THE WILD LIFE OF LAKE SUPERIOR 



163 



m 



Photograph by George Shiras, 3d 



A BEAUTIFUL LAKE ON ST. IGNACE ISLAND 



This lake, four miles long and nearly dividing the island, is the largest of some fifty 

 ponds and lakes. The western shores are high and rocky and the eastern low, with shallow 

 Days, where forty moose were seen in two days. Many of the animals feed on the water 

 plants, six feet below the surface. While the forests look dense, all the lower limbs have 

 been eaten by the moose (see page 187). 



although hearing them howl upon hun- 

 dreds of occasions and seeing their tracks 

 in every direction. 



Northern Michigan was, and still is, 

 one of the favorite resorts of the timber- 

 wolf, owing to the dense forests and the 

 abundance of deer and rabbits. Here I 

 have shot a few and trapped or poisoned 

 a dozen or so about the camp, a favorable 

 record, considering that of the myriad of 

 hunters roaming this section every fall, 

 many of them, in more than half a cen- 

 tury of hunting, have yet to see or kill 

 their first wolf, although they number 

 thousands about Lake Superior (see page 



133). 



Nowhere in America have I ever been 

 able to get an authentic account of a man 

 being deliberately pursued or injured by 

 a wolf, although out of the multitude of 

 such stories it may be that one or two are 

 true, for the possibility always exists of 

 an individual animal lacking the caution 

 of its forebears or where living in a 

 totally uninhabited country it has not in- 

 herited any suspicions of man. 



Probably the most conclusive proof of 

 the wolf's fear of a human being is the 

 fact that every season thousands of deer 

 carcasses in the Lake region are left over 

 night on the ground or hung from a 

 branch within reach, and yet are undis- 

 turbed because of the slight scent left by 

 the hunter. Even the entrails remain un- 

 touched until all human trace has disap- 

 peared. 



A WOLF SHUNS A DL£R THAT MAN HAS 

 TOUCHED 



Venison is the principal diet of the 

 Lake Superior timber-wolf, for they 

 think and dream about it from puppy- 

 hood days, yet these keen-nosed creatures, 

 when the air is filled with bloody odors, 

 refrain from touching the unguarded car- 

 casses. This should convince the most 

 skeptical that such an animal on detecting 

 the presence of a traveler in the woods 

 is not likely to attack him in the flesh, 

 since it shrinks in terror whenever dis- 

 covering anything indicating human scent 

 about a slain deer. 



