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.
If I was in a ground blind and that “big bad wolf” came in my sights I believe there would be no other course of action then to SHOOT!
That is one scary looking wolf Mike. How has the deer movement been up there? Have you seen any good bucks?
Very cool. I long to hunt there someday, Hanback.