by Jonathan DuHamel
I begin with Alaska Department of Fish & Game Technical Bulletin 13 (2002) entitled “A Case History of Wolf-Human Encounters in Alaska and Canada.”
That study was precipitated by a wolf attack on a 6-year-old boy near
Icy Bay, Alaska, in April, 2000. The study documents 80 wolf-human
“encounters.” “Thirty-nine cases contain elements of aggression among
healthy wolves, 12 cases involve known or suspected rabid wolves, and 29
cases document fearless behavior among non-aggressive wolves. In 6
cases in which healthy wolves acted aggressively, the people were
accompanied by dogs. Aggressive, non rabid wolves bit people in 16
cases; none of those bites was life-threatening, but in 6 cases the
bites were severe.”
PIERCE, Idaho – A North Idaho grandmother
considers herself lucky to be alive after she was able to shoot and
kill a wolf as it tried to attack her on a recent hunting trip.
The wolf snuck up on Rene Anderson late last month near Headquarters, Idaho about 125 miles southeast of Spokane.
“It was coming down pretty fast towards
me; it was kind of nerve racking. I laid my bow on the ground and I
thought this thing seriously wants to eat me,” she said.
Anderson knew just how much danger she
was in because just six days before, wolves had killed three of her best
friend’s hunting dogs.
A wolf attacked a Tok trapper on his
snowmachine last week about 30 miles off the Taylor Highway, biting
through the man’s parka and three layers of clothing to put a 3-inch
gash on his arm.
Lance Grangaard, 30, said he was “putting
along” on his Ski-Doo Tundra on Thursday afternoon, coming down a
frozen creek, when he saw the wolf out of the corner of his eye.
“I turned in time to stick my arm up,”
said Grangaard, who was trapping with his father, Danny, in a remote
area off the Taylor Highway known as Ketchumstuk. “A single black wolf
grabbed my arm and started jerking on me.”
At least two wolves chased down and
killed a teacher who was jogging on a road last year outside a rural
Alaska village, according to a report released Tuesday by the Alaska
Department of Fish and Game.
The body of Candice Berner, 32, a special
education teacher originally from Slippery Rock, Pa., was found March
8, 2010, two miles outside Chignik Lake. The village is 474 miles
southwest of Anchorage, on the Alaska Peninsula.
Biologists ruled out reasons for the
attack other than aggression. Investigators found no evidence that the
wolves had acted defensively or that Berner was carrying food. They
found no kill site that wolves may have been defending, no indication
that the wolves had become habituated to people, and no evidence of
rabies.
“This appears to have been an aggressive,
predatory attack that was relatively short in duration,” the report
concluded. DNA tests confirmed Berner was killed by wolves.
When Delta Conservation District
Executive Director Rory Mattson headed out to begin a forestry project
Oct. 8 along Trombley Road, he didn’t expect to find himself treed by a
small pack of wolves.
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