Northern Trails, Book I. | Page 2

or
lonely to run away. He even wagged his tail when I called to him softly.
Had I shot him on sight, 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