166 EEPOKT OF ONTARIO GAME No. 52 



partial to human flesh or that they are prone to attack human beings. 

 In fact, the most careful investigation tends only to accentuate what an 

 arrant coward is the wolf of the Province in the neighborhood of a 

 human being. The howling of wolves, or a glimpse of one or two of 

 them, is apt occasionally to frighten the nervous, with the result that 

 wild stories have been circulated of men having been treed for hours by 

 wolves, and having only escaped after prolonged periods of suspense and 

 terror, but as a matter of fact no single instance has as yet, it would 

 appear, been authenticated of a grown man or woman being attacked, 

 much less killed, by wolves in the woods of Ontario. Thousands of in- 

 stances on the contrary can readily be adduced proving the absolute 

 security of human beings in this regard, and it would seem, therefore, 

 that this erroneous plea for the carrying of firearms in the reserves has 

 been rightly disregarded. 



There are, however, timber prospecting and other concessions issued 

 in certain of the reserves which involve the presence in the reserves of 

 parties or gangs of men, and there are, also, in certain instances indi- 

 viduals desirous of crossing the reserves for the purpose of reaching the 

 country beyond them, w^hile outside of the reserves the carrying of fire- 

 arms is not, of course, illegal at the present time. The possession of 

 firearms in lumber and other camps is always to be deplored, for the 

 illegitimate destruction of game that is effected by lumber-jacks and 

 others from such camps is, in many cases, great and yet at all times 

 most difficult to prove. In the case of the reserves, at least, some 

 measures should plainly be taken to prevent the possibility of this evil 

 occurring from this source, as well as from prospectors and other par- 

 ties. In many instances, however, the lumber jack and prospector 

 carries most of his worldl}^ possessions about with him, and should he 

 chance to be the owner of a gun, it might be hard on him to compel him 

 to dispose of it or leave it behind when entering a reserve, for these per- 

 sons are frequently of a more or less nomadic disposition and conse- 

 quently unlikely to come out of the reserves at the point at which they 

 enter them. Again, in the case of the traveller who might find it neces- 

 sary to cross the reserves on his road elsewhere, it would be an obvious 

 injustice to force him to abandon his firearms or to penalize him for 

 carrying them across the reserves. It would seem, therefore, that some 

 system might well be devised and enacted to meet special contingencies 

 of the nature indicated. In some reserves, outside of the Province, it has 

 been found both simple and effective for the superintendent or rangers, 

 as the case might be, to seal all firearms which for one reason or another 

 have to be taken into the reserves, the breaking of the seal by the owner 

 of the weapon while in the reserve being deemed proof of an infringement 

 of the game laws. There might, of course, be some little difficulty experi- 

 enced by those entering the reserves by unfrequented routes in getting 

 their firearms sealed, but if due discretion were used in this regard, it 

 would seem that the introduction of such a system into the reserves of 



