Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 12, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 April 1893 — THE WAYS OF WOLVES. [ARTICLE]

THE WAYS OF WOLVES.

Westerners Used Not to Mind Them More than Ground Squirrels. Does the American wolf ever attack human beings? Up to a few years ago almost the only account of the killing of persons by wolves is to be found in £.udobon and Bachman, which tells of the devouring of a slave by a pack of wolves in some one of the southern states. This account came to the authors at second or third hand, and to my mind it is not at all convincing. In the old days in the west a man no* more thought of being afraid of a wolf than of a ground squirrel. With a stick,, or without one, a man could chase a pack, of gray wolves as far as he could run,, and as long as his wind held out. Evens in the bitterest weather the wolfers neverthought that there was any danger of being attacked by wolves. The only* case of which I ever heard which suggested anything like this was toward theend of a very long snowy winter, when a> large white wolf oda night followed a. friend of mine up to his cabin door. Theanimal trotted along only a few steps behind the unarmed man, who confessed tofeeling somewhat uneasy lest the beast should spring at him, but it made nodemonstration of this kind. Of late years more or less frequent accounts have been published in the newspapers of packs of wohres attacking, human beings, in Minnesota and North. Dakota, but I have always believed, and still think, that such dispatches are merenewspaper “fakes,” and no more to- becredited than the bear and hoop snake; stories which so frequently adorn the pages of the journals to-day.—[Forest and Stream.