Jan. 8, 1910.! 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
55 
The Boy and ihe Wolves. 
The boy had grown up from babyhood in the 
woods of Northern Wisconsin. His father, a 
pioneer, had settled on a homestead of 160 acres 
of land which was heavily wooded and sur¬ 
rounded by immense tracts of timber. The boy 
was born with the natural instincts of a hunter, 
and with a .22 rifle with which he first killed a 
large wildcat, then to the single-barrel shotgun 
and from that to the repeater, he had become 
a fine shot. The hardy outdoor life had per¬ 
fected muscle and nerve. 
A hunting party had been with them that fall, 
the boy’s seventeenth year. With good health 
and a wagon box full of game, he had started 
the day before the expiration of the hunting sea¬ 
son with his father and older brother for the 
railroad station thirty-two miles away. He had 
hunted some with them. The day after the close 
of the hunting season he was to return to the 
log school house for the winter course. It was 
a pleasant day and the ground was covered with 
three inches of snow. Two hours or so after 
the party had gone the boy started out alone for 
a last hunt. 
There did not seem to be much sign of deer, 
but he tramped on through the heavy hardwood 
timber and finally, fairly late in the afternoon, 
he jumped a buck. A quick running shot brought 
the telltale spots of blood and then followed a 
long chase. Carefully he trailed, using all of 
his craft to get a shot, but without avail. Al¬ 
though it was then getting late and he was five 
or six miles from home, he kept up the pursuit 
until he was beyond his reckoning so far as 
familiarity with the country went. 
Now he began to get a glimpse of the deer 
once in a while as he dodged between the trees. 
Seeing the deer was beginning to circle, the boy 
cut off to head him and kept this up, barely fail¬ 
ing two or three times to get a good shot. Up 
to this time he had not heard nor seen anything 
that gave any indication of any other animal life 
in the woods. At last between the trees he could 
see some kind of an opening. The deer passed 
along in front of it and right behind him was 
what looked to the boy like another deer. This 
did not surprise him, as frequently deer wounded 
and followed will run among and travel along 
with others. He ran toward the opening, which 
he found to be an abandoned beaver meadow 
half a mile long and not very wide. Running 
down the middle of it on a deer trail that fol¬ 
lowed the little stream flowing through the cen¬ 
ter of the meadow, he heard the deer crashing 
in the alder brush that lined the sides. Run¬ 
ning further ahead, he jumped on a little mound 
of frozen bog and stood ready to bag his game, 
the open meadow in front of him and more 
alder brush close to his back. 
In a moment came the deer, a big fellow, and 
close behind him, reaching for his hams at every 
jump, six big timber wolves. They were mak¬ 
ing no sound. The buck was laboring so hard 
to get away that his panting could be plainly 
heard. Though the animals were large, they 
made a rather small mark. In the long dead 
grass in the gathering gloom, as the sky had 
now become overcast, it was an Indistinct mass 
of moving wolves and deer, but the boy fired 
as fast as he thought he had a good sight. In 
less than two minutes they were all out of view. 
The boy stood still wondering what he had 
done, when suddenly there was a crash and a 
snarl right behind him in the alder brush. Whirl¬ 
ing quickly he saw within twenty feet of him a 
big wolf, teeth bared, growling like a ferocious 
dog. Pulling up the gun he fired and the wolf 
disappeared. Then with gun cocked he cau¬ 
tiously stepped to where the big wolf had stood 
and there found some wads of hair and plenty 
of blood. He followed the track far enough 
to see that the wolf was running strong and 
then turned back to the meadow wondering if 
after such a fracas he would still have to re¬ 
turn home empty handed. 
He had hardly cleared the brush when he 
i | 
IN THE WISCONSIN WOODS. 
Photograph by O. W. Smith. 
again heard the deer breathing hard in the 
grass. Hurrying there, he found him down and 
unable to get up. In addition to a wound in 
the hip, which came from the first shot, the buck 
had been completely hamstrung by the wolves 
between the time he broke from the brush and 
the commencement of the boy’s shooting. Near 
him lay one monstrous wolf shot through the 
top of the shoulders. 
Ascertaining that the wolf was dead and that 
the deer could not get away, the boy began 
tracking around to see if he had any more game. 
He found from blood on the tracks he had 
wounded another wolf, as it had bled freely, 
but as it was now getting dark, he decided it 
would be useless to try to follow him, and so 
came back to the deer. 
The buck was still alive. Raising his gun he 
aimed to shoot him through the neck and put 
him out of his misery. The click of the falling 
hammer alone was heard. Thinking it a miss- 
fire, he snapped again, but with the same result. 
He then exanfined the gun and found the maga¬ 
zine empty. He searched his pockets for extra 
cartridges, but found none. The wolves began 
to howl in the distance, but this did not frighten 
him. Taking his jackknife, he managed to cut 
down and break off some alder brush clubs, then 
went at the deer. The buck could move his 
head and neck and partially raise himself on 
his front feet and he dodged and warded blows 
with his horns like a skilled boxer. After quite 
a fight the boy succeeded and the deer suc¬ 
cumbed, then with his knife he dressed the deer, 
dragged it into the brush, bent some of the tops 
down over it, tying them together with some 
cord he had in his pocket, then covered up the 
carcass as best he could with brush, grass and 
snow. This done he tied more cord around the 
neck of the wolf and around his waist and 
started to back track for home, a distance of 
about nine miles. 
It was after 9 o’clock before he reached a 
locality which he recognized. The wolves fol¬ 
lowed him in, evidently howling on his track, 
but apparently they did not come nearer than a 
quarter of a mile. Before he reached home he 
had to sit down, as it seemed to him, every five 
minutes. It was after 11 o’clock when he 
reached the house and brought relief and joy 
to the then thoroughly alarmed mother and the 
little children. 
The wolf weighed sixty pounds after the en¬ 
trails had been removed. The boy received from 
the State and county $20 for the scalp and he 
sold the carcass to a taxidermist for $10—not 
a bad day’s work for a boy. 
His father and his brother returned home the 
next day and on the following one they went to 
the place where he had the deer covered up. 
They found it untouched, skinned it out and in 
two trips carried it to where they could get in 
with a horse and jumper. It had snowed a little, 
so they could not track the wounded wolves and 
consequently were unable to learn whether or 
not either of them had been mortally wounded. 
Carolus. 
Emperor William’s Hunting. 
The series of cinematograph views of ruling 
monarchs and the heads of States as hunters was 
continued recently in Donaueschingen, where 
Emperor William was present as the guest of 
the Duke Max Egon zu Furstenberg, the presi¬ 
dent of the Shooting and Field Sports Exhibi¬ 
tion, to be held in Vienna this year. The Kaiser 
exhibited a lively interest in the work of the 
photographers, who took views of the more in¬ 
teresting episodes of the hunt on three succes¬ 
sive days. The views show that both the Kaiser 
and the Prince Furstenberg deserve their repu¬ 
tation of being first class shots, for hardly a 
shot missed. The bag amounted to about 150 
foxes, nearly half of which were killed by the 
Kaiser. The views include the meeting of the 
hunters with the Emperor, the reception of the 
company by Princess Furstenberg and other 
ladies at the breakfast tent, the breakfast and 
the bag. 
The next views will be taken in Rambouillet, 
where King Manuel of Portugal will take part 
in pheasant shooting as guest of President Fai¬ 
lures. The hunting exhibition so far has cine¬ 
matograph views of Austrian, Swedish, English, 
German, French or Portuguese hunting scenes* 
