Your tiny lap dog
How does your pet dog behave when smelling his ancestral buddies, the wolves?
Do they start whining, not leaving your side, begging you to turn around? Or are they interested and wanting to explore? I guess this would depend on either critter’s sex (more about this in my future “wolf” article). Spending seven to eight months out here, as paradise-like as it is, it could get boring without a friendly-pawed dog.
Our small rucksack-fitting dachshund-cross, we intuit, knows that he’s rather puny in size and therefore sticks close to us. Alas, once he smells wolf and he’s not leashed on our near-daily one-hour walk, he’ll pick up his stubby, crooked legs and hightail it for home. This happened last April, the last day out here before being picked up by plane.
Walking down a little knoll onto the river’s old side channel and looking left and right, guess what stood there in the middle of our snowmachine-made track? A big brown-black wolf, right there! And to our incredulity (the guns have already been put away), he was just standing there and looking at us. Paul started to go on with our walk, stepping towards the wolf, who was not worried and, it seemed, not wanting to retreat.
Eventually it did, but so did our dog Rupert, gunning it for home. We returned home, too, as I feared there’d be more fine specimens out hunting and maybe cutting off the dog’s flight. Back home, we got the leash and ventured out on our round trip again. Sure enough, there were at least three different-sized wolf paw prints in the snow. Dogs are a good “lure” to have on a trapline—but I wouldn’t want Rupert to become a snack.
Wolves and moose
Some of our trapline trails are up on the banks of the river and meander in and out of the forest. A grisly but natural sight that we spotted once was an only half-eaten moose calf carcass on the frozen river. Wolf tracks were all around and also crossing our trail in the bush. We had some wolf snares with us, so we set about five in the wolves’ paths.
We got back to the same spot, four or five days later, and there was a big black wolf in one of the snares. Back home, we hung the big male on a scale. He weighed 101 pounds. On that account, we noticed that wolves are moving about lots: a pack might eat its fill, move on and be back two weeks later to finish off what’s left (if a wolverine hasn’t found the kill, dragging every piece of meat and bone off to bury somewhere for a later snack time).
The lone wolf
A lone wolf might just follow a pack but will stop to chew on a few leftover moose-rib bones. A scruffy, old yellow wolf dragged a shoulder blade onto the lake (instead of farther into the bush, to be concealed while gnawing on it). We actually saw this; the moon illuminated the snow-laden and frozen lake like it was daylight.
Paul was able to shoot the wolf and put it out of its misery. I skinned and tanned it myself, as it wasn’t going to fetch any money at auction. The hide had bald spots where the hair was non-existent, and teeth were missing or broken off. Still, I also cleaned the skull.
Another lanky lone wolf was spotted on our ride home one day. We saw him again and again, walking ahead of us on the river and then veering up onto our trail, which makes for easier trotting. We took pictures and even a video. About three kilometres from basecamp, he’d jump up onto the trail again—but not before gulping up a mouthful of snow. Then he disappeared. We had a few snares set at our moose-kill site and he was in one of them, two days later.
A wolf pack and humans
In Paul’s early trapping career, he was breaking trail with his snowshoes. He came to a very small lake. A pack of wolves had just put down an adult moose in the bay. Paul didn’t feel very smug, walking by on the other shore (no gun strapped to his back), as the wolves were all staring at him and not moving. It seemed they weren’t prepared to share their fresh meat with a two-legged creature. Maybe they realized they had the “upper paw,” being in the majority!
Some readers might find these stories ugly and become sad. That’s life, though, and nature can be brutal. I think about this often, more so when I’m without a care in the world, because circumstances can change in a heartbeat.
Be safe, and travel together.
Sonja Seeber, Yukon trapper
