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When it comes to wolves, magazine should try realism
Outdoors Editor On the cover of the February edition of Outdoor Life is an illustration of a man fending off two wolves with a tree limb. The headline reads, "Wolf Attack: A Fight to the Death."
Might be time to drop my subscription. I'm accustomed to seeing this kind of ridiculous sensationalism about bears, but this is the first time I've seen a wolf attack being used to sell a supposedly reputable outdoors publication.
The story tells how wolves attacked a dozen dogs that were being trained for bear hunting in Idaho. Several dogs were killed and several others were wounded.
Nowhere in the story does it point out that wolves are territorial and will attack other canines they see as competition. Wolves attack coyotes, coyotes attack foxes, foxes attack your pet Chihuahua and your pet Chihuahua attacks.....well, some dog has to be at the bottom of the chain.
Later in the story the author surmises that maybe the wolves were hungry. Now there's a novel concept. He writes that "wolves had depleted the local game population to the point where they were seeking alternative sources of food, meaning more dogs and even humans could follow. Scott walked away realizing that he and Brian had been on the verge of becoming a pile of wolf scat themselves."
And I paid money for this?
Through an Internet search I learned there's just one recorded instance of a human being killed by a wolf in North American history. It happened in November 2005 in Saskatchewan. The victim was Kenton Carnegie, a 22-year-old man who was killed while hiking in remote woods. It's possible that other deaths have not been recorded.
Just when I thought the cover of Outdoor Life signified an all-time low I turned to the contents page, where I found the headline, "Noble or Nasty? Our exclusive photo gallery of a wolf eating a deer - while still alive - raises the question of whether wolves are noble predators or nature's monsters."
That does it. Cancel my subscription. How could a reputable outdoors magazine publish such nonsense?
The wolf is neither a noble predator nor nature's monster. It's just a predator that must kill to survive, like every other being on earth that walks, runs, flies, swims or slithers.
Nine times out of 10 a wolf heads the other way when it catches a whiff of human scent, yet humans have abused wolves for centuries, far beyond the necessary killing of the animals that prey on livestock. Since the time our ancestors arrived on this continent we've done everything we can to exterminate the largest wild dog on earth.
Why? Because unlike the dogs we could tame, dogs we fondly refer to as "man's best friend," the wolf refused to be tamed. The human ego can't accept a dog that prefers to live without us.
And therein lies the nobility of the wolf, the dog that refused to come in from the cold.
VINCE MEYER, outdoors editor, can be reached at vince.meyer@brainerddispatch.com or 855-5862.
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