......

Scent is airborne.....the best nose in the world can't smell what is upwind in a decent breeze.........

As it happens, the black bear has probably the most sensitive nose there is. Honest, go check it out. Depending on the approach of the bear and how much scent you had spread around the area, the bear very likely knew right where you were. Just didn't care.


[/quote]I know bears have lousy eyesight....I should have stood up to show I was a man long before he got so close to me (my bad).........animals have a fight-or-flight "zone" within which it is very unwise to startle them........[/quote]

You could almost compare that to the difference between our sense of smell and our eye sight. Bears don't have bad eye sight, they just don't depend on it like they do their sense of smell. In the same way people don't have poor ability to smell things, we just use eyesight much more. Black bears can see about as well as you or I. It's just that they have a sense of smell that is far greater than any bloodhound.

"zone" is instinct. All creatures have a flight or fight reaction hardwired, even us. Would it be accurate to say that your reaction to anything and everything is either kill it or run away? Bears are solitary creatures because the food the need is spread across a range of land. That food is only enough to support the one bear and so they don't allow for competitors to move in and start eating their food.

You can see that bears will collect in a river to catch the salmon run. No fights there because the food is plentyful and there is more than enough for all.

I am convinced he had no idea what was there, and was coming to investigate my flailing arms .........
I was not that alarmed, obviously, or I would have shot the thing.

If you were up wind of the bear, as I think you mentioned, then there is no chance that the bear didn't know you were there.

I had a more dangerous confrontation in fall with a LARGE bull moose, obviously in rut.........talk about unpredictable! In a heavy rain I got far too close, and he behaved agressively, rolling his antlers at me, lowering them, taking steps towards me......then head back, nostrils flaring.........probably 1600 lbs of testosterone-charged muscle.....antlers looked like a twisted snow plow......wow! I didn't shoot him either .

In rut, if they think you are bigger then they will back down. All you have to do is convince the moose, your bigger. heh heh

I stood my ground and spoke to him........rifle on the shoulder, mind you. If he charged, my plan was to snap off one, and run around the large fir tree on my right He was probably 10 yards off........and he backed down.

You should write down what it is you said to him eh Doctor Dolittle. heh heh

Gotta love the bush. I'm hardly there anymore.......

I used to love going into the woods when I lived out in BC. There is a calmness that comes when you make yourself a part of that.

 

[Twila]

We underestimate wildlife at our peril.

Beautifully said.

We are slowly learning just how smart animals actually are. I just hope the knowledge come faster. For their sake.

 

[Cliffy]

I think a major problem with understanding wildlife is that we judge everything from our perspective. How many have tried to put themselves in the wolf's or bear's position, to see it through their awareness. Having lived with them for a decade, I would have to say that they are incredibly intelligent (domestic animals have had their intelligence bread out of them by comparison).

 

[lone wolf]

In rut, if they think you are bigger then they will back down. All you have to do is convince the moose, your bigger. heh heh

That takes some fair convincing. Too many times, it calls for proof. Many are the logging trucks, highway tractors and railroad locomotives that have had a very expensive tattoo knocked on as verification of a process that sometimes ends in a draw....

 

[Unforgiven]

I think a major problem with understanding wildlife is that we judge everything from our perspective.

Yep, and this is one of the major problems we have when dealing with pets. A lot of pet owners have surrogate children rather than an animal living with them. When there is a problem it's over looked, if it becomes a tragedy, they blame bad breeding.

How many have tried to put themselves in the wolf's or bear's position, to see it through their awareness. Having lived with them for a decade, I would have to say that they are incredibly intelligent (domestic animals have had their intelligence bread out of them by comparison).

Once you do, everything changes. I think the most startling and difficult thing is understanding that it's always our fault and accepting the responsibility for that.

I don't know how much intelligence you can breed out of a species, but I am quite sure you can breed faults and then force an environment on a creature where it can only fail and bring on mental instability.

 

[Trex]

Several years ago I was on a project which consisted of living in tents on the northern tip of Ellesmere Island.
The wolves on Ellesmere have no fear of people.
None whatsoever.

It got kinda interesting when the local pack passed by.
If they were hungry then they had a sort of: get the hell out of my way, I am on business attitude.
If they had fed recently they had a: I like to play and I am going to spend all day harassing the hell out of these weird strange people things in my territory.
If you encountered one or more wolves on a path, YOU always yielded right of way.
Those wolves never yielded and trying to test that was plain dumb.
I had a wolf put me in my tent and keep me their for an hour.
I think he did it just because he could, and he wagged his tail and smiled the whole time.
Trying to throw a rock or snowball at a wolf is like trying to throw a rock at smoke.
They move quicker than the eye can see.
The wolves used to be possessed with trying to steal stuff.
Hats, gloves whatever.
The problem was if they tried to steal your glove while you were wearing it you could end up missing a finger or two.
And if you refused to play "wolf" games then on occasion they might consider giving you a nip in the ass to speed you up.
A wolf nip in the ass could result in a lot of stitches.
Park policy at the time was any wolf that "nipped" a human was shot.
That is why access to Ellesmere is so tightly controlled.
Ultimately it isn't fair to the wolves to allow people there.

Wild wolves are really smart, playful animals with a set of choppers like a chainsaw running wide open.
I believe that they incredibly smart, gorgeous animals.
I also believe that they could be very,very dangerous and are best viewed at a safe distance.

I am with Colpy on this one.
I believe when in the back country, pack a gun.
Know how to use it.
Stay out of places where you are not comfortable or don't belong.

Its always the animals that suffer in the long run.
All they need is space and understanding.

Trex

 

[Twila]

I don't know how much intelligence you can breed out of a species, but I am quite sure you can breed faults and then force an environment on a creature where it can only fail and bring on mental instability.

YES YES YES!!! I don't know how many times I've watched people hollar at their dog to "come" and then when it does scold the poor beast. Or stand there and yell at the dog using long winded sentences and expect the dog to understand.

We don't accommodate the animal in the least. We don't learn about dog language and we expect the animal to conform to our will without it knowing english. Ridiculous!

We take a PACK animal and we put it in our house where it is left alone for 8 hrs a day and then when we get home we're too tired to give it any exercise...that poor animal. Expected to play and round around in a backyard by itself. With superior intelligence we can't even see the stupidity and cruelty of what we do to them.

 

[Twila]

Maybe we ought to teach children to have respect of wild creatures and what do to in the event of an unexpected encounter in elementary school.

 

[#juan]

Oh yeah, I hear ya. I haven't been out hunting for a long time. I think I've told my wolf story here before, but it seems worth repeating in the context of this thread. I was out with a couple of buddies hunting upland game birds in the kind of habitat they prefer (obviously; no point in looking for them where they aren't), the prairie zone called the park lands, a mix of brush and light forest and open spaces on a rolling terrain. (All you people who think the prairies are flat and treeless need to get off the #1 highway and go north a bit.) I kept seeing flickers of movement in the brush out of the corner of my eye but couldn't identify what I was seeing, until I pushed through a bit of forest and came out near the edge of a small pond. At the water's edge, less than 10 meters away, was a wolf looking at me. A BIG one. And all I've got is a 12 gauge loaded with three rounds of #7 shot, which wouldn't be much better than shooting dust at a critter the size of that one. He must have known I was coming long before I saw him, his senses are much better than mine, and I'm convinced he chose to show himself to me. I think there must have been a pack in the area, and he'd been shadowing us to find out if we were a threat or not. Wolves aren't stupid, they know how dangerous humans can be to them, I'm sure that's why they rarely attack us, and where there's one, there are others. Motionless, we stood there inspecting each other for a few minutes. I made no move, no noise, just stood there with my shotgun cradled in my arms with the safety on. I'm pretty sure wolves know the difference between a man with a gun and a man without one too. Eventually he must have decided I was no threat, he loped off into the forest showing no fear of me at all. I saw no further sign.

There it is: mutual respect between the top predators. I'd have been a good deal less sanguine with a bear, bears are unpredictable and stupid and unsociable, but that wolf seemed to be smart enough to give me a message: we're watching you, don't mess with us.

I concede I may be confabulating that experience into something it really wasn't, but at the time it certainly seemed to me the wolf was trying to tell me something. If he hadn't wanted me to see him, I wouldn't have seen him, he was downwind of me and he'd certainly have heard me crashing around in the bushes, he could easily have avoided me. I can't understand that experience in any other way except that he must have chosen not to.

We underestimate wildlife at our peril.

That is an excellent story Dexter, and it is a story I can relate to. When I was growing up in northern B.C. there was a $25.00 bounty on wolves. In an earlier post I mentioned that the lake where my parents owned a little resort froze over in winter. We had an older military jeep that my older brother took out on the lake ice and on one occasion, when I was about ten years old, we followed a wolf down the lake and just about to it's den. My brother shot the wolf and we later discovered that it was a female and there was a litter of nine pups with their eyes quite recently opened. One of the pups was a jet black male and much bigger than the rest. His eyes were bright yellow. I wanted to raise that pup in the worst way but my dad wouldn't have it and it was put down.
Years later, when I was working for Canadian Bechtal at the first tar sands plant in Fort McMurrey, the job superintendent, a big, blonde, Swedish guy came into the camp one morning with a big black wolf in the back of his truck. He accidentally hit the wolf with his truck and when he stopped, the wolf was still alive but it's back was broken and it could only raise itself up on the two front legs. He shot the wolf and brought it right to the jobsite. A couple of the guys brought out cameras and our job super wanted a picture of himself with that big wolf on top of him as if he were fighting the wolf off. The wolf hadn't been dead long and I guess it had one more spasm in it and the body moved and our hero just about killed himself getting out from under that wolf.
Just an afterthought. That wolf was absolutely skin and bone but it weighed a hundred and fifty pounds. In good shape and healthy, it would have been over two hundred.

 

[#juan]

I have a photos of that big, black wolf in Fort McMurrey but I can't seem to find them. Since the record is about 175 pounds, that wolf, in good shape, would have probably surpassed the record. The things I remember are the bright yellow eyes and the canine teeth that were fully two inches long. When I find the photos I will post them.