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FOREST AND STREAM 
wolf story, turns to the full moon (a far cry) 
which, he asserts, I carelessly allowed to rise at 
midnight My article, which was before his eyes 
when he wrote, says as plainly as print can say 
it, “At sunset the gale blew itself out, and pres¬ 
ently the moon wheeled full and clear over the 
dark mountain.” Further on he ridicules the 
idea of my finding wolves “at the edge of a 
hamlet swarming with dogs and human beings.” 
That is not an argument, since wolves have re¬ 
peatedly entered a village by night, and have 
sometimes mated with the dogs, and sometimes 
eaten them; but my article leaves absolutely no 
room for such misrepresentation. After describ¬ 
ing a lonely harbor on the Newfoundland coast, 
where I was once storm-bound, the record states 
plainly that the dogs appeared “on the lonely 
shore, miles away from the hamlet,” and that the 
wolf appeared on the hills beyond the dogs. Now 
examine the paragraphs which your writer quotes, 
and you will see that he has carefully omitted 
that “miles away” from his quotation. 
The same lack of candor characterizes the 
foolish, dogmatic assertion that wolves were ex¬ 
tinct on the island at the time of my visit, and 
indeed every other statement that your corre¬ 
spondent makes. There is not one of them which 
a man who had regard for either natural history 
or humanity could or would have made if he 
had any imperative desire to find or to speak 
the trufh. And, finally, he shows his breed and 
his quality by declining to sign his name to his 
slander. 
The question of anatomy remains, and that 
alone will interest Forest and Stream readers 
who are also sportsmen, and who have enough 
regard for nature to prize one fact above many 
opinions or prejudices. Briefly stated, the ques¬ 
tion is, can a big wolf kill a deer or caribou by 
reaching the heart with his teeth? To me that 
is not a question but a recorded observation, and 
I so stated in my story of the big white wolf. 
The statement was ferociously challenged by one 
who thought himself an authority; he declared 
that the fact was “mathematically impossible,” 
that “no wolf’s teeth are long enough for the 
job.” that “it would require the tusks of a wal¬ 
rus ; and I was exhorted to discover my error 
“by hanging a grapefruit in the middle of a keg 
of flour, and then see whether a big dog could 
bite through the keg into the grapefruit.” This 
idiotic comparison of a deer’s heart and chest to 
Figure 3-Heart Held in Human Hand. 
a grapefruit in a keg was echoed by some other 
naturalists who get their ideas of anatomy 
from their inner consciousness, or perchance 
by inspiration. 
Your first accurate glance at any member of 
the deer family will show you how far astray is 
the notion that his lower chest is like a keg, or 
his own belly, or any other rounded object. If 
you get near enough to a living deer or caribou 
to examine him, or if you turn a dead animal 
over on his back, you will see that the chest be¬ 
tween the forelegs is shaped like a wedge, a sur¬ 
prisingly thin wedge, and that the point of the 
heart is down in that wedge where the teeth of 
a wolf might very easily reach it. The thin ribs, 
with their cartilaginous endings are not very re¬ 
sisting: and between the ribs the heart has no pro¬ 
tection whatever, save for a thin tissue. The 
shoulder blades are not attached to the skeleton, 
but slide loosely back and forth under the skin, 
exposing the heart at every stride; so that with a 
tiny penknife, or a thorn less than an inch long, 
you can strike the heart of any deer or caribou 
or moose if you catch him when his shoulder 
blade is either forward or back, leaving the thin 
wedge of his chest open to attack. This is not 
a matter of anybody’s opinion; it is a plain 
matter of fact. 
The accompanying photographs of a full- 
grown deer were taken by an amateur, in thick 
cover and poor light, exactly where the deer fell 
to a shot in the brain. They are not nearly so 
convincing as your own observation will be, but 
they reveal plainly enough the anatomical fact 
that I am trying to illustrate. 
Photo No. i shows the wedge-shaped chest 
between the forelegs. The heart lies just under 
the folded foot-rule, at a depth of two and one- 
half inches. The point of the heart touches the 
thin chest wall at every beat. The distance 
through the chest and point of heart, from sur¬ 
face to surface, is four and five-eighths inches. 
Thickness of wedge at extremity, one and one- 
half inches. Does any man, who has ever seen a 
big wolf gape his long jaws wide open, doubt 
wedge into his mouth and sink his fangs to the 
heart of it? 
Photo No. 2 shows the brisket of the same 
deer with skin removed above the ribs and heart. 
The top of the heart is the speck of light to the 
left of the middle rib. The distance from the 
outer skin to the heart is five-eighths of an inch. 
Photo No. 3 shows a man’s hand grasping and 
compressing the whole lower chest and holding 
the deer’s heart at its middle point on either side 
between the thumb and middle finger. The point 
of the heart comes down into the man’s hand; 
the distance between his thumb and finger, as 
shown by the open foot-rule, is three and one- 
half inches. 
Photo No. 4 is of a sketch of a buck made by 
Hon. G. W. Bartlett, Superintendent of Algon- 
for an instant that the brute could take that 
quin Park, in Ontario. He certifies that he has 
seen one deer killed by a wolf-bite to the heart 
at the point marked (X) one; another deer 
killed by a wolf-bite to the heart at point 2; 
and two animals (a deer and a yearling cow) 
killed by wolf-bites through the kidneys at point 
3 , the latter wounds being given after the animals 
had been thrown. 
As for the wolves, long ago on my first ex¬ 
pedition to study them, I had the luck to run into 
a large pack in their day bed, after trailing them 
for six hours; and the first wolf I ever laid 
hands on was a good one. He weighed, as near¬ 
ly as I could estimate after dissecting him and 
putting the pieces on a spring-balance, something 
over 130 pounds. Even when his muscles were 
stiffening in death I .opened his jaws a full 
seven inches, and his fangs were an inch and a 
quarter long. There were some others in the 
pack of apparently equal size; several others 
were smaller; but there was one huge brute 
(which I did not see at first, and at which I 
took running shots with a revolver) that made 
my big wolf look like a youngster. So far as 
length of fangs and spread of jaws and terrific 
snapping power are concerned, any wolf in that 
pack could readily have killed a young caribou 
Figure 4—Wolves Have Killed Deer By Bites as Indicated By X. 
