In The Company of Wolves

This thread is a redefine and redirect of my rant on Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs: www.abovetopsecret.com...

I opened this thread with the purpose of putting my considerable lifetime experiences with my Wolf friends into the public domain. I am not writing a book or shooting a film. I am just using this forum to share my experience with these remarkably loving and intelligent beings in the hope to lessen the public fear of them. I do not like them depicted as monsters or dumb beasts as they are often portrayed in fiction and film.

I will discuss here some of the remarkable things I have discovered working, hunting, and living with them. They are vicious, and ruthless when they need to be. They are also intelligent, loyal, and loving creatures as well. Does that sound like anyone you know?

I'd like to hear about your experiences with them.

I am going to start by saying I was first introduced to wolves by my big sister who is the Alpha Bitch of her pack and is quite ok with that characterization.

I went to her house for a visit shortly after returning from my last tour in the Sand Box. She put me up for a while until my disability started coming in. I got the crap blown out of me by people I trusted and befriended over there. Loyalties can change rather quickly with rather dire consequences.

I will not dwell on that as it distracts from the main reason of this thread. My sister has big place in the boonies. You leave the hard pack quite some distance from her place. A place where you wash your truck about once a month or less if you hope to find it. She is known as the wolf lady. She loves her wolves but knows first hand what sets them off and what behavior gains their respect. She always carries several knives, a whip, and a little bag of rocks and a sling shot.

Her wolves are all born there at her place but she has bread some adults she did not know well early on. Most of her pups are sold, some are raised and bread. Some are returned to the wild and introduced to fully wild wolves. I went with her to return a breading female to a wilderness preserve. That was an experience I will not soon forget. She called her Luka. Luka wanted to bolt from her travel pen right away. She ran about 20 feet and then stopped and turned to look at my sister and I. Luka picked up the scent of the wild wolf males. My sister knew the signs by her body language. My sister told me to quickly return to the truck as she went to her door.

Luka ran back to us and acted aggressive but did not close the last yard to 2 to the truck. She stood and growled baring her teeth for about 10 seconds which is longer than it sounds when you see a wolf do this up fairly close. She then relaxed and took off up hill towards the tree line. My sister got out her binoculars and watched her take off. She seemed happy and excited unlike me where I am just about as alarmed as I had been since I got back. She watched Luka for some time while she headed for the tree line. Just as she was right at the tree line she stopped running and crouched down behind some scrub brush. As she did several wolves came slowly out of the tree line to greet her.

Much like dogs there was lots of sniffing, posturing, and a bit of biting but nothing serious. Luka had managed to work her way into the social order fairly quickly. I ask my sister why Luka had charged at us and we had to return to the car rather quickly. She answered smiling, "Luka smelled the pack was near by. She alerted me when she turned around and looked up wind at us." She wanted to protect us and look like she was running us off because her actions were being watched but she was also being smelled and listened to as well. It was my first experience with wild wolves.

When we returned to her place her husband and kids had just returned from a trip to town. They carried in the groceries past a mob of wolves all with their tales wagging in excitement. They all greeted us with howls from the big ones and yips from the pups. It takes about 30 seconds or more for us to get past the greeting mob. When we get inside the howl chorus starts again and dies back down after a few minutes.

I ask my sister about this behavior and she said they greet returning pack members with the howling chorus for a number of reasons. First it is hello, next the whole bunch chimes in and that establishes there number for other near by packs. Later it changes a bit and this is to call any members of the pack that might be out in the bush still. I found this fascinating. Wolf packs are a lot like tribes in many ways. That might be why they are so revered by my people.

a reply to: machineintelligence

They are also intelligent, loyal, and loving creatures as well. Does that sound like anyone you know?

I hope you're talking about dogs and not humans...

We are none of the above for the most part...

Fascinating! I know of a guy and his wife who have wild cats, some raised, some rescued. Always interesting to hear these stories!

I had been living in my sister's place for a few weeks at this point. The daily routine was a real study in animal care, child care, and lots of chores. Keeping up a place where a pack of wolves is constantly testing, and probing their boundaries as well as each other, and all us humans is no small task.

My sister introduced me to Merlin that day. It was a cold October morning as I recall. Merlin like any puppy was all feet and loved to be touched and run up under your feet. He had shockingly beautiful blue eyes and blue grey fur with a dark blue face that was nearly black. His tail was mostly black on top and steel grey underneath. My sister wanted me to train him and she would teach me how. I was unsure at first and kept hedging since I was not sure where I might end up and did not rightly know if I could keep him.

He won my heart after a couple of weeks. He was growing so fast I wondered how I would ever feed him. In the 6th week at her house was my first lesson about how wolves are not dogs. The largest of their male wolves Bacchus, got in a fight with a large raccoon that came out of the near by forest. It made the mistake of climbing the fence, likely seeking a meal. It must have not been familiar with the smell of wolves or the poor creature would never have made that mistake. He had no idea about what was on the other side of the fence and did not know about the inner hot wire used to keep the wolves in. When the raccoon hit that hot wire he fell and made a terrible noise from the pain of the electric wire. Bacchus closed the distance on that raccoon quicker than I could get to the window after I heard the noise. By the time I was looking out the window Bacchus had the raccoon by the throat and was shaking him and had his throat ripped in no time flat.

Others in the pack approached and he backed them down with a serious bare toothed growl. Once the others retreated he ate that raccoon. He mostly worked on the liver, heart, and breast and one of its haunches. After about 20 minutes he got full and looked around as if to indicate to the pack that he was finished. He went around and marked his area and went under the house to sleep it off. The others in the pack then came up and argued with each other for what was left of that raccoon.

The house they have is pier and beam underneath. The wolves have dug under it to make a den for themselves. My brother in law goes under to be sure they have not dug out too much and have compromised the house foundation. He says they always seem to know where and how much they can dig without bringing the house down on them. The look on the face of an unsuspecting person walking up to her house on a hot summer day and all the sudden more than half a dozen wolves come out from under the house and hit the fence is a look of shear terror.

My brother in law works for a big defense contractor and has to commute some distance to get to work each day. My sister is a stay at home Mom and cares for their kids and the wolves, and some smaller inside dogs and cats. The cats do not venture outside the house. They know they might become wolf chow if they do. The little inside dogs have been introduced to the pack and they do not have a problem with each other. My niece had a ferret for about 6 months. She called him peter. He was a cute little guy and was always getting into things. He finally managed to escape the house one day when one of the little dogs was let outside. I will not elaborate on the result but no other ferrets have been brought out to the property since.

The day came when I would leave them to get my own place. Some friends of his and my brother in law pooled their money and purchased a nice 24 foot bumper pull travel trailer for me. I used my Veteran benefits to purchase some land not far away from my sisters place. They helped me set up the water and septic systems. I purchased a nice solar panel system and battery bank as well as a couple of sheds. We put up a fence and then Merlin moved in. He was still all puppy but was getting huge. He is not pure wolf. His mother was Malamute. Merlin probed the perimeter about a hundred times a day. Every day he would have some little creature cornered. He liked to chase anything that would run from him. There was this one big squirrel that would play chase with him for hours. There was a big pecan tree in the North of the property that was his main hang out. Their chase game was very different. The squirrel would taunt Merlin, making clicking noises and twitching his tail. Merlin did not seem to want to catch him so after a while I gave him the tentative name Rocky.

One very cool morning I went quietly out the door of my trailer and did not disturb Merlin who was sleeping in his dog house. I saw a little flick of movement on his right front shoulder. It was Rocky. He had cuddled up to Merlin in the night. Alerted to my presence by Rocky's movement Merlin put on a disingenuous show of running Rocky off up the pecan tree. You could just hear that squirrel laughing as he ran up the tree. Merlin finished his mock chase and came up to me for some affection. It was kind of a cute start to the morning.

OMG how cute is that? You should have gotten a pic of Rocky and the wolf.

Very nice read Got anymore??

I created a thread HERE about wolves, unfortunately some of the pictures are nolonger displaying, but there's two very nice videos at the bottom of the op.

a reply to: VoidHawk

I have more but I am under a deadline drafting a board resolution, and finishing up some patent applications. I will put up more when I get my real work caught up.

a reply to: Night Star
Back in those days when a camera made a clicking sound it was because it had a mechanical shutter. Cameras were no where as at hand then. Also it was low light and very unexpected.

It ended up being a regular thing for Merlin and I to go for walks after I returned from my errands in the evenings. At that time I owned a then late model GMC Yukon. Merlin loved to go for a ride because he loved the road. Just like regular dogs he loved to overdose his olfactory sense with the window open.

God only knows how many distinctive scents he could perceive with that snout of his.

This time we went about 5 miles North of my place higher up into the hills and deeper into the woods. Merlin was just a bit over a year old at this time but was pretty well trained. Like any wolf you always know that any trip into the woods might be the last you see them. I loved Merlin but I felt that keeping him penned into a 5 acre fenced area was a very small range for a wolf. This was another reason why I traveled by vehicle with him with the window cracked. If he wound up chasing something and not returning in a timely fashion he could find his way back to the house. After a few outings he knew I would leave if he did not return when called.

I used a whistle to train him. He was trained to come to the sound of it. I never yelled or hollered at him. Wolves do not like scolding or yelling and will run off if you make aggressive sounds. They are unlikely to cower when yelled at or scolded, and instead become incensed and just leave.

Anyway we went out and this was one of those times he did not return right away when called. I worried and hung out for a bit but it was getting pretty dark so I got in the truck and headed back home. I had the windows open and heard him howling when I was about 300 yards out headed South back home. I stopped the truck and blew the call on the whistle again and waited for a while. With the engine off and the lights on I was hopeful he would find me easy enough.

Then all the sudden I could hear very rapid foot falls of him running up at full speed down the gravel road. Merlin jumped right straight into the passenger side rear window so fast he hit the back of the seat with a thud. He quickly recovered and looked up at me all out of breath and had a very serious expression on his face punctuated with a soft nervous whine that indicated distress. I instinctively rolled up the windows. Before I even got the truck in gear the reason for his mad dash into the truck window became clear. There in the glow of my tail lights I could see a large pack of Coyotes come to a screeching halt. I took my foot off the break and rolled out onto the road continuing South.

I patted Merlin and told him, "See you need to come on back when I call you, you just about had a very bad night there." Needless to say Merlin was sure to get back to the truck when he heard the call after that. He likely would have out run that pack of Coyotes back to our place but he would have been one tired wolf when he made it back.