This
page was created as a gift to me by my dear friend and teacher,
Corry Stuart.
As always, Corry, I am deeply grateful.
Painting and graphics by: Corry Stuart
Stellar Nova Studio®
Hounded by man from time immemorial, wolves still hang on by tooth and nail in North America's wilderness. Peering cautiously from Alaskan shrub, this animal seems like a big, friendly specimen of its descendant, the domestic dog.
The scene was Bathurst Inlet in Canada's Northwest Territories, and a great white wolf was making its way over the tundra straight toward a herd of caribou.
It was a mixed herd of about a hundred, with bulls in velvet, a high proportion of ragged, shedding cow, and several calves perhaps a month old. They were all passing along a parallel series of animal trails, stopping every few strides to nibble choice pieces of dwarf birch or willow.
Then suddenly the herd, sensing the wolf, was drawn together as if by some giant biological magnet. The tightly pressed group flowed quickly forward. Four or five caribou on a nearby slope also sensed the danger and bolted downward to join the dense nucleus of their kind.
The white wolf made its decision. Instantly it sprang forward. While the stragglers gravitated toward the herd, the wolf began closing the 200 yard gap.
As the wolf pressed closer, the caribou increased their speed. Straight toward them the white wolf shot, with long legs alternately stretching out then pulling together in 15 foot bounds. And directly away from the wolf the caribou sped. The chase covered a quarter of a mile, and the wolf tried its best all the way. Still the wild hunter was unable to come closer than about 200 feet to its intended prey. It chased the caribou at this distance for about fifty yards. Then all of a sudden the wolf slowed, and less than a minute after the chase had begun, it was over.As the straggling caribou joined the safety of their tightened herd, the wolf trotted off along a boulder strewn slope and picked its way up the valley and eventually out of sight. It would have to find some other caribou on which to dine.
These dramas , with the same unsuccessful climax, are enacted often on the Arctic stage.
ShadowWolf Website Copyright © 1999
This page last updated March 19, 2000
