388 The Wilderness Plunter. 



tendants on the great herds of the bison. Every traveller 

 and hunter of the old days knew them as among the most 

 common sights of the plains, and they followed the hunt- 

 ing parties and emigrant trains for the sake of the scraps 

 left in camp. Now, however, there is no district in which 

 they are really abundant. The wolfers, or professional 

 wolf-hunters, who killed them by poisoning for the sake of 

 their fur, and the cattle-men, who likewise killed them by 

 poisoning ^because of their raids on the herds, have doubt- 

 less been the chief instruments in working their decima- 

 tion on the plains. In the '7o's, and even in the early 

 '8o's, many tens of thousands of wolves were killed by the 

 wolfers in Montana and northern Wyoming and western 

 Dakota. Nowadays the surviving wolves of the plains 

 have learned caution ; they no longer move abroad at 

 midday, and still less do they dream of hanging on the 

 footsteps of hunter and traveller. Instead of being one 

 of the most common they have become one of the rarest 

 sights of the plains. A hunter may wander far and wide 

 through the plains for months nowadays and never see a 

 wolf, though he will probably see many coyotes. How- 

 ever, the diminution goes on, not steadily but by fits and 

 starts, and, moreover, the beasts now and then change 

 their abodes, and appear in numbers in places where they 

 have been scarce for a long period. In the present winter 

 of i892-*93 big wolves are more plentiful in the neighbor- 

 hood of my ranch than they have been for ten years, and 

 have worked some havoc among the cattle and young 

 horses. The cowboys have been carrying on the usual 

 vindictive campaign against them ; a number have been 



