Two wolf stories: The first happened a few years ago while driving to the big Ohio gun show; wife Nancy and I were south of Xenia and north of Wilmington when a gray wolf ran across the road about 100 yards ahead and loped into the bean field. It was no coyote.
Bill Murphy may remember Kody, our kid's half-wolf when they were in Leesburg VA. Kody was, for all intents and purposes, a wolf to look at, and a good pet. A really big coyote weighs 40-45 pounds; an average young wolf weighs 72 pounds and stands 3 inches higher at point of shoulders than my then 80 pound Lab Clipper. Kody stood 3-inches above my Lab and weighted 80 pounds also. I am a soybean farmer and watched that wolf lope through the almost mature beans that almost reached his shoulder. A coyote would have been under the canopy...
The following summer at the Leader Lake WI Cottage Owners Assn. annual meeting in Minong WI (about 40 miles due south of Duluth MN), we had a DNR guy make an after dinner presentation, this time about wolves. He said there was--and still is--a "Minong Pack" of about 16, about 8 miles west of our cottage; I had seen one once. The DNR guy explained how they catch and then track them with electronic collars, and said one problem was that the young males sooner or later get kicked out of the pack by the alpha male, and they are programed genetically to try to muscle themselves into another pack. But there being no other packs close by, they become "lone wolves," sort of like the guy who didn't have a nickle to get of the MTA.
Punch line: The DNR guy said one of their collared lone wolves had been hit by a truck near Madison IN, and another collared young male hit by a car near Wilmington OH--two weeks after I saw a wolf thereabouts...small world!
Another wolf story is wife Nancy's from this summer in Alaska. We were in a remote area north of Fairbanks, on the Chena Springs Road. I was off in the wilderness chasing grayling with my 3-weight, and she came looking for me with ParkerDog, our 72 pound yellow Lab. Usually ParkerDog would be pissing on every bush and ranging out 30 yards sniffing everything, but he held close to Nancy, following at heel; what's up?
Nancy came around a bend in the wide trail and there stood a mature wolf 10 yards away. The wolf simply turned and walked away, not rushed, but quickly disappeared in the bush. ParkerDog just stood there. I wonder what he was thinking...
And I wonder how many bloggers with second- and third-person hearsay and AP-news stories to reiterate have ever actually seen a wolf in the wild? Nancy has two to her credit. Anyone else?
On our way back from Alaska we visited friends in Montana. Seems like everyone there had bought a wolf permit, but the newly-enacted special season was in in doubt because of the usual 11th hour litigation. Seems like judges run the country nowadays. I left before the issue was resolved, one way or the other. But I did get a copy of the regs, and suffice it to say that reducing a wolf to possession in Montana, legally, would probably require a lawyer's and/or Talmudic scholar's advice. Things ain't what they used to was. EDM
