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You’re right - the wolves can be “trained.” But, I’d warn you my friend, that this appears to take *generations* of wolf learning. At the rate of wolf packs are expanding, I don’t think we have generations before they snatch a child.

There’s a paper I have somewhere in files on wildlife and range management, which is about wolf behavior in the former USSR (now Russia & Siberia) vs. the US and Canada. This study was done in the late 80’s, and the paper was translated subsequent to publication somewhere else in the USSR or ComBloc countries.

Anyway, the thrust of the paper was this: There was statistical evidence that during the 50+ years of gun control in the USSR, wolves had become much bolder in the USSR than they were in (then Canada) and in the US prior to WWII, when they were eradicated back to the very northern Rockies or northern MN/WI/MI. Wolves in the US & Canada learned that “human means death” even when the human wasn’t packing a rifle at that exact moment.

The statistical hypothesis was that after years of gun restriction in the USSR and what few gun owners there were in the private, non-government hands in the USSR, even hunters were loathe to waste their limited ammo or risk exposure to authorities by shooting “mere wolves” instead of game animals. So the wolves in the USSR became rather much bolder around humans over 50 years.

What we have here is the reverse: On the large scale, we’ve set up a system whereby the wolves in the northern Rockies are under a great deal of protection (from outside legal groups) and for people who aren’t well versed in how to kill predators and get rid of all evidence quickly, the wolves have a free run of the joint. They’re learning alright, but what they’re learning is that they can get away with coming ever-closer to human habitation.

Coyotes, due to their constant and long-standing close-in relationship with man (there are now ‘yotes in all lower 48 states, and in such urban areas as Central Park, NYC) are much more rapidly adaptable. When we farmed, we had lots of coyotes in the valleys in NV, and where we lived, I could hear no fewer than three coyote packs singing at night around the edges of the valley. We never saw pack behavior “in close” to habitation - all we saw were opportunistic forays by very bold coyotes. We had a saying in Nevada - if you’re going to shoot at a coyotes, HIT IT. If you shoot and you miss, you’ve just trained the SOB as to what your range and windage capabilities are. They learn that fast.

There were two animals that I came to respect for their learning curves: The corvids (crows, ravens, magpies) and coyotes. Both of them would not only learn from direct experience, they learned by watching other members of their species interact with humans. I cannot emphasize this enough. There are some animals that are dumb as rocks - we’re talking stump-hole stupid. They can watch their neighbor get blown into pink mist, and they learn *nothing* from the event.

Crows, on the other hand, are so damned smart, that I could shoot one of them pilfering my seed (eg, oat seed, drilled into the ground - they’d hop down a drill opener line and pull up every damn seed for 10 feet or more - now think of a murder of crows 100 strong... that’s a big bare patch in a field). The other crows in the area would take note of how far I was from the victim when he died. The VERY next day, no crows would allow me to get within that range of them.

So my summers would go like this:

1. Drill seed.
2. Shoot first crow with a 12ga.
3. Shoot next crow with a .17 hmr.
4. Shoot next (and last) crow with a .223 at upwards of 400 yards.
5. Yell at crows.

After that, the crows were so damned smart that for the rest of the summer, they could look at what long gun I was carrying and they would make sure that no one would land within the “crow effective” range of that long gun. They knew the difference between my shotgun (black, synthetic stock) and an AR-15 (black, synthetic stock), and somehow, they would communicate this to crows down the field, on the ground, and get them to flee the area when I was approaching my effective range - but not before. ie, if they saw me with the 12ga, they wouldn’t yell at their brethren on a pivot 400+ yards away.

You tell me that isn’t brains.

Coyotes would learn almost as fast, including when I’d catch them when they were food-obsessed. The easiest shots I’ve taken on coyotes were when they’d be watching some chukar climbing a hill, or were waiting for a squirrel to pop out of his hole, or were waiting on the edge of a sage grouse lek. They’d get so overwhelmingly food-obsessed that they’d SEE me get within 50 to 100 yards of them... and they would not move. They’d look over, see me, and then immediately direct their attention back to their intended dinner.

The first time this happened and I shot the food-fixated ‘yote, I saw a half-dozen other ‘yotes run like hell for the tall sagebrush within 200 yards of where I was sitting when I took the shot. Apparently, I disturbed a community hunting activity.

The next time I ran into one of these food-obsessed coyotes, the “spectators” started trying to slink away when they saw me approach Mr. Foodie. But then I shot two of the spectators, then swung around and got the food-fixated coyote as he was trying to make a get-away — hw was a little late tho, because he chose to try to bag the chukar on his way out of the area. He got a .223 up the poop chute for his trouble.

After that, any time I was in that particular part of the valley for the next two years, ALL the coyotes would clear out - and never allow me to get within 400 yards of them. That’s how fast they learn. They’d even learn the sound of my truck. They’d learn the sound of my buddy’s hunting vehicle during deer/chukar season, and we’d try to shoot coyotes of opportunity on hayfields in the winter. They’d watch every other car pass them by 200+ yards away and never give any mind. Let my little hunting Toyota wheeze up the road, and you’d see most of them kick in the afterburners before I got within 500 yards.

Unless the enviro’s allow someone who is an out-and-out no-limit professional killer of wolves loose in their domain, or they allow everyone to shoot at wolves, wolves won’t learn anywhere nearly that fast.