FOREST AND STREAM. 
[Feb. 2, 1907. 
I 72 
Protection Against Wolves. 
For several years much complaint has been 
made at the Forestry Bureau in Washington 
of the depredations of wolves on stock in the 
West. With'the increase of cattle on the range, 
and of game in game preserves, game refuges 
and national parks, there seems to have been a 
corresponding increase in the number of wolves, 
as might naturally enough have been expected. 
The complaints seem largely to be founded on 
an erroneous idea that the forest reserves serve 
as breeding grounds and homes for the wolves, 
from which they raid the surrounding country, 
killing stock and again, retreating to forest 
cover. This of course is not the case. The 
wolves stay close to their food supply.. If their 
food is in forest reserves they remain in the 
reserves; if the food is outside they are found there. 
The frequency of these complaints led Mr. 
Pinchot, the forester, to apply to the Biological 
Survey for assistance in this matter, and Dr. C. 
Hart Merriam, Chief of the Survey, detailed Mr. 
Vernon Bailey, his Assistant in charge of Geo¬ 
graphic Distribution, to make an inquiry into 
the matter. Mr. Bailey’s very interesting and 
valuable report has just been issued by the 
Forest Service as Bulletin 7 2 - If will b e found 
of great interest to all persons living within the 
territory where wolves range. 
The wolves of North America are divided into 
two groups, the coyotes or prairie wolves, com¬ 
prising a number of small species and sub¬ 
species, and the large wolf which varies in color 
from white to gray and red to black, which are 
generally known simply as wolves, though often 
called “timber wolves,” “gray wolves,” “moun¬ 
tain wolves,” “big wolves” or in the southwest, 
‘‘lobos” or “loafers.” It is the big wolves that 
<do the damage to cattle, the coyotes confining 
their depredations to sheep, very young calves, 
the young of game and smaller birds and mam¬ 
mals. 
Over much of the more thickly settled 
United States wolves have been exterminated. 
There are a few in the Appalachian Mountains, 
in western North Carolina and Tennessee and 
some in Florida, southern Georgia, Alabama, 
and Mississippi, as well as in Minnesota, Wis¬ 
consin and Michigan. Over the whole plains 
country, however, from Texas and Mexico, 
north to the Arctic circle wolves are abundant, 
but in western Utah and Arizona, in part of 
Oregon and Washington, and in Nevada and 
Southern California there are few or none. 
Mr. Bailey’s observations and all reports of 
hunters, trappers, ranchmen and forest rangers, 
show that the wolves leave the mountains when 
the cattle come down from them in autumn, and 
only return there when the cattle are - driven into 
the mountains in June. They breed in the lower 
country—the foothills—and some of them do not 
follow the cattle into the hills in summer, but 
remain in the valley through the summer. 
How abundant wolves are in any given terri¬ 
tory no one can say. In the past, most States 
have offered bounties for the destruction of 
wolves, but apparently without greatly affecting 
the supply. In twelve years, for example, the 
State of Wyoming paid bounty on 20,819 wolves, 
the amount of which was more than $67,000. 
To this should be added some portion of over 
$14,000 paid in 1898 on wolves, coyotes and 
mountain lions, the species not reported on sep¬ 
arately. In Minnesota a bounty for thirty years 
from 1866 to 1895 inclusive, paid on both wolves 
and coyotes, amounted to the astonishing sum 
of $261,987.27, and in the nine years from 1896 
to 1904 inclusive the bounty was paid on 29,346 
wolves and coyotes, amounting to $119,952.38. 
The stock destroyed by wolves is mainly 
cattle. Calves and yearlings are generally 
selected, but cows and even full-grown steers 
are often killed. They are usually attacked 
from behind and eaten alive. “Occasionally an 
animal will escape the wolf with a great piece 
torn out of its ham, while the wolf goes on to 
catch and kill another. The ranchmen in the 
wolf country maintain that a ‘critter’ even 
slightly bitten by a wolf will die of blood poison¬ 
ing, and many detailed instances seem fully to 
substantiate this. More cattle are therefore 
killed than are eaten. Evidently the wolves 
prefer freshly killed beef. In summer they 
rarely return for a second meal from the same 
animal; but in winter, when in the snowy north 
the cattle are gathered into pastures or stables, 
they often return to a carcass until its bones 
are picked. 
“The actual number of cattle killed by wolves 
cannot be determined. Comparatively few ani¬ 
mals are found by cattlemen and hunters, when 
freshly killed, with wolf tracks around them ana 
wolf marks on them. Not all of the adult cattle 
missing from a herd can surely be charged to 
the depredations of wolves, while missing calves 
may have been taken by wolves, by mountain 
lions, or by ‘rustlers.’ Nevertheless, there are 
data enough from which to draw fairly reliable 
conclusions. In the Green River Basin, Wyo¬ 
ming, on April 2, 1906, Mr. Charles.Budd had 
eight yearling calves and four colts killed in his 
pasture by wolves within six weeks. At Big 
Piney a number of cattle and a few horses had 
been killed around the settlement during the 
previous fall and winter. At Pinedale members 
of the local stockmen’s association counted 
thirty head of cattle killed in the valley around 
Cora and Pinedale in 1905, between April, when 
the cattle were turned out on the range, and 
June 30, when they were driven to the moun-' 
tains. In 1906 wolves were said to have come 
into the pastures near Cora and Pinedale and 
begun killing cattle in January on the ‘feed 
grounds,’ and Mr. George Glover counted up 
twenty-two head of cattle killed by them up to 
April 10. Just north of Cora, Mr. Alexander, 
a well-known ranchman, told me that the wolves 
killed near his place in June, 1904, a large three- 
year-old steer, a cow, three yearlings, and a 
horse. On the G. O. S. ranch, in the Gila 
Forest Reserve in New Mexico, May 11 to 3 °> 
1906, the cowboys on the round-up reported find¬ 
ing calves or yearlings killed by wolves almost 
daily, and Mr. Victor Culberson, president of 
the company, estimated the loss by wolves on 
the ranch at 10 per cent, of .the cattle. 
“In a letter to the Biological Survey, under 
date of April 3, 1896, Mr. R. M. Allen*, general 
manager of the Standard Cattle Company, with 
headquarters at Ames, Neb., and ranches in both 
Wyoming and Montana, states that. in 1894 his 
company paid a bounty of $5 at their Wyoming 
ranch on almost exactly 500 wolves. The total 
loss to Wyoming through the depredations of 
wolves Mr. Allen estimated at a million of 
dollars a year.” 
Young colts are killed in considerable num¬ 
bers on the horse ranges of the West; sheep 
not very frequently when they are herded, 
though coyotes do much damage. Goats, .if un¬ 
herded, are killed in some numbers, and in the 
timbered bottoms and swamps of eastern Texas, 
Louisiana and Arkansas hogs are frequently 
destroyed. 
“The amount of game killed is even less easily 
determined than of cattle, but. judging from the 
evidence obtained, wolves kill far less game in 
the western United States than either coyotes 
or mountain lions. 
“At Big Piney, Wyoming. I examined wolf 
dung in probably fifty places around dens and 
along wolf trails. In about nine-tenths of the 
cases it was composed mainly or entirely of 
cattle or horse hair; in all otjier cases, but one, 
of rabbit fur and bones, and in this one case 
mainly of antelope hair. A herd of twenty or 
thirty antelope wintered about five or six miles 
from this den, and the old wolves frequently 
visited the herd, but I could find no other evi¬ 
dence that they destroyed antelope, though I 
followed wolf tracks for many miles among the 
antelope tracks on the snow. Jack rabbits were 
killed and eaten along the trails or brought to 
the den and eaten near it almost every night, 
and a half-eaten cottontail was found in the den 
with the little pups. While wolves are usually 
found around antelope herds, they are probably 
able to kill only the sick, crippled and young. The 
following note from Wyoming appeared in the 
Pinedale Roundup of July 4, 1906: 
“ ‘While riding on the outside circle with the 
late round-up, Nelse Jorgensen chanced to see a 
wolf making away with a fa!wn antelope. He 
gave chase to the animal, but it succeeded in get¬ 
ting away, never letting loose on its catch.’ 
“About a den near Cora the numerous de¬ 
posits of wolf dung on the crest of the ridge 
not far away were found to be composed of 
horse and cattle hair, though fresh elk tracks 
were abundant over the hillside on all sides 
of the den, while cattle and horses were then to 
be found only in the valley, eight miles distant. 
Several j-ack rabbits had been brought in, and 
eaten, and the old wolf on her way to the den 
had laid down her load, evidently a jack rabbit, 
gone aside some twenty feet and caught a ruffed 
grouse, eaten it on the spot, and then resumed 
her load and her journey to the waiting pups. 
One small carpal bone in this den may have been 
from a deer or small elk, but no other trace of 
game was found. 
“Talking with hunters and trappers who 
spend much time in the mountains when the 
snow is on the ground brought little positive in¬ 
formation on the destruction of elk or deer by 
wolves. Mr. George Glo.ver, a forest ranger 
long familiar with the Wind River Mountains, 
in both winter and summer, said that he had 
found a large blacktail buck which the wolves 
had eaten, but that he suspected it had been 
previously shot by hunters. In many winters 
of trapping where elk were abundant, Mr. 
Glover has never found any evidence that elk 
had been killed by wolves. Coyotes constantly 
follow the elk herds, especially in spring when 
the calves are being born, and probably destroy 
many of the young, but wolves apparently do 
not share this habit. It seems probable, how¬ 
ever, that in summer the young of both elk and 
deer suffer to some extent while the wolves 
are among them in the mountains. 
“Many deer are killed by the wolves in the 
timbered regions of northern Michigan, Wis¬ 
consin and Minnesota, and in parts of Canada, 
especially during the winter, when snow is deep 
and domestic animals are housed. On Grand 
Island, in Lake Superior, a gray wolf appeared 
on the game preserve of the Cleveland-Cliffs 
Iron Company in January, 1906, when the snow 
was two feet deep. Within the next thirty days 
it killed thirteen deer and one caribou, the 
carcasses of which were found by the party 
organized to hunt the wolf. 
“Wherever wolves inhabit timbered 'country 
they are destructive to game in proportion to 
their abundance, to the abundance of game, and 
to the scarcity of domestic cattle. In the far 
north caribou, moose and musk-ox are their 
principal prey, while in some parts of the United 
States and Canada they kill many deer every 
year. Over the Central Plains region of the 
United States wolves in great numbers origin¬ 
ally preye.d on the buffalo herds, but the buffalo 
wolf has now become pre-eminently the cattle 
wolf.” 
