766 Life-histories of Northern Animals 



suspicious looking or human-tainted things; he will starve 

 rather than approach the carcass so guarded. 



With poison, a similar change has come about. Strych- 

 nine was considered infallible, when first it was introduced. 

 It did vast destruction for a time, then the Wolves seemed to 

 discover the danger associated with that particular smell, and 

 will no longer take the poisoned bait, as I know from number- 

 less experiences. 



It is thoroughly well known among the cattle men now 

 that the only chance of poisoning Wolves is in the late summer 

 and early autumn, when the young are beginning to run with 

 the mother. She cannot watch over all of them, the whole 

 time, and there is a chance of some of them finding the bait 

 and taking it before they have been taught to let that sort of 

 smell-thing alone. 



The result is that the Wolves are on the increase, have 

 been, indeed, since the late 8o's. They have returned to 

 many of their old hunting-grounds in the cattle countries, and 

 each year they seem to be more numerous and more widely 

 spread, thanks to their mastery of the new problems forced 

 upon them by civilization. 



The Gray-wolf is one of the shyest of wild animals. I 

 have talked with men who have lived their whole lives in 

 regions where Gray-wolves were far from rare, and yet they 

 have never seen one. They hear them at night, they see their 

 trails and their work in the morning, but never see the animals 

 themselves until after they have been trapped or poisoned. 

 Their extreme shyness is partly a modern development, as 

 also is the respect for man, which now fully possesses every 

 Gray-wolf in the cattle country. There are many records that 

 show the Wolf to have been a continual danger to mankind in 

 the bow-and-arrow days. There can be no doubt that then 

 man was considered a fair prey, a difficult and wide-awake one, 

 no doubt, but still a creature to be eaten in times of scarcity. 

 Consequently, each winter in America, as in Europe, a number 

 of human beings were killed and devoured by hungr}' Wolves. 



