22 WOLVES IK EELATION TO STOCK, GAME, AND FOEEST KESEKVES. 



DESTRUCTION OF WOLVES. 



The methods usually employed for the destruction of woh^es are 

 hunting with rifle or with dogs and horses, capturing the young in 

 the dens, trapping, and poisoning. 



HUNTING. 



Hunting wolves with dogs and horses has been so fully described 

 by President Roosevelt « from his own and his associates' experience 

 that little can be added. For thrilling sport and for a test of skill 

 and nerve it can hardly be excelled, but as a method of destroying 

 wolves it is costly in horseflesh, dogs, and the time of the best riders. 

 Nevertheless, this is often the only method employed by the ranch- 

 men. 



In the upper Green River Valley, in April, 1906, the three Alex- 

 ander brothers showed me the skins of 8 wolves which had been 

 taken the previous fall and winter, in most cases by running with 

 horses. They had bought considerable grain at a high price to keep 

 their horses up and had devoted a good deal of time to* the hunt. 

 Near Big Piney the same winter several wolf hunts were organized, 

 on one of which 2 wolves were killed by a party of riders. Occa- 

 sionally a rider surprises a wolf at close quarters and, if well 

 mounted, overtakes and ropes or shoots it. There are also authentic 

 records of wolves having been shot after being followed all day on 

 soft snow, but few hunters will adopt so tiresome a method. 



Ordinary trail hounds are said to drive the wolves out of a section, 

 but the relief afforded is only temporary. The dogs can not catch 

 the wolves, and the wolves sometimes turn and kill a number of the 

 pack. Several packs of Russian wolfhounds and large greyhounds 

 are kept in the Green River Yalley, but I could not learn that a 

 wolf had ever been killed by their aid. 



Men who have made a business of hunting Avolves for the bount}^ 

 assert that they are usually able to shoot one or both of the old wolves 

 at the den by Avatching the trails, or hiding near the den early in the 

 morning before the wolves return from the night's round. These 

 statements are fully corroborated by my own experience. While 

 watching dens in Wyoming I could easily have shot the male who 

 was doing sentinel cluty; for although he watched from a high 

 point from which he could see a man long before being himself seen, 

 still in his anxiety to decoy me away he often came within rifle range. 



a Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter, Theodore Roosevelt, Scribner's, 

 pp. 100-132, 1905 ; The Wilderness Hunter, Theodore Roosevelt, Putnam's 

 Sons, pp. 386-411, 1893. 



