Family Life

IN MID-JULY I decided it was time to give up my role as a static observer and to begin seriously studying the hunting activities of wolves.

This decision was hastened by the accidental uncovering of my long-neglected Operation Order from under a pile of dirty socks which had been accumulating on top of it for several weeks. I had almost forgotten, not only about the Order, but about Ottawa itself; but as I again leafed through the minutely detailed sheaf of instructions I realized I had been guilty of a dereliction of duty.

The orders plainly stated that my first task should have been to conduct a census and general survey of wolves, followed by an intensive study of “wolf-caribou-predator-prey relationships.” Studies of the nature and the social behavior of wolves were thus placed firmly outside the frame of reference of my work, and so one morning I struck my little tent, packed up the telescope, and closed down my observation post. The following day Ootek and I loaded a camping outfit aboard the canoe, and set out on a prolonged cruise through the tundra plains to the northward.

We covered a good many hundreds of miles during the succeeding weeks, and gathered much information concerning wolf population and wolf-caribou-predator-prey relationships; together with a lot of associated information which, though it was unrelated to the Department’s aims, could not be entirely ignored.

A semiofficial estimate of the wolf population of Keewatin had already been made by the competent authorities on the basis of information received from the usual trapper-trader sources, and the given figure was thirty thousand wolves. Even with my sketchy grasp of mathematics I was able to work this out as an average of one wolf to every six square miles. If one then took into account the fact that about a third of the tundra plains lay under water, while another third consisted of barren rock hills and ridges where neither caribou, wolf nor most other beasts could make a living, the density rose to one wolf for every two square miles, approximately.

This seemed pretty dense. Indeed, had it been true, Ootek and I might have had trouble making progress due to the sheer pressure of wolves.

Unhappily for the theoreticians we found the wolves widely scattered, in the usual family groups—each family occupying a territory of one to three hundred square miles, although this dispersal was by no means uniform. We located one site, for instance, where two families had denned within half-a-mile of each other; and Ootek told me he had once found three females, each with a litter of pups, denning within a few feet of one another on an esker near the Kazan River. On the other hand, we traveled for three days through what looked like good wolf country on the Thlewiaza River and never saw a footing, a scat, or a hair of a wolf. Reluctantly, and recognizing that it was not going to endear me to my employers, I was forced to revise the population estimate downward to three thousand, and at that I was probably guilty of gross exaggeration.

The families we encountered were of all sizes from a single pair of adults with three pups to a group of seven adults and ten pups. Since, in every case but one, there were extra adults, and since I could learn nothing about their relative status in the family except by murdering them (which would have enabled me only to determine age and sex), I again resorted to Ootek for information.

Female wolves do not breed until they are two years old, and males not until they are three, he told me. Until they are of breeding age most of the adolescents remain with their parents; but even when they are of age to start a family they are often prevented from doing so by a shortage of homesteads. There is simply not enough hunting territory available to provide the wherewithal for every bitch to raise a litter. Since an overpopulation of wolves above the carrying capacity of the country to maintain would mean a rapid decline in the numbers of prey animals—with consequent starvation for the wolves themselves—they are forced to practice what amounts to birth control through continence. Some adult wolves may have to remain celibate for years before a territory becomes available. However, because the period of urgent amorous appetite is short—only about three weeks out of the year—these bachelors and spinsters probably do not suffer any great feeling of sexual deprivation. Moreover, their desire for domesticity and the companionship of other adults, as well as pups, is apparently met by the communal nature of the family group. Indeed, Ootek believed some wolves actually preferred the “uncle” or “aunt” status, since it gave them the pleasures of being involved in rearing a family without incurring the full responsibilities of parenthood.

Old wolves, particularly those who had lost their mates, also tended to remain celibate. Ootek told me of a wolf he had encountered every year for sixteen years who, during the first six years of this period, fathered an annual litter. During the seventh winter his mate disappeared, possibly poisoned by bounty hunters in the south. The following spring he was back at his old den. But although a litter of pups was reared there that season, they belonged to another pair of wolves; perhaps, so Ootek thought, to the widower’s son and daughter-in-law. In any event the old wolf remained supernumerary to the establishment for the rest of his life, although continuing to share in the task of providing for the pups.

Apart from the fact that there are only a fixed number of homesteads available to the wolves, their abundance is apparently further restricted by a built-in birth-control mechanism. Thus it happens that when food species, are abundant (or the wolf population is scanty) bitches give birth to large litters—sometimes of as many as eight pups. But if the wolves are too numerous, or food is Scarce, the number of pups in a litter may fall to as few as one or two. This is also true of other arctic animals, such as rough-legged hawks. In a year when the small mammal population is high, roughlegs will lay five or six eggs in a clutch; but when mice and lemmings are scarce, they may lay a single egg or they may not breed at all.

Epidemic disease is the overriding factor which ensures that, even if other controlling factors fail to operate, the wolf population will not become too large for the capacity of the prey animals to maintain it. On those rare occasions when the general balance is upset (often as a result of man’s interference ) and wolves become too abundant, they soon begin to weaken physically as food grows scarce and malnutrition grades into outright starvation. At times such as these devastating epidemics of rabies, distemper or mange invariably appear among the wolves, and their numbers are quickly reduced to a bare survival level.

In 1946 the lemmings (which in the Canadian arctic are a cyclic species whose peak of abundance occurs every four years followed by a population drop to near the zero mark) were at the low point in their cycle. Coincidentally, the drastically depleted caribou herds of Keewatin ^*4 chose that year to alter their age-old migration habits, and most of them bypassed southern central Keewatin entirely. It was a disastrous season for the Eskimos, foxes and wolves alike. Hunger lay heavy on the land. The latent rabies virus flared up among the starving foxes, and the wolves began to contract the disease too.

Now, animals stricken with rabies do not “go mad” in the usual sense of the word. Their nervous systems are affected so that they become erratic and unpredictable, and they lose the protection of a sense of fear. Rabid wolves sometimes walk blindly into speeding automobiles and trains; they have come stumbling in among entire teams of Huskies and have been torn to pieces as a result; and not infrequently they have wandered into village streets and have even entered tents or houses occupied by men. Such wolves, sick to the verge of death, are pitiable objects; but the human reaction to them is usually one of unbridled terror—not of the disease, for it is seldom recognized as rabies, but of the wolves themselves. Grotesque incidents occur which help to sustain the general myth about the vicious and dangerous nature of the wolf.

One such sick and dying wolf appeared in Churchill during the 1946 epidemic. It was first encountered by a Canadian Army corporal wending his way back to barracks after a session at the Churchill beer hall. According to the corporal’s account, a gigantic wolf leaped at him with murderous intent, and he barely escaped with his life by running a mile to the shelter of the guardhouse. He could exhibit no physical evidence of his ordeal, but his psychic scars were evidently deep. His warning sent the whole Army camp into a panic of near-hysterical proportions. American and Canadian contingents alike were mobilized, and squads of grim-faced men armed with rifles, carbines and spotlights were soon scouring the surrounding country intent on dealing with a menace which, in a matter of hours, had grown into several packs of starving wolves.

During the ensuing excitement eleven Husky dogs, one American Pfc, and a Chippewayan Indian coming home late became casualties—not of the wolf, but of the vigilantes.

For two days children and women stayed indoors. Foot soldiers all but vanished from the Army camp, and men on missions to distant buildings either went by jeep, well armed, or did not go at all.

A wolf was glimpsed on the second day by a light Army aircraft which had joined the hunt, and an intrepid detachment of Mounted Police sallied forth to deal with it. The wolf turned out to be a cocker spaniel belonging to the Hudson’s Bay Company manager.

Not until the third day did the panic ease. Late that afternoon the driver of a six-ton Army truck, returning to the camp from the airport, suddenly saw a bundle of fur on the road ahead of him. He jammed on the brakes but was unable to stop in time, and the wolf—by then so sick it could no longer move—was mercifully killed.

The aftermath was interesting. To this day there are residents of Churchill (and no doubt also a number of soldiers scattered over the continent) who will, at the drop of a hat, describe the invasion of Churchill by wolves in 1946. They will tell you of desperate personal encounters; of women and children savaged; of dog teams torn to ribbons; and of an entire human community living in a state of siege. All that is lacking is the final dramatic description of the North American equivalent of a Russian troika fleeing across the frozen plains, inevitably to be overwhelmed by a wave of wolves, while the polar night resounds to the crunching sound of human bones being cracked by wolfish jaws.