The Source of the Harmless Wolf Myth

[6.5swedeforelk]

From experience, I certainly agree that any wild animal
becomes inured, or tending to overcome their innate fear, of us.
With familarity comes lack of respect (fear).

A 2yr old beaver took up residence in our dugout water supply.
Within 6 weeks, I had him waddling up the bank to take a carrot
from my hand.

Here's a beautiful red fox I met while bush working.

[6.5swedeforelk]

Originally Posted by northerntrapper

I found this interesting. As a trapper, I respect the wolves intelligence and cunning, and their ability to quickly ascertain what happened at each snare site and avoid similiar reoccurrences.
Once you catch a wolf, the remainder of the pack kinda goes goofy and disorganized for a short while and that is your chance to pick up more if you have more snares set in the area, but after that, you now have a much smarter pack of wolves...

Interesting post northerntrapper.
Sounds like you don't just talk the talk, but also walk the walk.

The seeming difference of results of catching a wolfpack member has a logical explaination.
I have caused & observed the "educated pack" that you speak of.

The breakdown of the remaining pack sometimes comes about
when the Alpha member is removed.
This, and hard times with food shortage is when you start finding
shreaded wolf hide & hair- nothing more.

[F Mandolin]

From what I can understand I think Geist should have stayed with the sheep, elf, and deer where he did some good work. All I got out of the entire spiel was that wolves can become habituated and trappers had a very hard time in the early 1900's. Habituation of any animal and it's consequences is well known and from what I experienced in the late fifties and heard from my grandfather who came west in 1907 to homestead trappers and bounty hunters could make more money than miners and loggers. I know we did trapping for fur and cougar bounty. I also question the rabies epidemic and the horror stories of massive poisoning of wolves. There were none, and no ravens or white tailed deer either. Someone fill me in on what I am missing.

[Young Eldon]

There were a lot of ungulates and wolves on the East Slopes in the early 1950's. Some rabies cases in northern Alberta triggered a massive poisoning effort across the province which almost eliminated the wolves on the East Slopes. It took almost 20 years for wolves to make a comeback. They increased steadily from 1973 to 2000 by which time they were reducing ungulates at a high rate. Moose, elk and some deer populations have been in the predator pit caused by wolves, cougars, bears, and hunters (recreational and subsistence) since then. Predation combined with habitat degradation and hunting could keep ungulates at very low densities for many years to come.

[F Mandolin]

I don't know what you call the eastern slopes but in the foothills east transition area there were very few wolves in the early fifties, you could go all winter and see one or two single tracks. I was never in the mountains in the fifties. I knew many of the trappers and rangers that were given strychnine and most didn't even set it out because there was nothing to poison. I agree wolves and big game were common in the early seventies but never seen or heard any evidence of wolves in any number from 1907 to the late sixties.

Wolves eat a lot of big game and increased access helped hunters but the ridiculous number of tags given out which continues today with cow elk and now white tailed deer does and fawns given out is worse than wolves ever were. You could shoot an elk, a moose, and at least two deer every year. Where did the mule deer go in ten years? Game is in a pit all right but it's not wolves by themselves that put them there or is keeping them.

[KegRiver]

Since I have little experience with the Eastern slopes region of Alberta I did a little research to find out if in fact wolf populations were low in that region during the 1950s.

What I found supported that claim to some extent, and it supported those who claim that wolves were present in relative abundance in the Peace River area through that time period.

A paper written by E. E. BALLANTYNE, President of the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association through the 1950s had this to say;

The Alberta Department of Lands and Forests is responsible for controlling predators in the forest areas of the province. The director of forestry, with his staff of approximately 70 men, i.e. forestry superintendents, and rangers, worked out a plan for traplines under the supervision of the speaker.

The methods, etc. used have been published previously (1) so will not be repeated. Briefly, 5,000 miles of traplines were established in the forest close to farming areas to provide settlement protection of humans and livestock. That was a long distance, but it would take 40,000 to 50,000 miles to cover all of the forest area every 5 miles. In the spring of 1953, 150 professional trappers were employed. Due to the drastic reduction in wildlife predators through depopulation, Nature's crash and from rabies, the number of trappers was gradually reduced until in the spring of 1955 only two trappers were on staff for each of the nine forestry divisions. These were a mobile force working over pockets of wolves and coyotes. If circumstances required an increase in the number of trappers, these two men would act as trainers and supervisors. In one district though, two extra trappers were employed to handle a migration of coyotes. The depopulation program had no effect on prolonging the occurrence of Nature's crash.


From November 1952 to April 1955(inclusive),
the following figures indicate the estimated number of animals killed in the forest areas.

Foxes ............. 55,499
Coyotes. .......... 50,781
Lynx ............... 9,927
Wolves. ........... 5,271
Bear ............... 3,827
Skunk .............. 664
Cougar .............. 69
Fisher .............. 18

Keep in mind, this is not talking about independent trappers, trapping for fur, these were government employees tasked with the drastic reduction of certain predator populations.
They called it a depopulation program.

So although it mentions the Rabies epidemic these programs were not part of the rabies response.
It does however show that there was a relatively healthy Wolf population in Northern Alberta at the start of the 1950s if one reads far enough.

The Alberta Government in a paper titled;


MANAGEMENT PLAN FOR WOLVES IN ALBERTA,
published in 1991 had this to say.

Stelfox (1959) estimated that wolves were very scarce along the eastern slopes of the Rockies and practically nonexistent in the prairies and parklands of the central portion of the province by 1900, although Williams (1946) reported two wolves with young and others near Milk River in extreme southern Alberta during 1923-25.

Later on it has this to say about wolves in Northern Alberta.

As high as 1286 wolves were bountied during a single year, 1945-46.

I'm not sure what is meant by, "I also question the rabies epidemic.

Does that mean one does not believe it ever happened or that it wasn't
as severe as history records?
Or perhaps something entirely different then I imagine it means.

As they say, google is your friend.

For those who would like to read more on both subjects from sources other then AOs self appointed experts, here's a few links;

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/art...00362-0029.pdf

Lots about the rabies epidemic on this link.
http://aep.alberta.ca/fish-wildlife/...ement-2009.pdf

https://books.google.ca/books?id=FIL...lberta&f=false

http://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcre...8&blobtype=pdf

This one is a bit messed up for some reason I don't understand but it does still have some interesting data.
https://archive.org/stream/managemen...0albe_djvu.txt

[Big Grey Wolf]

Keg you always do good research before you express a opinion. I grew up in Northern Alberta in 50's and remember the extensive depopulation of wolves/coyotes and was always justified by rabies.
However to throw another twist read reference to trappers in BC and extensive strychnine campaign on wolves. It was mentioned that rabies played a part but the Federal $$$ was put up by Dept of Indian Affairs. It was supposedly to save the ungulate population from wolf slaughter so govt would not have to buy to much beef to feed their wards of the state.

[F Mandolin]

Originally Posted by Big Grey Wolf

Keg you always do good research before you express a opinion. I grew up in Northern Alberta in 50's and remember the extensive depopulation of wolves/coyotes and was always justified by rabies.
However to throw another twist read reference to trappers in BC and extensive strychnine campaign on wolves. It was mentioned that rabies played a part but the Federal $$$ was put up by Dept of Indian Affairs. It was supposedly to save the ungulate population from wolf slaughter so govt would not have to buy to much beef to feed their wards of the state.

Would you be north of highway 16? What were numbers like as compared to today?

[KegRiver]

Originally Posted by Big Grey Wolf

Keg you always do good research before you express a opinion. I grew up in Northern Alberta in 50's and remember the extensive depopulation of wolves/coyotes and was always justified by rabies.
However to throw another twist read reference to trappers in BC and extensive strychnine campaign on wolves. It was mentioned that rabies played a part but the Federal $$$ was put up by Dept of Indian Affairs. It was supposedly to save the ungulate population from wolf slaughter so govt would not have to buy to much beef to feed their wards of the state.

Much of the data I posted came from just such a program here in Alberta.
However, it was my understanding that here it was more in response to ranchers pressuring the government to get rid of predators that they thought were a threat to domestic livestock, mainly cows.

One has to look at the history of those early ranchers, many of which were recent immigrants from Europe where wolves were considered a major threat to livestock, and there they probably were.
For one thing they were a different species, much more like our Coyote then our Timber Wolf behaviorally, and they had lived close to humans for many centuries.

As wikipedia put it ;

Many Eurasian wolf populations are forced to subsist largely on livestock and garbage in areas with dense human activity, though wild ungalates such as moose, red deer, roe deer and wild boar are still the most important food sources in Russia and the more mountainous regions of Eastern Europe.

I did not find any data on the numbers of animals poisoned in the effort to halt the rabies epidemic and that makes sense from what I was told.
Dad was one of those recruited to put out strychnine and he told people that he was not given any instructions other then to kill as many wolves, Coyote and Fox as he could.
I know he kept no records of what he killed by trapping or poisoning.

Fur records were kept by fur buyers but many of them are no longer in business and haven't been for many years. I don't know if the government kept such records and if they did where one might find them.

I have found some historic fur records but the ones I found recorded the take of species as a whole. That is to say, they covered the whole country and did not differentiate between fur taken by trappers and those taken by ranchers and others in non trapping activities and as such I suspect there may be a high level of duplication of information from other activities and thus the numbers would not accurately reflect what wolves were taken as part of trapping activity only.

I do know that dad salvaged the hides from the animals he poisoned while putting out baits for the government rabies eradication efforts.
And I know he kept no records of any sort.

I think it is safe to say that the numbers I posted are no where near the total number of wolves killed during this period.

Not only were a huge number poisoned for the rabies eradication program there would also have been a good number trapped for fur and many shot and abandoned by livestock owners.
It was how things were done back then. Wolves were feared by many who owned livestock.

That was also long before anyone suspected that species were so interconnected. It was thought that the eradication of predators would be good for all species they preyed upon. We know now that this is not the case.

Don't get me wrong, there were conversationalists even back then, but they had no political clout in Alberta and were vastly outnumbered.
They were pretty much on the fringes of society.
The majority and most government people seemed to give little thought to conservation and in fact paid little attention to those conservation laws that were in effect at the time.

My dad was one of those people. He never bought a Moose license in his life. He claimed and it might have been true at the time, that the homestead act allowed him to take one Moose a year without a license but the truth is he wouldn't have bought a license even if that were not the case.

He and many others believed they had a right to harvest what they needed without paying for a piece of paper.
We did not agree and we were afraid he might get in trouble with the law, so one year we bought him a license. It was the only year he didn't get a Moose. He forbid us from ever doing that again and we didn't.

It was the same sort of mentality that drove the predator eradication programs and the rabies poisoning efforts.

Ironic in a sad way. It's the same sort of mentality we see spreading among outdoorsman these days, without the gentlemanly standards of my dad's era.

They were polite poachers, this generation is producing rude and violent poachers.

[Big Grey Wolf]

FMandolin, it was north of the Peace River. When wolf population was very high in Late 40's almost no moose in the Peace Country. After the rabies scare/depopulation the wolf numbers in Alberta were estimated around 1000. The moose population skyrocketed over next 20 years so we needed to invite the Americans to come and shoot a moose without a guide and for a $20 license. Their were high moose numbers everywhere north of highway 16.

[F Mandolin]

Originally Posted by Big Grey Wolf

FMandolin, it was north of the Peace River. When wolf population was very high in Late 40's almost no moose in the Peace Country. After the rabies scare/depopulation the wolf numbers in Alberta were estimated around 1000. The moose population skyrocketed over next 20 years so we needed to invite the Americans to come and shoot a moose without a guide and for a $20 license. Their were high moose numbers everywhere north of highway 16.

Makes sence to me as i heard there were wolves up north and then in later years i knew a trapper at Swan Hills and he sais there were moose everywhere and you could shoot cows and calves.

Keg River - that was an excellent piece you wrote. Your father and my grandfather sound so similar it's kind of eerie. He always told me that everytime i had shot half a dozen rabbits or chickens i had better shoot a chicken hawk or great horned owl to keep things even. Times have changed in the last 60 years.

[wind drift]

Another explanation for a difference in wolf behaviour between North America and Europe / Asia that I once read about (can't remember where) is the frequent occurrence of mass human mortality events over there, such as disease outbreaks and wars. The resulting abundance of dead and dying humans caused wolves to become accustomed to eating us over the past 2-3 thousand years. It's conceivable that these circumstances might have had effects leading to differing behaviour in Old World Wolves vs. ours here.

[calgarychef]

Originally Posted by wind drift

Another explanation for a difference in wolf behaviour between North America and Europe / Asia that I once read about (can't remember where) is the frequent occurrence of mass human mortality events over there, such as disease outbreaks and wars. The resulting abundance of dead and dying humans caused wolves to become accustomed to eating us over the past 2-3 thousand years. It's conceivable that these circumstances might have had effects leading to differing behaviour in Old World Wolves vs. ours here.

Probably true, I remember hearing that natives here fear bears because of the same thing happening during the smallpox outbreaks.

[F Mandolin]

Originally Posted by calgarychef

Probably true, I remember hearing that natives here fear bears because of the same thing happening during the smallpox outbreaks.

I knew Andy Russell and he swore that grizzlies ate natives that died during the smallpox epidemic. I can't remember the creek where he said theis happened.

[KegRiver]

Originally Posted by F Mandolin

Makes sence to me as i heard there were wolves up north and then in later years i knew a trapper at Swan Hills and he sais there were moose everywhere and you could shoot cows and calves.

Keg River - that was an excellent piece you wrote. Your father and my grandfather sound so similar it's kind of eerie. He always told me that everytime i had shot half a dozen rabbits or chickens i had better shoot a chicken hawk or great horned owl to keep things even. Times have changed in the last 60 years.

My dad didn't go quiet that far, but only just. I can recall more then one Hawk or Owl that killed a chicken or two, they paid with their lives.

Times have changed, mostly for the better, conservation wise, at a grass roots level. I'm not so sure our top government people have improved much in that regard however.

Those old fellows knew that game ranching and raising exotic species were too high risk. As we all know, more recent governments have no such concerns.

It seems to me that where we gained in one area we lost ground in another.

Those old guys were gentleman. They took only what they needed and they willingly shared.
This generation takes all it can, even when they have no way to utilize their harvest. And they do not share if they can avoid it, but they demand that everyone else share.

We understand wildlife better then we ever have in the history of man, yet we do more to make life precarious for wildlife then we ever did in the past.

We strip the land of it's forests to build our cities, we fog our planet with a cocktail of man made chemicals that have unknown long term effects.
Our governments put out the most lethal and indiscriminate poison ever known to man to kill predators for man's sake. Sure they claim it's to protect the Caribou but does anyone believe that?

We have Caribou here but they aren't putting out poison here.

We have allowed Wild Boar to escape into our forests and we've made it possible for diseases like Chronic Wasting disease to spread into our wildlife populations via game ranching.

We cut logging roads and cutlines through every square mile of the north and we have shot so much game that everything has to be on draws these days.

I don't think it's that we have lost understanding so much as it is that we have not kept up with the pace of technological development and the exploding human population.
Whatever, the results are the same, for every step forward man kind makes we take two steps backward.

In 1967 Popular Science ran a story about what the year 2000 would be like.
They predicted that wars would be eliminated and crime would too.
They predicted that we would all be driving electric cars and our cities would be spotless.

Much of what they predicted has not only not happened, crime and pollution wise it is far worse now.

Technologically we have gained far more then anyone back then could have imagined. But it seems that we have lost moral and intellectual ground almost at the same rate.

[KegRiver]

Originally Posted by wind drift

Another explanation for a difference in wolf behaviour between North America and Europe / Asia that I once read about (can't remember where) is the frequent occurrence of mass human mortality events over there, such as disease outbreaks and wars. The resulting abundance of dead and dying humans caused wolves to become accustomed to eating us over the past 2-3 thousand years. It's conceivable that these circumstances might have had effects leading to differing behaviour in Old World Wolves vs. ours here.

It could well be.

Like others here I have heard stories of disease epidemics leading to Bears scavenging on human remains in Canada. It's conceivable that Wolves may well have done so too.

But our Wolves are not nearly so pressured as European Wolves are and thus, I would think, much less likely to scavenge human remains on this side of the pond.

An old native I knew told me that the Bears in Kananaskis country are flat footed bears. When I asked him what that meant he said they walked different, that they walked flat footed and that they hunted humans.

Then I read that when the Kananaskis valley was discovered there were natives living there and that those people were wiped out some years later by some disease.

Late on I read an account that claimed that Bears in that valley had become unusually aggressive after scavenging on the remains of those people.
The author claimed he was afraid to enter that valley because of those Bears.

I wish I could remember where I read that or even the name of the author, but it's been so long and I never was good at remembering such things.

My mind does not store precise details, it stores general information.
I think because in the bush things change too much. Remembering a precise detail does no good when everything around it has changed.
So I remember the big picture, not the intimate details of that picture.

[Young Eldon]

Keg:
Andy Russell wrote about grizzlies killing and scavenging Stonie Indians from their campsite on Yarrow Creek (S.W. of Pincher Creek) after many of them had died from a smallpox epidemic about 1860. Andy got this story from his Father In Law, Bert Riggall, who was a famous guide in the early 1900's. The story is in Chapter Four of Andy's 1978 book - Grizzly Country published by Alfred A. Knopf.
The story about Kananaskis grizzlies walking flat footed sounds O.K. - don't all bears walk flat footed?

[KegRiver]

Originally Posted by Young Eldon

Keg:
Andy Russell wrote about grizzlies killing and scavenging Stonie Indians from their campsite on Yarrow Creek (S.W. of Pincher Creek) after many of them had died from a smallpox epidemic about 1860. Andy got this story from his Father In Law, Bert Riggall, who was a famous guide in the early 1900's. The story is in Chapter Four of Andy's 1978 book - Grizzly Country published by Alfred A. Knopf.
The story about Kananaskis grizzlies walking flat footed sounds O.K. - don't all bears walk flat footed?

The walking flat footed had more to do with the way one puts their foot down. Most animals, including Bears put their toes down first and then roll the rest of the foot down.
Most modern humans and apparently some Bears put the heal down first.

It's a noisy way to step but it takes less energy. To be stealthy one has to put the toes down first and then roll the rest of the foot down.

I gather that was the case with those Bears, they were not trying to be stealthy because they had total confidence that they could take a human. They just strolled along like a fat man at a smorgasbord.