Northern Trails, Book I. | Page 2

I would probably have foolishly believed that he intended to attack me when he came trotting along my trail. Three separate times I have touched a wild deer with my hand; once I touched a moose, once an eagle, once a bear; and a score of times at least I have had to frighten these big animals or get out of their way, when their curiosity brought them too near for perfect comfort.
So much for the personal element, for the general attitude and fitness of the observer and his critics. But the question is not chiefly a personal one; it is simply a matter of truth and observation, and the only honest or scientific method is, first, to go straight to nature and find out the facts; and then--lest your own eyesight or judgment be at fault--to consult other observers to find if, perchance, they also have seen the facts exemplified. This is not so easy as to dogmatize or to write animal stories; but it is the only safe method, and one which the nature writer as well as the scientist must follow if his work is to endure.
Following this good method, when the critics had proclaimed that my record of a big wolf killing a young caribou by biting into the chest and heart was an impossibility, I went straight to the big woods and, as soon as the law allowed, secured photographs and exact measurements of the first full-grown deer that crossed my trail. These photographs and measurements show beyond any possibility of honest doubt the following facts: (1) The lower chest of a deer, between and just behind the forelegs, is thin and wedge-shaped, exactly as I stated, and the point of the heart is well down in this narrow wedge. The distance through the chest and point of the heart from side to side was, in this case, exactly four and one-half inches. A man's hand, as shown in the photograph, can easily grasp the whole lower chest of a deer, placing thumb and forefinger over the heart on opposite sides. (2) The heart of a deer, and indeed of all ruminant animals, lies close against the chest walls and is easily reached and wounded. The chest cartilage, except in an old deer, is soft; the ribs are thin and easily crushed, and the spaces between the ribs are wide enough to admit a man's finger, to say nothing of a wolf's fang. In this case the point of the heart, as the deer lay on his side, was barely five eights of an inch from the surface. (3) Any dog or wolf, therefore, having a spread of jaws of four and one-half inches, and fangs three quarters of an inch long, could easily grasp the chest of this deer from beneath and reach the heart from either side. As the jaws of the big northern wolf spread from six to eight inches and his fangs are over an inch long, to kill a deer in this way would require but a slight effort. The chest of a caribou is anatomically exactly like that of other deer; only the caribou fawn and yearling of "Northern Trails" have smaller chests than the animals I measured.
So much for the facts and the possibilities. As for specific instances, years ago I found a deer just killed in the snow and beside him the fresh tracks of a big wolf, which had probably been frightened away at my approach. The deer was bitten just behind and beneath the left shoulder, and one long fang had entered the heart. There was not another scratch on the body, so far as I could discover. I thought this very exceptional at the time; but years afterwards my Indian guide in the interior of Newfoundland assured me that it was a common habit of killing caribou among the big white wolves with which he was familiar. To show that the peculiar habit is not confined to any one section, I quote here from the sworn statements of three other eyewitnesses. The first is superintendent of the Algonquin National Park, a man who has spent a lifetime in the North Woods and who has at present an excellent opportunity for observing wild-animal habits; the second is an educated Sioux Indian; the third is a geologist and mining engineer, now practicing his profession in Philadelphia.
ALGONQUIN PARK, ONTARIO, August 31, 1907.
This certifies that during the past thirty years spent in our Canadian wilds, I have seen several animals killed by our large timber wolves. In the winter of 1903 I saw two deer thus killed on Smoke Lake, Nipissing, Ontario. One deer was bitten through the front chest, the other just behind the foreleg. In each case there was no other wound on the body.
[Signed] G.W.