3 Among the Wolves

by Helen Thayer

  Charlie made no attempt to go outside and, as usual, appeared in complete command of the situation. The wolves had crossed Charlie’s well-marked perimeter, but he didn’t behave defensively. He appeared to feel no need to prove his position of dominance with this family. In contrast, when the summer wolves had trespassed, he had angrily sent them packing to reinforce his reign over his own territory. Anything less would have shown weakness and decreased his neighbors’ respect for him.

  Mackenzie and his family eventually departed—satisfied with their findings, we hoped. It was early morning before we finally stopped talking about the delta wolves. Encouraged by Charlie’s positive relationship with the delta wolves, we decided to establish Wolf Camp Two here and stay for about one month, until early spring. The pack’s apparent calm gave us hope that the family would keep to the cycle John had described. If they showed signs of spooking, we would move our campsite farther away.

  When we awoke, the only signs of the wolves were their enormous prints in the soft snow surrounding our tent. Late on the fourth day after their disappearance, we heard a distant howl from across the forest. Charlie, clipped to his leash to prevent him from dashing off to join the wolves, immediately replied. Fifteen minutes later another howl, much closer to our camp, elicited a second reply from Charlie. Soon the same six wolves stood at the edge of the forest, staring at us.

  This pack of six was the smallest of the three families we had encountered. The summer pack had had eight members and the sea ice family, eleven. As we had done in the summer, to aid identification we chose names for the six. Mackenzie was named after the river that flowed through the delta.

  A medium-size blond female and close companion of Mackenzie was intensely jealous of any female who dared approach her “man.” She snarled and snapped a warning and drew blood one day when she chased another female and nipped her rump. The younger wolf immediately flipped onto her back in a submissive apology. The aggressor was the alpha female. We named her Willow.

  Wolves become sexually mature at two years of age and breed from late January to mid-March. The more northerly wolves in colder climates mate later than their southern relatives, so that pups are born in warmer weather. As we approached the end of February in the breeding season, Willow protected her breeding rights with the alpha male by preventing any other female from having close contact with him. Mackenzie, in turn, discouraged the other males from any close association with his breeding partner.

  Although the protective behavior produced more conflict than we had observed during our time with the summer pack, we never saw any fights or seriously aggressive acts. A simple rebuff appeared all that was necessary to maintain breeding rights and family harmony.

  There were two other adults, both midpack animals. The female, who was almost white, we named Spruce. Her coat had an ungroomed appearance, mostly because its white color showed every bit of dirt. Her ruff was shaggy. She was a playful wolf who often cavorted through the trees carrying a stick and teasing another into trying to take it away. If successful in finding a playmate she would race away, weaving through the trees, kicking up snow at her heels, daring her pursuer to catch up.

  We named the male Birch. He was gray with black streaks and a crooked tail, which we guessed had been injured in a hunting accident. He was a serious fellow, but often played with Spruce. Although not as quick at turning, he made up for his slower speed by intelligently cutting corners and ambushing Spruce from behind a tree. When the group set out on a hunt, Birch usually followed immediately behind Mackenzie, as if he were the second in command on hunts.

  The two other wolves were younger. They were probably that year’s pups, now almost grown but lacking the mature, well-rounded appearance of an adult. Richard, a male we named after Richards Island on the coast, was a well-proportioned animal with a gray coat and an unusual blond ruff. His stare, although not threatening, was intense. One day he would become an alpha.

  His sister, Kendall—whom we named for the Kendall Island Bird Sanctuary, north of our position—was less intense than her brother. She seemed almost scattered when she played tag among the trees. Sometimes she stopped to peer around with a “Where did they go?” look. Then, seeing her quarry, she would race toward it full speed with long, bounding strides. Her lithe body destined her to become a speedy hunter.

  After three days of resting and playing, the family disappeared during the night after hearing a bull moose trumpet in the distance. The only other sounds were the quiet whispers of a light breeze in the soft moonlight. Two days later the pack returned during a snowstorm, all with full bellies from successful hunts. They dug down into the snow and each curled up in a hollow, allowing the new snow to cover them for warmth.

  Beneath their snowy mounds the wolves slept. Hours later, the snow stopped and the sun struggled through gray clouds. Mackenzie rose and stretched, shrugging the snow from his body, then sat on his haunches and yipped his family awake. They uncurled, breaking the layer of caked snow that covered them. One by one they rose to shake themselves free. Cavernous mouths agape, they yawned sleep away. Mackenzie and Willow greeted each other with soft muzzle caresses; then, together, they strolled closer to Charlie’s boundary to peer at him sitting outside the tent, watching them. Spruce tried to initiate a game of chase, but the others were too lazy to respond, instead wandering into the trees to continue an idle day.

  Mackenzie was the only one to approach our tent during the next several days. He gave Bill and me sporadic glances of appraisal, but it was clearly Charlie who fascinated him.

  A steady cycle of hunting for a few days and returning to rest for one to three days continued. There must have been an abundant supply of large prey in the region to allow such a timetable, we reasoned. We had seen numerous groups of caribou and several moose on the delta.

  Alone in camp one day, we heard the faint sound of a snowmobile. We hoped it was John, whom we had been expecting, and not hunters. Just in case, we implemented a plan we had discussed with him before we left Inuvik. As soon as the sound reached us, we clipped on skis and headed away from camp to intersect the snowmobile. If the visitors were hunters, we would tell them a story about “the wolves we saw yesterday going that way.” Of course, “that way” would be in the opposite direction from where the delta wolf family rendezvoused.

  Through binoculars we watched a black snowmobile disappear into a stand of spruce and a single figure begin walking toward us on snowshoes. It was John. We met up a quarter mile away. A man of few words, his greeting was short and to the point: “Hello, are the wolves there?”

  After hearing a brief account of our adventures and of Charlie’s success with the family, his eyes crinkled into slits as a wide smile spread across his weathered face. “Good news.”

  We continued on to our camp where John, who agreed to stay a few days, pitched his tiny green one-person tent beside ours. From his large, worn pack he took a sleeping bag with two rolled-up caribou skins lashed to the outside, and arranged them in the tent: one skin went under his sleeping bag, and the other was spread on top. John wasn’t at all impressed with our foam sleeping pads. “Kabloona stuff is okay, but caribou skins are warmer.” We made another trip back to his hidden snowmobile to carry his food to camp.

  The next day the wolves returned. John, who had spent most of the morning sitting on a sled patiently waiting, didn’t move. His body was relaxed, but his eyes sparkled as the wolves appeared at the edge of the trees. They immediately noticed him. Their heads went up; their ears pointed forward. In minutes they relaxed. He remained sitting perfectly still for another hour. Then, quite casually, he rose and said, “They know me.”

  Together we ate lunch and talked about the only subject John cared about: wolves. He was amused at the names we had given the family. It had never occurred to him to name them.

  He was excited to hear of our contact with the family on the sea ice. In his travels to hunt seals, he had seen an unusual number of wolves on the ice for the past
three years and had wondered if they stayed out there all winter. Now he had an answer.

  As soon as John had arrived in camp, he noticed a change in Charlie, whom he had first met in Inuvik: “There he was a dog, now he’s a wolf!” With his intimate knowledge of wild creatures, John instantly understood why we had been so successful in contacting wolves. He could see that Charlie was acting like a dominant wolf in the wild. After watching Mackenzie gazing at Charlie from his usual vantage point at the tree line, John chuckled and told us that Mackenzie was trying to imitate Charlie’s sitting and standing posture.

  John saw the wolves through the eyes of many generations of Inuit. He was able to look into their souls, to know them at a level we kabloona never could. He missed the dark alpha who had disappeared, and was visibly upset at the thought that a hunter might have killed him. It was more clear to us than ever that wolves were John’s life.

  Charlie’s dominant, even pompous strutting captivated John. When Charlie looked at the wolves, John claimed that he could “see him talking to them with his eyes and body.” Each day and late into the night, John sat silently watching Charlie and the wolves. Finally he asked us if we would consider leaving Charlie to live with him, so he and Charlie could travel together looking for wolves. John recognized that Charlie would be a bridge to the wolves for him, just as he had been for Bill and me. Charlie could pave the way for John to live closer to the animals he loved.

  But John soon agreed that it wouldn’t be possible. He sensed our unbreakable bond with Charlie, and knew he could never replace us. He knew Charlie’s place was with Bill and me.

  The delta wolves usually hunted at night, but early one morning, after a frenzy of howling, they left to hunt under a sky marked by threatening storm clouds. With John, we followed a narrow trail in the snow that led away from the forest, across the flat tundra, and over a low willow-covered rise. The wolves had traveled single file, stepping in the same tracks to save energy. Only the front wolf would break trail, and when he tired, another would take the lead. Their snowshoelike paws kept them on the snow’s surface.

  We cut across a frozen lake to a low hill as the wolves outdistanced us. From there we watched through binoculars as they chased a moose. They gave up after a short distance when the moose sped away on a frozen side channel of the river. The thin covering of snow over ice provided a firm footing for the speedy animal.

  Undaunted, the hunters veered to the west and chased a caribou who made the mistake of breaking away from its main group. Caught in soft snow, the caribou floundered and soon went down under the mass of six wolves as its panicked companions dashed to safety. The wolves tore and slashed at the body, bolting down huge chunks of steaming meat with ravenous abandon. We were impressed by the wolves’ efficient movement, even in snow—and especially compared to our more clumsy efforts. A cold seventeen-mile-per-hour wind picked up as we turned back to camp, leaving the wolves to eat and hunt.

  We reached camp in time to escape the full strength of the storm, which built to a shrieking crescendo and kept us tentbound for three days. Charlie, who clearly missed his new neighbors, stepped outside now and then, in spite of the tent-shaking winds, to see whether Mackenzie and his family had returned. But this time six days would elapse before they returned. We guessed that they had hunkered down in the storm and continued hunting after the weather cleared.

  After spending ten days with us, John left to travel to the other side of the delta, where he thought he might see a few more of his wolf friends. He had been out on the delta for most of the winter, returning to town only to pick up his government check and buy supplies, and taking brief seal-hunting trips on the sea ice.

  Even before John had agreed to tell us of the delta pack’s location, we had promised to keep the rendezvous site’s exact position a secret, just as for the summer pack. There was always the possibility that either pack, especially the delta one, might be found by hunters. Both families had given us so much. Anything that might lead hunters to them would be a betrayal to the wolves and to John.

  We accompanied John to his snowmobile and agreed to meet him in Inuvik after we returned from the delta. As he drove westward in search of more wolves, we were sorry to see him go. His Inuit wisdom, quiet ways, and ability to understand Charlie’s acceptance by wild wolves amazed us. His sense of “wolf language,” as he called it, had given us greater insight into the wolves’ thinking and Charlie’s place in their lives.

  Stranger

  MARCH SLIPPED IN ON WARMER TEMPERATURES. As dawn made its appearance one morning, a solitary howl ending in a sorrowful wail carried across the tundra on the light breeze.

  Six wolves were instantly at the edge of the trees, their triangular ears bolt upright, watching a single wolf approach slowly but steadily from a half mile away. The pack tensed as the stranger approached. He stopped now and then to howl tremulously, perhaps seeking permission to approach. Mackenzie stepped to the front of his family and howled briefly in response.

  When the stranger, an immature male with a bloody shoulder, was three hundred feet from the pack, Mackenzie advanced, stiff-legged, his fur ruff raised. His lips drew back, exposing teeth set in powerful jaws, and a deep, angry rumble rose from his throat. The stranger’s blood-covered shoulder was gashed, but his steady gait showed no limp. He stopped as Mackenzie drew close, then yelped and cowered in submission as the aggressive alpha steadily approached.

  With a savage snarl, Mackenzie—his face contorted into a vicious mask, his ears pointing hornlike to the side—suddenly jumped to partially straddle the stranger, who immediately dropped to the snow and flipped onto his back, tail clamped tightly between his legs. Mackenzie stood over him, his fangs stabbing the stranger, snatching quick bites of fur. Then, after inspecting the stranger’s genital and anal areas, he stepped back, still snarling. The stranger lay on his back, whining pitifully.

  By now the entire family had approached and stood over the cringing wolf. Willow grabbed a mouthful of fur and yanked hard, pulling the prostrate wolf a few feet. The rest, snarling and biting, tormented the poor beast for several minutes, drawing blood from his rump and neck. Then, led by Mackenzie, the family withdrew to the tree line, leaving the young wolf groveling on his back.

  Meanwhile, just as Mackenzie first advanced on the stranger, Charlie rushed to his scent marker closest to the scene to stand guard over his territory. He snarled a vicious warning to the stranger to stay back. Straining to the end of his leash, he breached his boundary to further emphasize his message. Even as Mackenzie led his family away, Charlie continued a rumbling growl. Bill and I, shotguns in hand, stood within a few feet of Charlie in case the stranger decided to fight the dog that confronted him.

  The pack disappeared into the trees, but we suspected they still watched. It was an hour before the stranger slowly rose. Immediately all six wolves silently reappeared at the tree line. Charlie, who at our urging had retreated to the side of the tent, resumed his aggressive boundary stance: teeth bared, deep-throated snarls catching in his throat, facing down the bloodied wolf.

  Slowly the wolf advanced, shying away from Charlie. Finally, only fifty feet away from Mackenzie, the wolf again cowered on the snow and whined. Mackenzie walked to him, this time without aggression, and sniffed his bloodied fur. He turned toward his family with the stranger walking behind: head down, back arched, and tail tightly tucked beneath his body. The family gathered about, sniffing and moving in short, sudden jumps: leaping sideways to the stranger, then jumping to the front to block him. Thirty minutes later they wandered away to resume family life, leaving him alone.

  Stranger approaches.

  Not so Charlie. Every time the stranger looked toward him, Charlie resumed an aggressive posture, snarling fiercely. The wolf seemed to have been somewhat accepted by the family, but not by Charlie.

  The stranger lay a hundred feet away, cleaning his bloodied wounds. We were relieved that the possibility of a fight seemed to have evaporated. The stranger was gra
dually gaining acceptance, but we wondered whether the family would accept him as a pack member.

  Night arrived with the stranger lying at the edge of the trees, still being ignored. Charlie had calmed and ceased to continually guard his territory. Concerned that the outsider might still be rejected by the pack, and troubled about the bites the family had inflicted on him, we looked out now and then. In the darkness all we could see was a form huddled in the snow, all alone. Charlie showed no interest.

  At dawn the lonely animal was on his feet, but limping slightly. Mackenzie approached. The two gently touched muzzles and Mackenzie led the stranger into the trees—to where the family waited, we presumed.

  Toward nightfall the family reappeared, with the newcomer following close behind. He appeared to have been accepted, although he carefully kept to the rear. We were thankful to see that he walked confidently and his limp had improved.

  By now we had seen many instances in which wolves displayed intense emotions toward each other. Once the family accepted the newcomer, they demonstrated compassion toward him, as demonstrated by Mackenzie’s soft muzzle touch, signaling acceptance. It was a glimpse of the gentler side of wolf family life.

  Charlie’s attitude was now one of complete indifference, as if his high status within the pack placed him above concern over a newcomer.

  A day later all the wolves, including the outsider, left the area. Four days later they reappeared, the family’s new addition bringing up the rear. His appearance had changed dramatically. His coat was clean, and he gave no sign of a limp. He held his head high and stepped along with a certain jauntiness. He had found a new family, and all was well in wolf town. Even Charlie allowed him a softer look as they passed by.