A history of American wolves, Part II
The cattlemen weren't sitting idly by waiting for the legislature. Many of them started or stepped up their own efforts of poisoning carcasses, hiring professionals and, of course, every cowboy on the range had orders to kill any coyote, wolf or bear on sight.
In 1895, a new $3 bounty law was passed, and the Miles City newspaper reported 3,300 wolves killed by April, but this was later proven slightly high. A total of 5,866 hides were turned in for bounty in 1896, but the wolves were getting smarter and doing such things as not returning to a kill, avoiding traps and taking off at the sight of men on horses.
For several years, it was a Mexican Standoff. There were 4,780 wolf pelts bountied in 1898, and the next year the reward was upped to 3,382. In 1901, the price was privately raised on adults to $20 and the state went to $5 on pups.
That was probably the worst blow dealt to the wolves. Experienced men went into the forests and fields in spring when wolf family packs worked a small area in order to stay near the dens. In the first nine months, 3,938 pups were killed in the dens and only 1,403 adults were turned in for bounty. The kill in 1903 was 1,339 adults and 1,446 pups.
The cattlemen remained unhappy, and this produced a new law to inoculate captive wolves with mange and release them into the wild. A veterinarian said that only canines could get the mange, but in a short time so many cattle and sheep got mange (scabies) that the federal government stepped in to force a program of vat dipping and inspection.
This program went from the ridiculous to crazy and was finally ended in 1916. In the meantime, the fast spread of homesteaders across the plains and into the valleys of western Montana probably had more to do with the final eradication of the wolf than any thing else done after 1900.
In 1915, the federal government brought in or hired locally predator control hunters with a state budget of $125,000. Those boys killed 1,095 their first year in the entire nation, only some of which where here in Montana. Among those crafty lobos still holding out, there came to be some of super wolf reputation. Good examples are "Snowdrift" down in the Judith Basin country, immortalized by Frank Dobie, and "Three Toes" in the badlands below Miles City. Earnest Thomas Seton wrote of "Lobo," King of the Currumpaw.
From 1883 to 1918, there were bounties paid on 80,730 wolves, and by that time the high plains "Loafer" wolves were scattered and few. The white man had in one manner or another probably killed half a million in Montana since the Lewis and Clark Expedition. When I was a boy, there were still a few around. While on horseback, I saw a female with two almost-grown pups on the Nine Mile Hill in about 1943. Until I saw the Magic Pack in Glacier Park, the last wolf I'd personally observed here in Montana was a big white male at Sargeant Lake near the Bob Marshall Wilderness in 1964.
In my files, I have a scholarly paper from the Journal of Mammology printed in 1953 which tells of heavy wolf depredation of stock near Waterton Lake in 1921, and gives detail on sightings and shooting of wolves in the Flathead, especially the North Fork in the 1940s.
The largest one mentioned was a male killed in the fall of 1939 near Polebridge which measured eight feet from tip of tail to nose, with weight estimated at 140 to 150 pounds. I would truly appreciate any information from any of you old-timers out there as to what may have happened to the pelts of some of those North Fork wolves.
Note: For most of the statistical information used in this column, I have shamelessly picked through a doctorate thesis done by Edward E. Curnow in 1965. I was once able to borrow the complete files on wolves from the University of Calgary, Canada, and shared them with students from the University of Montana. I also have a modest library of wolf material, including Adolph Murie's masterwork, "The Wolves of Mount McKinley."
G. George Ostrom is a national award-winning Hungry Horse News columnist. He lives in Kalispell.