Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 35, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 February 1903 — Wolves are Numerous Out East. [ARTICLE]

Wolves are Numerous Out East.

Squire Charley Bussell, of Hanging Grove, the erstwhile mighty slayer of wolves, and son of the one still mightier Unole' Bttty Bussell, was in town a day or two ago, and told a greviona tale of the numbers and of the wolves out in his region of country. They are more numerous than for many years past, and never before were they so destructive- Poultry of all kinds is their daily diet, but yonng and jnioy turkeys their speoial delight. They are no respeotors of persons nor of judicial eminence in their pursuit of tnrkeys, for the Sqnire himself lost 90 of those profitable fowls the past year, from their ravages. All of his neighbors who tried to raise tnrkeys also suffered in mnoh the same degree. Heretofore, whenever the snows of winter lay thick and soft upon the ground, the Squire would take his hunting hounds and pursue and kill some of these wolves, every once in a while. Thus not only giving him revenge on the ferocious beasts for the destruction of his poultry, but also, by the bounties he thus earned, partly recouping him for bis financial loss. This winter, however, the head hound of his pack, John L. Sullivan, like his great hnman prototype and namesake, is growing old and sluggish and more disposed to use his bark than his bite; and thus, although the Squire has been out after wolves several times this winter, and his dogs have pursued and overtaken several, yet when the dogs and the wolf get into dose quarters, where the dogs should proceed to oiinch with the wolf and hold him till the Squire arrives with his gun, instead they stand baok and argue with the wolf, just like they were real Sullivans, Corbetts, Jeffries etc. They keep this up until the Squire begins to get nearly in gun-shot, and then the wolf, w ell rested by that time, will lope ©ff a few hundred yards and then stop and repeat the arguing process with the dogs. But the wolf never gets so mooli absorbed in ftie argument that he does not move an adjournment before the Squire gets near enough to project a load of buokshot into the disoussion.