Posted on 11/30/2008 9:24:40 AM PST by jazusamo
How the decline of hunting is changing the natural order of predator and prey
THE TWO WOLVES emerged like specters from the tree line and crossed a field of snow. From that moment, and even after everything that followed, no one disputed their penetrating beauty. Silver on white.
Two men watched them approach. The men—a pilot named Todd Svarckopf and an aviation worker named Chris Van Galder—worked at Points North Landing, an outpost that serves local mining camps in Saskatchewan province, about 750 miles north of the U.S. border. On this particular day in November 2005 a low cloud ceiling prevented aerial surveys for signs of uranium, so the bored men had struck out, walking toward a nearby junkyard to kill a few hours looking at a collection of abandoned airplanes.
They had crossed the camp's snow-covered airstrip and started across the moss-sprung landscape when the wolves appeared. One darker, one lighter. The darker one approached Svarckopf. He yelled at it, and it retreated a few steps.
"Whatever we do," the pilot told Van Galder, standing nearby, "we don't turn and run."
~snip~
After about a quarter hour—an eternity, it seemed, with the wolves snarling and snapping their teeth—Svarckopf and Van Galder made it back to the camp's airstrip, where the animals broke off the hunt and returned to the woods. Moments later, in the safety of the dreary mess hall, the breathless men related their story to the miners. Van Galder had brought a camera for the walk to the airplane junkyard, and he had managed to snap a few pictures of the wolves at the camp's edge. He showed them to his colleagues.
~snip~
A few days later, after the excitement had subsided and as the snow continued to ground flights, Carnegie told his colleagues he felt stir-crazy...
(Excerpt) Read more at vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com ...
750 miles north of the 49th parallel is well north of even Fort MacMurray. It’s 300 miles North of Nowhere, and the odds of a cross-bred wolf are about even with your being part Innu.
Some folks forget just how bloody BIG Western Canadian provinces are, and how sparsely populated. 75+ % of Canada’s population lives within 150 miles of the US-Canadian border.
Saskatchewan is the SMALLEST of the prairie provinces, at 251,866 square miles. Texas, the largest of the contiguous States, is less than 10,000 square miles larger, at 261,757 sq mi.
I sincerely doubt these were hybrids. The guys were in a fly-in camp, for heaven’s sake!
My mistake: Manitoba is slightly smaller than SK, making MB the smallest prairie province. Even so, MB is still less than 12,000 square miles smaller than TX.
Alaska is 570,380 sq mi., just for info’s sake.
For some reason Wikipedia lists the total area of Alaska as 663,268 square miles. But further down they also give the same figure you have. Maybe the extra area is offshore.
(FYI your last post was to yourself.)
Pharmboy, have their been any reports of black bears on the golf courses up by you?
The only reports of wolf-coyote crosses so far are in the northeast US.
However, a wolf-dog hybrid is possible about anywhere. Both Huskies and Malamutes were last, as a breed, crossed with wolves in the 1930s at latest, so there would be considerable personality variation in the puppies if a male mated with a female wolf today.
It is also possible that somehow, Eurasian wolves were taken into Alaska or Canada, and crossed with Gray wolves. This would explain pair hunting, as Eurasian wolves often have smaller packs, and pair or solo hunt.
And most of all, Eurasian wolves can be very fierce, and are generally not afraid of humans. They are regarded as much more dangerous than Gray wolves, of which Eurasian wolves are a subspecies.
It’s pretty difficult for there to be a wolf-dog hybrid if there are no dogs about, which was my point. Even the natives aren’t out there anymore.
Wideminded: Perhaps the difference is winter/summer ice packs? < VBG >
From this article, the local natives say that wolves would not normally live in Points North Landing, but were feeding on a garbage dump instead of following caribou herds:
http://www.cbc.ca/sask/features/wolves/
Saw a small black bear last year at a campground near Arrowrock, in southern Idaho. It didn’t seem too afraid of people or cars.
I was going to get out of the car and go hand to hand with it over possession of the campground, but my wife grabbed my arms and held me back.
Darn! My wife is that way too, they just won’t let us have any fun. :)
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