Trappers make the wilderness a safer place for people. There is no doubt about it.
The Source of the Harmless Wolf Myth by Valerius Geist
http://westinstenv.org/wildpeop/2011...ess-wolf-myth/
The Source of the Harmless Wolf Myth
Note: Dr. Valerius Geist, Professor Emeritus of Environmental Science at the University of Calgary in Alberta, is a renowned expert in wildlife management and conservation practices. In addition to teaching, writing about, and lecturing on the subjects, Dr. Geist has performed years of in-the-field research on big game species. He has authored 16 books, seven documentary films and contributed 40 entries to various encyclopedias. Two of his papers are posted in the W.I.S.E. Colloquium: Wildlife Sciences [here, here]. Other essays by Dr. Geist are [here, here, here, here, here, here]
The effects of thousands of impoverished trappers and wolf bounties in northern Alberta early in the 20th century on predators, and its relation to the myth of the harmless wolf.
by Valerius Geist
I have been digging into historical literature in my quest to understand why in North America the myth of the “harmless wolf” took such a such a severe hold, to the point of perverting scholarship and quite probably leading to the death of some believers.
The conventional view of the harmless wolf, which I also believed in throughout my academic career and four years into retirement, is in sharp contrast to experiences elsewhere. Yet, it certainly coincided with my personal experience pre-1999 when a misbehaving pack of wolves settled about our and our neighbor’s properties at the edge of a farming district in central Vancouver Island. I subsequently discovered that the wolves were much the same in their behavior, whatever their origins, but that circumstances lead to vastly different outcomes.
In general, the evidence indicates that wolves are very careful to choose the most nutritious food source most easily obtained without danger. They tackle dangerous prey only when they run out of non dangerous prey, and they shift to new prey only very gradually, following a long period of gradual exploration. Wolves are very sensitive to strangeness, including a potential prey species strange to them. Garbage is the easiest and safest food source for wolves, and they do take advantage of such. Once they are habituated to people due to their proximity, they may begin to investigate people. The ultimate exploration of a strange prey by a carnivore is to attack — consequently, the danger from habituated wolves. However, they need not have garbage, just a shortage of prey to begin investigating and eventually attacking humans. This means that as long as wolves have sufficient natural prey, they leave livestock aloe. As long as they have livestock they leave humans alone. When short of natural prey and livestock they turn their attention to humans and their habitations and may even break into such to extract cattle, horses, pigs, sheep or poultry. Dogs and cats are attacked before that. We humans are next in line, primarily children. But even then the initial attacks are exploratory in nature and clumsy, allowing some victims to escape. However, this scenario is of exceptional scarcity in North America, though it is practiced occasionally by coyotes targeting children in urban parks.
The discrepancy, however, between global and conventional American experiences with wolves is crass. Wolves have killed thousands upon thousands of people as chronicled by European and Asian sources, yet in North America fatal attacks are few and disputed. The differences are real. What then was going on in the past century in North America to make wolves so harmless? I felt I had obtained part of the answer that showed that wolves are wolves wherever they occur, but that circumstances can generate very different outcomes in wolf behavior.
In a teleconference with a committee of the Montana legislature last April, I suggested that in Canada trapping and official wolf control via hired predator control officers was likely a good part of the answer. I ran subsequently into most unlikely sources, plus follow-ups. These are the memoirs of two German authors, the two volume work of Max Hinsche (1935) Kanada Wirklich Erlebt (Canada really experienced) and Reinhold Eben-Ebnau (1953) Goldgelbeds Herbstlaub (Golden yellow fall leaves). In addition I examined C. Gorden Hewit’s (1921) The Conservation of the Wildlife of Canada and followed up with some reading by a like-minded and qualified author on Russian and Siberian conditions Egon Freiherr von Kapherr (1941) Wo es trommelt und röhrt (Where [wildlife] drums and roars).
Max Hinsche arrived in Canada in 1926 and became trapper and collector of wildlife. He was a taxidermist by trade. He spent eight years on the Athabaska River in Northern Alberta, but traveled for a year in the then unexplored Yukon before retuning to Germany in 1935. He wrote his memoirs in two volumes, and died shortly thereafter. He arrived virtually destitute in Canada, and rumor has it he fled the law. When he returned with a significant collection for the Dresden Natural History Museum, somehow, all was forgiven, and his books made him for a short time a hero.
Hinsche is an excellent, vivid writer, and a close, careful, objective observer. His is far and beyond the best account of how trappers lived in Northern Alberta 1926-1935. He illustrates a community of desperately poor, hard struggling men who at great danger to themselves trapped for a meager grubstake in winter. In summer they were employed as laborers, which earned them just enough to go once again trapping. Most held down a trap line alone, some lived in pairs, however, all were united in a web of mutual support and code of conduct. It is evident that there were many such poor trappers as Hinsche met them on the Athabaska going to and from to his trap lines. After a first dreadful year in which Hinsche and a companion of his almost starved to death, Hinsche set up a routine that made him reasonably successful and allowed him some museum collecting. He was out virtually day and night and experienced especially Canadian winter conditions in their full severity.
What was Hinsche’s views on wildlife and wolves? When he came in 1926 moose were scarce, but increased and were abundant when he left in 1935. Mule deer were abundant throughout. Wolves were present, but not common and Hinsche in eight years had only one serious run-in with a wolf pack. However, that run in, described in exquisite detail, is classic. A pack confronted him as he trespassed into an area where they had killed three moose and three deer. Hinsche pointing out that he had only four shells in his rifle, backed out without shooting and reached his cabin safely. (A Saskatchewan friend of mine did exactly the same thing opposing seven very pushy wolves with five cartridges in his rifle’s magazine and chamber). Hinsche counted 18 wolf beds in the snow the following day.
Hinsche trapped a few wolves along with other fur-bearers. His significance resides in his detailed account of the attitude of trappers towards wolves due to the problems wolves cause them. He points out that when wolves arrive in a trappers area, they first of all spook off the big game which the trappers rely on for food. These desperately poor men and their few dogs relied almost entirely on big game for food through the long winter, and when wolves emptied the land of moose and deer the trappers could be in serious difficulty. As we learn later in detail from Eben-Ebenau, keeping meat safe for personal use was not easy, as some bears managed to get at cached meat, which meant that the trapper had to disrupt trap line work and go hunting once again. Finding no wildlife to hunt was thus a very serious concern for a trapper. Secondly, wolves notoriously followed trappers, and destroyed the catch in the traps. This was a serious financial loss to already very poor men, especially if wolves destroyed a high value fur such as lynx, marten, mink, or cross fox. Thirdly, wolves could destroy sled dogs, another economic blow. (And I must add that there are also incidents of a wolf or more attacking a trapper and/or his sled dog team as told to me by native trappers, though neither Hinsche nor Eben-Ebenau mention such). Consequently, and understandably, trapper sought to rid themselves of wolves. Wolf fur was of no particular value. However, with a bounty added, there was incentive to trap wolves. One advantage of the bounty system was that only the scalp had to be handed in to receive the money. Consequently, one only needed the scalp, and one could save oneself the trouble of skinning, preparing and transporting the bulky wolf fur.