sask wolf cam pic in my spot last fall

As you read this, I sit in the same area where this black wolf showed up like an apparition one time on our trail camera last year. I shiver in the bone-chilling cold, listen to the pounding silence of the North Woods, gaze at those frost-covered spruce and willows that sparkle pink and blue in the morning sunlight, thank God that I am alive and able to go hunting in an awesome place like this.

As I watch for a massive-bodied buck with a thick rack the color of old motor oil, I inevitably wonder, “Where is the black wolf?” (When you sit freezing for 10 straight hours each day in a tiny chair in a tiny ground blind, you have a lot of time to think.) I have hunted this Saskatchewan bush for 10 years running without ever having spotted a wolf, but I know they are here, and close. I have found their big dog-like tracks many times, have heard them howling at the dark night and the moon, a primal sound that never fails to stand the hairs on your neck.

Will I see the black wolf, any wolf this week? From a hunting perspective I don’t want to, because the rank stench of him will run all the deer out of my spot for at least a week. But the man in me wants to see one, because it stirs something primal in your soul, something you can never feel back home.

If I see a wolf I cannot shoot it, it’s against the law. I wouldn’t want to anyway.