Posted on 08/02/2007 8:51:10 AM PDT by george76
A kayaker's life-and-death struggle with a hungry wolf on B.C.'s remote north coast... has prompted a conservation officer to warn against taking wolf encounters too lightly.
"This was a predatory wolf attack," conservation officer James Zucchelli confirmed in an interview from his Bella Coola Valley office. "That fellow was perceived as a prey source. He was attacked with intent to eat. The wolf saw him and took off running at him."
the attack reinforces the fact that wolves are predators and capable of attacking humans under certain circumstances...
The fit, 31-year-old Port Moody kayaker was setting up his tent on a beach at 4 p.m. in the Anderson Islands off northwest Aristazabal Island, a straight-line distance of about 125 km north of Bella Bella, when an old female wolf emerged from the bushes and attacked, ...
The kayaker fought with the wolf for a few long minutes, suffering bites to his leg and hands as he attempted to pry its jaws apart and put it in a headlock.
He eventually dragged himself and the wolf several metres down the beach to his kayak, removed a 10-cm knife from his life jacket, and repeatedly stabbed the animal.
"He proceeds to start filling this thing with holes in the neck and chest area," Zucchelli said. "The wolf gives up, gurgling and bleeding, and wanders off into the trees."
Unable to paddle due to his hand injuries, the kayaker called for help on his marine radio.
A man was severely bitten by a wolf in 2000 while sleeping outdoors in his sleeping bag at Vargas Island in Clayoquot Sound. He received more than 50 stitches to his scalp.
(Excerpt) Read more at canada.com ...
.
nah people are stupid.... wolves just follow their nature. You need to respect that and keep out of their way.
Anderson Islands off northwest Aristazabal Island
Good answer!!!!
shoot shovel and shutup
Yep, you jump in the ocean you might get bit by a shark. If you go into the wilderness...you are in the animal’s house now.
There were valid reasons wolves were hunted to near extinction in many places, the British Isles being one of them, I believe.
My brother and I were looking at a video of a tiger leaping over an elephant’s head to get a guy on top, and I made the comment that “Boy, can you imagine if there were creatures like that with wings that would swoop out of the sky and just snatch you up...”
After an imperceptible pause, we both looked at each other and said in unison “They would be hunted to extinction.”
Many people think that wolves are just big dogs.
Did you see the ‘tourists jumping over the fences because some wolves killed a deer’ story ?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1874245/posts
opps : you did see the report.
Dogs are just tame wolves :)
Absolutely! Did you click on my link near the bottom? It is good for a laugh...
On a serious note...I just finished watching the “Planet Earth” series that has an episode where a wolf is chasing a caribou calf down...the calf is made to run, and is able to keep ahead of the wolf, but...I had no idea a dog that big could run like that for that long...the chase seemed like it took several minutes of running at top speed, and the only reason the wolf caught the calf is that the calf would stumble just a little here and there, and every time it did, the wolf would creep just a few feet closer, then boom, it was right on it.
Pretty amazing stuff.
Does the article say how he beat off the wolf? :-)
Not saying that the wolf wasn’t just hungry ... but maybe it was rabid? My understanding is that having rabies will make an animal a lot more aggressive than normal (at least until it goes off to die). Anyone know about this?
The kayaker fought with the wolf for a few long minutes, suffering bites to his leg and hands as he attempted to pry its jaws apart and put it in a headlock.
He eventually dragged himself and the wolf several metres down the beach to his kayak, removed a 10-cm knife from his life jacket, and repeatedly stabbed the animal.
“He proceeds to start filling this thing with holes in the neck and chest area,” Zucchelli said. “The wolf gives up, gurgling and bleeding, and wanders off into the trees.”
” Subsequent tests on the dead wolf showed it did not have rabies...
The stomach contents included the jaw of a river otter, a feather, and bones from a rat fish scavenged from the beach.”
“There was no indication of any feeding or garbage, that anything had been placed on a regular basis on that little patch of beach to suggest a wolf attractant,”
“This wasn’t a beach used on a regular basis. There was no fire pit. There is no evidence these wolves had been fed by humans, period. There was nothing.”
A 2002 study by Mark McNay of the Alaska department of fish and game documented 80 cases in which wolves showed little fear of humans in Alaska and Canada ...
This guy is a maroon if his only weapon is a knife with a 4” blade.
Wolves can run for a long time.
A pack will work the victims by ‘cutting the corner’ and other tricks.
A baby caribou calf will be killed.
Wolves will kill to fun too.
This guy reminds me of Timmy Treadwell...
I can’t imagine people going into the wild like this guy did and not taking a firearm for protection. The odds of ever having to use it are very small but don’t try to convince this guy of that.
Do you know if it’s legal in Canada to carry a firearm in the wild? I know we can’t take them into Canada when traveling.
Predatory wolf? Are there vegetarian wolves?
;’) Thanks G76.
I believe that Americans can carry hunting rifles in Canada. There are lots of paper work. But illegal for hand guns ?
Only having a small knife against a brown bear ( not just a wolf ) would not be best.
The odds maybe small, but it would be handy on a long trip by yourself in a sea kayak to have some deadly force ? Nasties in the ocean with big teeth too.
When I lived in Canada, I had hunting rifles and shotguns. Don’t know what the regs were to carry them, but in the more remote areas (i.e. deep bear country) I imagine they’re a bit relaxed. Never owned a handgun there.
In Alaska, I have a 12ga w/slugs (Brenekke’s & sabots) when fishing. Thinking about a .44 or a .454 for when I kayak here.
Thanks.
This guy may have brought a recorder to document his demise ?
But no weapon.
Let's take a trip down memory lane - anyone else recall the insistent bleating on the part of the ecochondriacs that "There's never been a recorded attack on a human by a wolf in the North American continent, ever"? This guy may have some, ah, "input" on that issue.
Thanks for posting this. I don’t subscribe to the idiot notion that nature is a warm, fuzzy place resembling the Garden of Eden, but I’ve always read that the only documented attack by a wolf against a human being in North America was some guy in Manitoba in the 1940s riding a handcar along a railway line who was set upon by a rabid wolf, which hung on for a half hour before the guy got rid of it. (Yes, yes, I know that I could have looked this up on the Internet, but I think the facts are somewhat correct.) Nevertheless, here are two instances of wolf attacks in this article. Interesting stuff. Around here (about 100 miles south of the Arctic Circle), we always head into the forest and mountains armed, and we respect the land and wildlife. Thanks for posting this - I wonder if the info I was given about that lone wolf attack was true until the recent past, or whether it was just bad info.
A good resource for wolf attacks and scary encouters can be found here:
http://www.wc.adfg.state.ak.us/pubs/techpubs/research_pdfs/techb13p3.pdf
That wolf attack I remember is from Poulin, Ontario, from 1942, and did include a handcar on the railroad with the man fighting off the wolf for 25 minutes with a handaxe. (Case 50 in the above report). I also ran across some other sources that insist that this is the only wolf attack in North America, but the report above has many, many other instances of wolf attacks and encounters. Thanks again for posting this article and improving my understanding of things.
> This guy is a maroon if his only weapon is a knife with a 4” blade.
No, he’s a Canadian. Any blade much bigger than that is likely to get you into trouble.
The starving wolf was on an island and being old could not eak out an exixtance from normal prey
Let's not be hasty and cast asparagus on the wolf, now. ;) The wolf WAS hungry after all, so could we really call this an "attack?" Maybe he was just fixin' to have a little snack to tide him over.
Heeyyyyy...roast brisket of wolf with a side of ‘sperrygrass. I’m thinking a nice young Beaujolais to clear the palate. Yum!
> Let’s take a trip down memory lane - anyone else recall the insistent bleating on the part of the ecochondriacs that “There’s never been a recorded attack on a human by a wolf in the North American continent, ever”? This guy may have some, ah, “input” on that issue.
Wolves are large dogs, and large dogs sometimes attack humans. No surprises there. They also have a very sophisticated social structure with unwritten yet well understood rules — amongst other wolves. They are beautiful animals, extremely intelligent and not necessarily a threat to humans. Like humans, they use Strategy and teamwork when they hunt.
I have seen wolves a few times, when I lived in Canada. They never ceased to amaze and fascinate me. They tended to mind their own business and keep their distance. That said, I would never contemplate going up and petting one, either...
When you are out in the bush, you are either a guest or an intruder in their world: and they get to decide which of the two it is. Same deal with bears and cougars and wolverines. So be polite, but best go armed anyrate.
Like all large dogs, wolves should be treated with Respect and commonsense. As should all animals, wild or domestic.
I don't know if it has changed lately, but several years ago I went on a camping trip way up north into BC, off the alcan highway.
At the border crossing, the Canadian customs guy took a look at my truck and gear and the boat on the back... just asked "how many guns and of what kind do you have?" I told him we had a couple of rifles and a shotgun. No handguns (I'd studied the customs rules ahead of time). After that it was just checking to make sure we only brought two cartons of American smokes and two cases of American beer per person... and he wished us well and off we went.
The funny part was that he merely asked "how many", not "do you have any" guns. Apparently it was obvious from out appearance.
Thanks...I must have been mistaken thinking a good friend tried to take a rifle in instead of a handgun, this has been fifteen or so years ago.
Yah, it’s definitely no joy on the handguns. But long guns were still OK then. I ~think~ that’s still the case.
Even in a bar you might get attacked by a mink or a barracuda.
Dogs as we know them, are just tame wolves.
Or a ‘cougar...’
Please ping me if you find some good stuff in your book.
Thanks for your ping.
There must European, Russian...wolf attack reports too ?
As University of Wyoming geography professor James Thompson (1993:165) recently noted, “wolf recovery is [only] a ‘stalking horse’ for the larger issue of land use change.” Even environmentalists have admitted that “on the deepest level the issue of…wolf recovery is not about wolves. [Instead] it is about control of the west” (Askins 1993:5).
Simply put, environmentalists are using wolf recovery and the Endangered Species Act to run ranchers out of the country and to thwart multiple use of public lands. It is also a way for animal-rights and antihunting groups to ban all hunting and use of wildlife...
http://www.mtmultipleuse.org/ENDANGERED/wolfreport.htm#HIDDEN
> Dogs as we know them, are just tame wolves.
(grin!) My German Shepherd keeps reminding me of that fact at every opportunity she gets!
This is a dog that understands spoken English — not just the odd command, but entire sentences and ideas. She can tell exactly what I’m thinking when I walk into the room, and she tries hard to make speech-noises and expects to be understood (that part is really, really funny to watch!)
Purely by watching, she has figured out how to open doors using the doorknob (that’s sometimes a problem), and she knows approximately what time it is: just like an alarm clock.
Unlike cats dogs are not stupid. The more time you spend with them the smarter they get. I feel convinced that they think humans are funny-looking dogs with no snout and no tail who don’t know how to run fast on four legs.
I love Shepards.
Though I feel that dogs (and wolves) are smater than us. They, after all have adopted their life style for a free ride. Easy food and love. All they have to do is way their tails and they are home free.
I have two pure wolves that I really love and the love is returned ten fold.
I have two house puppies - dwarf yorkies crossed with mini rat terriers that are also such a joy. Combined the two weigh nine pounds.
The dogs and wolves love each other and recognize each other as part of the pack.
Life is good.
Starving wolf! Sheesh!
It’s been years since I’ve been followed by wolves. Things must be getting tough in the bush. In June of this year one of my neighbours had a very trying tussle with a large black bear - got scratched and bruised, but un-chomped upon.
I just heard on the radio about a cougar attack near Clinton. There’ve been quite a few in the last couple of years in B.C. I never used to see the cats at night - now they’re creeping closer to civilization.
When I was a lad, animals had respect for people. Not only have they lost their fear of people - now they just think we’re for lunch!
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