Mary and I tracked them to their carcass. The moose’s bone marrow was bright crimson and jelly-like from fat depletion. Hair was missing from its belly and flanks where the skin had been hemorrhaging, but we found no ticks and were unable to determine the cause of death. We monitored the site from the air and ground for a few days, and as far as we know the other Travers wolves never showed up. Nor did the landowners who were six kilometres away at Feely Lake, where no doubt they found the deer hide and rumen left by the poaching Pretty pack.
Complicating our interpretation of these tangled movements was a new source of food for the wolves — moose and deer shot in the park by native people. With the stroke of a political pen, a new predator entered Algonquin Park or, more accurately, a predator re-emerged with much-enhanced hunting efficiency, after an absence of one hundred years since the park’s creation.
There was a new scavenger too. As we drove through the town of Round Lake Centre one day, we spotted a highway-killed deer up on a snowbank. Wanting to see how quickly an off-territory pack can discover a carcass, we loaded it into the back of the truck and drove to the end of a nearby concession road close to the Grand Lake West pack’s temporary location. We met Graham, who helped us unload the deer and drag it along a snowmobile trail into the woods. On the way back we kicked snow over the drag marks to conceal our experiment from snowmobilers. Just as we reached our trucks, an ancient-looking snowmobile approached and a very old, toothless man dismounted. After an awkward silence, Graham explained that we were listening for wolves. The man got back on his snowmobile and drove on down his lane.
The next morning when we returned, ravens were circling and wolf tracks plastered the trail. The carcass, however, was gone. Over our trail ran fresh human tracks and a new drag mark. Judging from the raven droppings and wolf scats littering the snow, the old man must have had some well-seasoned meat.
By mid-January all the packs had come down to the deer yard. From a big, blue highway sign high on a hill advertising “Wilno Body Shop,” we could dial most of them up almost any time. Once, standing at a deer kill in a red pine plantation, we could hear the signals of four wolves from three different packs. We broke that record from a snowy hardwood ridge when we picked up seven wolves from five packs. Throughout February we tracked wolves across farm fields and found deer kills out behind barns. One cold, calm night we howled the entire deer yard and heard five packs, a record, three of them from one place — and many farm dogs.
Then, by mid-March, all but one pack returned home. We howled the deer yard again on the night of March 17; only the Grand Lake West wolves responded — and again many dogs. The Grand West wolves were on a deer they had killed recently. We were surprised that the wolves would leave, because the deep snow hung on and the deer stayed for almost another month. The wolves may have had something else on their minds; it was late in the breeding season, time to think about den sites and property boundaries.
Known mortality was comparatively light that winter at 18 per cent. We were missing other wolves and suspected some smashed collars, but we could count only known deaths. The next winter, however, was more disastrous.
Acting on a tip in late November 1992, I telephoned an employee of the Chalk River Atomic Energy Centre just north of the park who told me his brother had recently shot a collared wolf. It turned out to be Pretty 2, a yearling female collared that summer. During the conversation he recounted how he had overheard a maintenance man in the coffee room explain that he, too, had shot a radio-collared wolf. My informant described the man as an old fellow from the town of Barry’s Bay, a wolf hater who would not divulge where he shot the wolf because he did not want other people to know where he hunts. When Graham phoned him, the man vaguely mentioned White Mountain a few kilometres behind Round Lake Centre but refused to be more precise. He must have smashed the collar, because we could get no signal on mortality mode either around White Mountain or over the town. Missing and never accounted for was Foys 7 Ryan, likely his victim.
By the end of November, even before our winter field season had begun, two wolves had been killed and another was missing. Snow was light and temperatures mild until just before Christmas. Then, on December 22, deer began pouring out of the park and pack territories broke down again. Both the Jack Pine and Travers packs moved onto land claimed by the Jocko Lake pack while the deer were passing through. The McDonald Creek wolves, following the leading edge of the migration, came out to the periphery of the deer yard.
On December 28, student Stephan Beauregard flew over the Pretty and Travers packs, both close together on a plateau at the top of White Mountain. Because the packs were near each other, Mary, Jenny, Michelle, and I investigated. We drove a snowmobile trail along the south side of the Bonnechere River until, at an overflow, we could go no farther. From there we hiked up an old road that climbed the south slope of the mountain and soon came to a trail of wolf tracks that turned off at a bog. Ravens circled the trees on the far side. We spread out and, after a brief search, Jenny found the carcass, an almost completely consumed deer.
Remarkable about that kill was that while we stood there, we could dial up Pretty 1, Travers 1, Travers 4, and Travers 5 all within three hundred metres. After examining tracks, we concluded that the Pretty Lake pack had made the kill but the Travers pack had arrived and either displaced the Pretty Lake pack, or was allowed to feed, or was staying close hoping to feed. Anyhow, with wolves from two packs so close to a carcass, this was a case of extreme tolerance.
The next day, Travers 5, with three other wolves, left this carcass and moved down the mountain, across the ice of the Bonnechere River, and killed a deer six kilometres away. They consumed it completely and left while one of their packmates was still up on White Mountain and another had travelled more than ten kilometres to the north. Here was another case where they were not hunting or even feeding as a cooperative group.
By early January when we left the field, three radio-collared wolves had been confirmed shot and one more was suspected. Unfortunately, that was only the beginning; numbers rose by the time we returned in February. Conservation officer Blake Simpson met us at a gas station with Grand 6 in the back of his truck. This was a wolf we had known for nearly three years.
Grand 6 was born in the spring of 1989 at the den dug into a balsam-covered esker that lined a fast-flowing creek. That was before the Grand Lake pack separated. After it did, he stayed around the west end of the lake in the general vicinity of the den. Possibly he matured to be the breeding male in his last year of life.
Often on hot summer evenings we had listened to his howls tangled up with those of his pack, floating across Grand Lake and adjacent Clemow Lake. Twice the previous winter he had come down to the deer yard with his pack and returned. On one of these trips they killed a deer close enough to the Round Lake School that when we investigated the site we could hear children playing in the schoolyard.
Once, he and his pack chased some wintering deer that had bedded in an aspen stand on a series of knolls where visibility was good. Despite plentiful prey, the pack had been unsuccessful. That led us to wonder whether in areas of high deer density the wolves create a deerless zone around themselves as they travel, the fleeing deer causing others to flee, emptying the area in a domino effect.
Grand 6 had made a fatal mistake. In broad daylight he stood near a mailbox on the Bonnechere road long enough for the owner to spot him through the window, grab his gun, go outside and shoot. We were sorry to lose him.
Mortality mode was becoming unpleasantly familiar on our receivers. A few days later, Stephan heard Pretty 3 from the air on mortality mode just beyond the northern border of the park. When radio-collared the previous summer, she had been the lactating female of the Pretty Lake pack. We spent one long day in a February thaw and heavy rain, assisted by Tom Stephenson, trying to retrieve her. By snowmobile and snowshoe we managed to get close to her burial place under the snow, but her signal was deflecting from steep hills, confounding our effo
rts to figure out where to dig. With approaching darkness, the temperature dropped suddenly, and the possibility of hypothermia from wet clothes forced us to abandon the search. While Pretty 3’s cause of death remains unknown, her remoteness rules out humans.
One cold, brittle evening a few nights later, when stars were brilliant, we picked up the signal of Travers 5 on mortality mode just south of town. The signal seemed to come from a farmhouse whose light we could see through shadowy pines. Leaving the truck by the road, we walked up the dark laneway. A yard light lit up a pickup parked by the door. I was almost certain the collar was in the house but wanted to be sure. Mary and Joy Cook stayed back in the shadows, and by the time I reached the farmhouse, the signal was very loud. Standing midway between house and shed I tuned the receiver down and realized the collar was not in the house but the shed.
Suddenly a curtain moved and a head appeared. The porch light went on and a man yelled through the window, “What do you want?” For a moment I did not know what to say, so I yelled back, “You have a wolf collar. I’d like to get it.”
“Eh?” he called.
I said it again, this time gesturing to my neck, “Collar, a wolf collar.”
“No, no,” he called. “Go away.” But then his wife’s face appeared at the window so I tried again. “We’re doing research on wolves and you killed a wolf with a collar. I want to get it.” I heard the wife tell him, “Let him in,” but to me she called out, “Do you know how many deer these wolves have killed?” Then she said, “Go around to the back door.”
I struggled in, tripping over my antenna, and said that my wife and student were out in the lane. She motioned that they could come in too. Things were a bit tense for a few moments, then both of them started talking about all the deer the wolves had killed. We learned later that they routinely fed the deer beside their barn, effectively baiting the wolves as well. Either they did not make the connection or were deliberately attracting wolves to kill them. To defuse the situation I explained that we were studying wolves to see if we could find out how much they killed, and no matter what a person’s attitudes, it seemed best to have some accurate information. That seemed to change the atmosphere, and they offered us chairs.
Joe Mask is a small man with rugged, weathered features, recently retired from a labour job with the MNR. Once, he helped build logging roads in the park, and only a decade before was employed by the MNR to kill wolves. Gradually it emerged that he had shot three wolves the previous Saturday (upon autopsy we learned that they had been snared, then shot) back in the bush behind the barn, and that there had been, and still were, many more around. They were very bold, he said.
Joe’s wife explained how disgusted she was by their cruelty. The wolves were so bold that she feared for her husband when he went out to shoot them. Emphasizing their fearlessness, she told of a wolf encounter that had taken place just the previous week. A neighbour was snowmobiling close to their farm when a wolf jumped right up onto the back of the machine behind him. The driver rushed to their house and was so upset he fell to the kitchen floor. They thought he had suffered a heart attack.
Joe explained how one wolf had turned and snarled at him back in the bush, and he motioned to his face for emphasis. “Oh! He was vicious.” Undoubtedly the wolf was in a snare.
Finally Joe got up and went out to the shed for the collar. He returned saying, “Those darn wolves are howling now.” From the doorway we heard a pack in full chorus, likely the McDonald Creek wolves who only an hour earlier had been just behind the school, but we did not take the receiver out to check. As we left, Joe agreed to recover the carcass of Travers 5 the following morning.
The next day we were back and saw the farm in daylight — log barn with a couple of steers in the barnyard, a few pines scattered around a clapboard house, a small field rolling to the forest beyond. Three deer — good animals — were feeding on hay beside the barn. Joe was out shovelling snow in the yard. Travers 5 lay at the door of the shed with its frozen feet in the air. A rope that Joe had used to drag him behind his snowmobile was tied around the wolf’s neck.
Joe was in a snarly mood. “What good are they?” and he quickly answered his question with “no good. Just cause a lot of trouble. Cause trouble everywhere. I shot lots of wolves, last winter. Collared ones too. And I’ll shoot any more I see.”
We lifted Travers 5 into the back of our truck. Mary tried to persuade Joe to recover the other two wolves he said he had killed, but he refused. “Darn deer killers. Not as many deer around as there was a few years ago.” Behind him the wall of his shed was covered with deer skulls, trophies of his own hunts.
We thought that maybe there were no more wolves for Joe to retrieve, but when we phoned again a few days later, he had retrieved another wolf. When we drove up, it also lay by the shed door, its frozen feet in the air. Mrs. Mask unexpectedly invited us in, and again we sat on the kitchen chairs. The previous evening, CBC Television had shown “Cry Wolf” on the series “The Nature of Things.” They had watched it, and rather than fan the flames of their animosity, it seemed to have done just the opposite. We talked about the film for a while, then as we left, Joe said almost under his breath, “I understand more now.” He had obviously been giving wolves a lot of thought. We were quietly elated, and that night I wrote in my notebook: “Who knows if he will kill more wolves? Maybe his recent experiences will make him reconsider.” They did not, as we would learn a year later.
The following summer, there was no Travers pack, nor the next year, nor the next. The work of one man had silenced wolf voices from the pineries around Lake Travers and washed out the wolf tracks from the sandy places along its shore. Single wolves travelled through the area but moved on. For a few years, the land lay vacant.
Different from the Masks are younger, macho types who kill wolves for ego gratification. They are fearless men held in awe at the local pub or mill. We encountered several of them, among them Richard, who killed most of the East Gate pack and was proud of it. We were at the MNR workyard at the park’s east gate to pick up a snowmobile when Richard expressed his annoyance with Graham, who, the previous year, had come to pick up the carcasses. Richard interpreted Graham’s remarks as agreement to go out trapping with him and show him our techniques. Graham laughs about it, as if he would instruct the man who killed the East Gate pack.
Eugene appeared to be in it for ego too. He bragged that he had killed thirteen coyotes down near Bancroft and had outwitted a wolf that was hanging around. Both he and Richard work for the MNR.
Such men are different from professional trappers, many of whom neither feel animosity towards wolves nor use them for ego enhancement. They are making a living. Animate things are no different from inanimate. Most of the McDonald pack succumbed to a commercial trapper who felt neither hate nor pleasure when he killed them.
Eulogy for Basin 4 McDonald
Basin 4 McDonald died in a neck snare on Saturday, March 6, 1993. At the same time, 300 metres away, a packmate died the same way. Four days later, within 150 metres, a third wolf died.
Other members of the pack were at the snare sites, possibly watching the death struggles. Wolves have deep social ties. They are loyal. Most of them paid for staying around by getting snared too.
The destruction of the McDonald Creek pack occurred in Hagarty Township within two kilometres of Round Lake Centre. A trapper had laced the deer trails there with snares. Unsuspecting, the pack of twelve entered the death zone. It was reduced to three.
The previous August, the McDonald Creek pack had selected a complex of small ponds and bogs as a home site. There they hunted beaver and came and went on distant forays for deer or moose. Each night their howls rang through the forest — like the Foys Lake pack who owned this land before them, they were good howlers. We camped nearby, staying quiet so not to disturb them as they went about their business. Later we returned when the red maples flared and the bracken had browned, but they had gone, following secret forest pathways to some
other place.
Basin 4 McDonald was born in the spring of 1985 (confirmed by tooth ageing) and died in his eighth year, an old wolf by the standards of the persecuted Algonquin Park wolf population. He had distinguished himself as the largest wolf in our study. When radio-collared in late August 1990, he recovered from the drug so quickly and ran over the nearby ridge so fast that we mistakenly thought his radio had failed. He was recaptured the next summer and his collar replaced. Often he hunted by himself along a favoured system of forest trails. He held a position of dominance in his pack and left several offspring — two daughters that we know of: Basin 9 McDonald and McDonald 5, confirmed by DNA evidence.
Basin 4 McDonald must have known tragedy in his life. When we first saw his big tracks, he was a five-year-old male, alone without a pack. At that age he should have been surrounded by family. That was the summer he met Grand 3, who had dispersed in March 1990 as a young female from the Grand Lake pack immediately to the north. After they met, in thirty-eight of fifty-two fixes from then until his death, they were together. That first winter they spent most of their time in and around the McDonald Creek marshes, often leaving the imprints of their tracks in the snows along Carcajou and McDonald creeks.
The following summer, 1991, they successfully raised a litter of five pups. Now as a pack of seven they often travelled the chain of lakes between Carcajou Bay of Grand Lake to Carcajou Lake lying ten kilometres to the west. That was the old travel route of the late Foys Lake pack. Late that winter they travelled out of the park to the Round Lake deer yard in search of food.
In the summer of 1992, they again raised a litter of five pups and as a pack of twelve again returned to winter in the Round Lake deer yard.
Graham discovered that Basin 4 McDonald was dead on March 13, 1993, while radio-tracking from the air. Hearing the wolf’s radio signal on mortality mode, he was drawn farther east than Algonquin Park wolves normally go. The signal came from a row of houses along the shore of a lake. Later that day, Mary and I drove there and by walking up the road with the receiver picked out the house. We rang the door bell, but nobody was home. Behind the house was a pile of dead wolves, some skinned, others not. Some had bloodied heads where they had been clubbed. On the pile was Basin 4 McDonald, identifiable by his size. His collar and pelt had been removed.
Wolf Country Page 19
