142 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 



The gray- wolf area embraces about three-fourths 

 of the entire continent of North America, and it 

 includes the entire Rocky Mountain region of the 

 United States and the Sierra Madre of Mexico 

 down to Guadalajara. Wherever found, the 

 proper course with a wild gray wolf is to kill it 

 as quickly as possible. While it is quite possible to 

 catch gray wolves in steel traps, success in such 

 endeavors is very difficult to attain. Poison is the 

 best exterminator, but its successful use calls for 

 expert knowledge. The best of all methods is to 

 destroy the young in their dens, as soon as possible 

 after their birth. The destructiveness of the gray 

 wolf is concentrated on the young of range stock, 

 colts, calves, half -grown cattle and sheep being the 

 principal victims. Of wild game, the deer and 

 antelope are the greatest sufferers, and to both 

 those species the gray wolf is terribly destructive. 



In regions that now are almost destitute of game, 

 the gray wolf, when hard pressed by hunger, some- 

 times becomes deadly dangerous to man. It has 

 been stated that there is not on record in America 

 one well- authenticated instance of a human being 

 having been attacked and killed by gray wolves. 

 Now, however, there are two such cases on record, 

 and we believe that the evidence on which they rest 

 is true. It is reported that near the close of 1912, 

 a mail-carrier serving the lumber-camps above 

 Lake Nipigon, about sixty miles north of Lake 

 Superior, in the Province of Ontario, was killed 



