by Farley Mowat
The circle did not go very far, for I was weary and discouraged, and there was no strength in me.
“Shweeanak! Pretty poor,” Ootek commented disparagingly.
“Dammit!” I cried hotly. “Let’s see you do better!”
I think my guardian angel must have inspired that challenge. Ootek grinned in a superior sort of manner, ran over to the circle, picked it up, swung back his arm like a discus thrower, and let fly. The circle rose like a fleeing partridge, glittered brilliantly in the sunshine as it reached the top of its trajectory, sailed gracefully out over a nearby tundra pond and, with barely a splash, sliced into the water and disappeared forever.
Ootek was stricken with remorse. His face tightened with apprehension as he waited for my anger to explode. I suppose he never understood why I threw my arms about him and led him gaily through several steps of an Indian jig before taking him back to the cabin and splitting my last, precious bottle of wolf-juice with him. But the incident no doubt confirmed his conviction that the ways of the white man are indeed inscrutable.
With the plant study so fortuitously ended, I was faced with another distasteful duty—the completion of my scatalogical studies.
Because of the importance attached to scatology in Ottawa, I had been ordered to devote part of my time to collecting and analyzing wolf scats. This was not a task with which I was enraptured, but as I went about the Barrens I had kept a casual eye open for scats. Using a long pair of forceps I had collected those I found and placed them in small canvas bags, each of which bore a label indicating the approximate age of the specimen and where and when it was collected. I kept these little bags under my bunk in the cabin, and by the end of September I had amassed such a formidable collection that there was not room for them all and they had begun to spill out on the floor and get underfoot.
For a variety of reasons, not least of which was the mental image I had formed of Ootek’s and Mike’s expressions when they realized what I was doing, I was loath to begin analyzing my finds. I had managed to keep my scat-collecting activities secret, and although Mike and Ootek may have been curious about the contents of my little bags they were too polite (or too fearful of what they might be told) to question me on the subject. Even though they had both become reasonably tolerant of the idiosyncrasies involved in my professional duties, I did not want to try them too far and so I continued to postpone the analytical work, until one October morning when they went away together on a caribou hunting trip, leaving me in sole possession of the camp. Feeling reasonably assured of privacy I then prepared to come to grips with my unpleasant task.
Due to the effect of weathering, followed by prolonged storage, the scats had become as hard as rocks and had to be softened before I could work on them. I therefore carted them down to the riverbank and put them to soak in two galvanized pails filled with water. While the softening process was taking place I laid out my tools, notebooks and other equipment on a large flat rock exposed to the sun and to a steady breeze. I felt the task ahead of me was one which could best be conducted in an unconstrained environment.
The next step was to don my gas mask. I am not trying to be funny when I record this fact. I had been supplied with the gas mask, along with a case of tear-gas grenades with which I was supposed to drive wolves out of their dens so they could be shot as autopsy specimens. Naturally I would never have stooped so low, even before I came to know and respect the wolves as friends. I had long since dumped the bombs into the nearby lake; but I had retained the mask, since I was charged with it. It now became useful, because wolf scats sometimes carry the eggs of a particularly baneful parasite which, if inhaled by man, hatch into minute worms that bore their way into his brain where they encyst, frequently with fatal results both to themselves and to their host.
Having ascertained that the first batch of scats was in a pliable condition, I donned the mask, placed a scat on a white enamel plate which I had borrowed from the cabin, and began dissecting it with forceps and scalpel. As I identified its constituents through a hand lens, I noted the information in my record book.
It was a laborious process, but not devoid of interest. In fact I soon became so wrapped up in my work that I ceased to be aware of my surroundings.
Consequently when I stood up an hour or two later to stretch my muscles, and casually turned toward the cabin, I was intensely surprised to find myself confronted by a semicircle of a dozen unfamiliar Eskimos who were staring at me with expressions of incredulity mingled with revulsion.
It was a disconcerting moment. I was so startled that I forgot about the gas mask, with its elephantine snout and goggle eyes; and when I tried to greet these strangers my voice, filtered through two inches of charcoal and a foot of rubber pipe, had the muffled and lugubrious quality of wind blowing through a tomb—an effect which filled the Eskimos with consternation.
Hastily attempting to redeem myself I tore off the mask and stepped briskly forward—whereupon the Eskimos, with the precision of a musical comedy chorus line, stepped briskly backwards, staring at me the while with wild surmise.
Desperate to show my good intentions, I smiled as broadly as I could, thereby baring my teeth in what must have seemed a fiendish grin. My visitors responded by retreating another yard or two, and some of them shifted their gaze apprehensively to the shining scalpel clutched in my right hand.
They were clearly poised for flight; but I saved what was left of the situation by recalling appropriate Innuit words and blurting out a more or less formal welcome. After a long pause one of them ventured a timid reply, and gradually they ceased to eye me like a flock of chickens in the presence of a rattlesnake.
Although there was no real rapport between us, the stilted conversation which followed revealed that these people formed a part of Ootek’s band which had spent the summer farther east and had only just returned to the home camps, where they had been told of the presence of a strange white man at Mike’s cabin. They had thereupon decided to come and see this phenomenon for themselves; but nothing they had heard in advance had prepared them for the spectacle which met their eyes when they arrived.
As we talked I noticed several children and some of the adults casting surreptitious glances at the scat pails and at the enamel plate with its litter of hair and mouse bones. In any other people this would have represented simple curiosity, but I had now spent enough time with Eskimos to appreciate the obliquity of their minds. I interpreted their interest as a. subtle suggestion that they were hungry and thirsty after their long journey and would appreciate some tea and food.
Since in Mike’s absence I was the host, and since hospitality is the greatest of virtues in the North, I invited the Eskimos to join me in the cabin for a meal that evening. They seemed to understand and to accept my offer and, leaving me to complete my work on the last few scats, they withdrew to a nearby ridge to pitch their travel camp.
The results of the analysis were most interesting. Some 48 per cent of the scats contained rodent remains, largely incisor teeth and fur. The balance of the identifiable food items included fragments of caribou bones, caribou hair, a few bird feathers and, surprisingly, a brass button much corroded by the action of digestive juices but still bearing a recognizable anchor-and-cable motif such as is used in various merchant navy services. I have no idea how this button happened to end up where it did, but its presence cannot be taken as evidence of a wolf having eaten some wandering sailor.*5
Watched by two solemn little Eskimo boys, I now washed out the pails, then filled them with fresh water with which to make the several gallons of tea I knew would be required. As I walked back to the cabin I noted that the little boys were haring it up the ridge as if filled with great tidings which they were anxious to impart to their elders, and I smiled at their enthusiasm.
My cheerful mood did not survive for long. Three hours later dinner was ready (it consisted of fish balls cooked Polynesian style with a sweet-and-sour sauce of my own devising), and there was no sign of my guests. I
t was already dark, and I begun to worry lest there had been some misunderstanding about the time of dinner.
Eventually I put on my parka, took a flashlight, and went in search of the Eskimos.
I never found them. Indeed, I never saw them again. Their camp site was abandoned, and the people had vanished as totally as if the great plains had swallowed them down.
I was much puzzled, and somewhat offended. When Ootek returned the next day I told him the story and demanded an explanation. He asked a number of searching questions about pails, scats, and other things—questions which did not seem to me to be particularly relevant. And in the end, he failed me—for the first time in our association. He insisted that he could not possibly explain why my hospitality had been so rudely spurned…and he never did.
23
To Kill a Wolf
THE TIME was drawing near when I would have to leave Wolf House Bay—not because I wished to, but because the wolves would soon be departing to their wintering grounds.
During late October, when winter begins to savage the bleak plains, the caribou turn their backs on the tundra and begin working their way down into the alien but sheltered world of forests. And where they go, the wolves must follow; for in winter there is nothing left upon the frozen plains for the wolves to eat.
From early November until April the wolves and caribou travel together through the taiga, the sparse borderline forests of stunted spruce and jackpine lying below the timberline. In years when the snow-shoe rabbits are abundant, the wolves prey heavily upon them; but always they stay close to the deer—since, in time of famine, only deer can save them.
Each wolf family travels as a group, but it is not uncommon for two or three small groups to come together into a single band. There appear to be no fixed rules about this, and such a band can break up into its component parts again at any time. However, there are upper limits to the numbers in a given band. Winter hunting requires a close degree of co-operation between several wolves if the hunt is to be successful; but if there are too many wolves they will not all get enough to eat from a given kill. A band of from five to ten individuals seems to be about the ideal size.
They do not appear to have fixed territories in winter. Each band hunts where and as it pleases, and when two strange bands meet they have been observed to greet each other and then go their separate ways.
A concentration of bands seldom occurs in any one area. How they manage to keep dispersed, and thereby avoid the dangers of too many wolves and too little food, is not known; but the Chippewayan Indians say it is done by means of urine messages which are left on every prominent point, rock, or tree around the lakes and along the well-used trails. The fact remains that, unless outright starvation sweeps the land, the nomadic winter wolf bands, moving at the whim of the equally nomadic caribou herds, somehow manage to avoid treading on one another’s toes.
For the Barren Land wolves winter is the time of death.
Once they have entered timber they are exposed to a concentrated, highly skilled, and furious assault from men. Trappers cannot bear them, for wolves not only compete for caribou but can wreak havoc with a trapline, springing the light traps used for foxes without getting caught themselves. Furthermore, most white trappers are afraid of wolves—some of them deathly afraid—and there is nothing like the whip of fear to lash men into a fury of destruction.
The war against wolves is kept at white heat by Provincial and Federal Governments, almost all of which offer wolf bounties ranging from ten dollars to thirty dollars per wolf; and in times when the value of foxes and other furs is depressed, this bounty becomes in effect a subsidy paid to trappers and traders alike.
Much is said and written about the number of deer reputedly slaughtered by wolves. Very little is said about the actual numbers of wolves slaughtered by men. In one case a general falsehood is widely and officially disseminated; in the other the truth seems to be suppressed. Yet one trapper operating along the boundary between Manitoba and Keewatin, in the winter of the first year of my study, collected bounty on a hundred and eighteen wolves of which one hundred and seven were young ones born the previous spring. According to law he should have killed those wolves by trapping or shooting them. In fact he did what everyone else was doing—and still does in the Far North, with the covert permission of Governments: he spread strychnine so indiscriminately over an immense area that almost the entire population of foxes, wolverines and many lesser flesh-eaters was wiped out. That did not matter since foxes fetched no price that year. Wolves were worth twenty dollars each for bounty.
Traps and poison are the commonest wolf-killers; but there are other methods in wide use as well. One is the airplane, a favorite of those civic-minded sportsmen who serve society by sacrificing their time and money to the destruction of vermin. The crew of a high-flying aircraft keeps watch for wolves in the open, preferably on the ice of a lake. When one is found the aircraft is flown low over him and the beast is pursued so long and hard that he frequently collapses and sometimes dies even before a blast of buckshot strikes him.
However, I know of one occasion when this method failed of its purpose. Two men in their own light aircraft had flown out from a large city to help rid the world of wolves. During previous hunts they had killed many, and the pilot had become adept at chasing the beasts so closely that his skis would almost strike them. One day he came too close. The harassed wolf turned, leaped high into the air, and snapped at one of the skis. He died in the ensuing crash; but so did the two men. The incident was described in an article in a widely distributed sportsman’s magazine as an example of the cunning and dangerous nature of the wolf, and of the boundless courage of the men who match themselves against him. This is, of course, a classic gambit. Whenever and wherever men have engaged in the mindless slaughter of animals (including other men), they have often attempted to justify their acts by attributing the most vicious or revolting qualities to those they would destroy; and the less reason there is for the slaughter, the greater the campaign of vilification.
Antiwolf feelings at Brochet (the northern Manitoba base for my winter studies) when I arrived there from Wolf House Bay were strong and bitter. As the local game warden aggrievedly described the situation to me: the local people had been able to kill 50,000 caribou each winter as recently as two decades past, whereas now they were lucky if they could kill a couple of thousand. Caribou were becoming scarce to the point of rarity, and wolves were unanimously held to be to blame. My rather meek remonstrance to the effect that wolves had been preying on caribou, without decimating the herds, for some tens of thousands of years before the white men came to Brochet, either fell on deaf ears or roused my listeners to fury at my partisanship.
One day early in the winter a trader burst into my cabin in a state of great excitement.
“Listen,” he said challengingly, “you’ve been screaming for proof wolves butcher the herds. Well, hitch up your team and get out to Fishduck Lake. You’ll get your proof! One of my trappers come in an hour ago and he seen fifty deer down on the ice, all of ’em killed by wolves—and hardly a mouthful of the meat been touched!”
Accompanied by a Cree Indian companion I did as I was bid, and late that afternoon we reached Fishduck Lake. We found a sickening scene of slaughter. Scattered on the ice were the carcasses of twenty-three caribou, and there was enough blood about to turn great patches of snow into crimson slush.
The trapper had been correct in stating that no use had been made of the carcasses. Apart from some minor scavenging by foxes, jays and ravens, all but three of the animals were untouched. Two of those three were bucks—minus their heads; while the third, a young and pregnant doe, was minus both hindquarters.
Unfortunately for the “proof,” none of these deer could have been attacked by wolves. There were ho wolf tracks anywhere on the lake. But there were other tracks: the unmistakable triple trail left by the skis and tail-skid of a plane which had taxied all over the place, leaving the snow surface scarred wi
th a crisscross mesh of serpentine lines.
These deer had not been pulled down by wolves, they had been shot—some of them several times. One had run a hundred yards with its intestines dragging on the ice as a result of a gut wound. Several of the others had two or more bullet-broken limbs.
The explanation of what had actually happened was not far to seek.
Two years earlier, the tourist bureau of the Provincial Government concerned had decided that Barren Land caribou would make an irresistible bait with which to lure rich trophy hunters up from the United States.*6 Accordingly a scheme was developed for the provision of fully organized “safaris” in which parties of sportsmen would be flown into the subarctic, sometimes in Government-owned planes, and, for a thousand dollars each, would be guaranteed a first-rate set of caribou antlers.
During the winter sojourn of the caribou inside the timberline they feed in the woods at dawn and dusk and spend the daylight hours yarded on the ice of the open lakes. The pilot of the safari aircraft, therefore, had only to choose a lake with a large band of caribou on it and, by circling for a while at low altitude, bunch all the deer into one tight and milling mob. Then the aircraft landed; but kept under way, taxiing around and around the panic-stricken herd to prevent it from breaking up. Through open doors and windows of the aircraft the hunters could maintain a steady fire until they had killed enough deer to ensure a number of good trophies from which the finest might be selected. They presumably felt that, since the jaunt was costing a great deal of money, they were entitled to make quite certain of results; and it is to be assumed that the Government officials concerned agreed with them.
When the shooting was over the carcasses were examined and the best available head taken by each hunter, whose permit entitled him to “the possession of only a single caribou. If the hunters were also fond of venison a few quarters would be cut off and thrown aboard the plane, which would then depart southward. Two days later the sports would be home again, victorious.