The Return of Wolves by Eli Francovich

Author:Eli Francovich
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Timber Press
Published: 2023-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

Predators and Humans

The crisp morning in early November started like many others, Craig Condron recalls. He was hunkered behind a scrum of logs and brush, rifle in hand, placed strategically along a well-worn game trail. With his head and shoulders barely visible above the blind, he’d already seen a doe and its mother wandering through the little clearing. Squirrels were now scampering through the woods. He’d been up for hours, an autumn ritual that he eagerly anticipates. A retired homebuilder, Condron has been hunting the same piece of land for fifty years.

It’s dappled land, thickets of trees interspersed with pockets of more open brush. Logged many times, the trees are not large, and are still fighting to establish themselves. The longest clear shot Condron had on that morning was one hundred fifty yards. Now in full light, he was keeping an eye on the squirrels when suddenly he saw a flash of white out of the corner of his eye.

A deer, he thought at first. But as the name suggests, white-tailed deer have white tails, and the speck of white was moving toward him, rather than away. The speck exited the trees, resolving itself into the presence of a white wolf, followed in short order by five gray wolves. The pack picked their way out of the timber and onto the game trail running about fifty feet in front of Condron’s hiding spot. They strolled by, mouths agape in that universal canine grin.

Condron had never seen a wolf, much less five of them, although for more than a decade he’d been seeing signs of their return—tracks in the snow and mud.

He’d also been seeing less tangible, harder to quantify signs, including some that were certainly not scientific. Condron had taught his son how to hunt on this land. Every fall, they’d bag a deer or elk, sometimes both. In fact, their success had been so assured that they took to passing up bucks, waiting for one that was “a little bigger,” a common practice among hunters.

But starting about twenty years ago, and accelerating recently, it has become harder and harder for Condron and his son to fill a deer or elk tag. There aren’t as many animals in the woods, he tells me, and those that remain are wary and hard to find.

Meanwhile, he’s seeing more and more wolf and cougar tracks. Some days he sees only predator sign, without a huntable ungulate track in sight. Last year his son didn’t get a deer after eight days of hard hunting. “It was sad,” Condron says. Since the return of wolves, he’s started carrying a .44 magnum (think Dirty Harry). “I’m always looking over my shoulder,” he tells me. “Here I am, trying to enjoy the outdoors, and there is a little bit of fear factor.”

So, when he saw the five wolves wandering out of the woods and into the clearing, he didn’t feel any surge of fondness or awe.

The leader of the pack stopped. Sniffed. The wolf looked downhill toward Condron’s hiding spot, even though he hadn’t moved a muscle.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.