Wolf Corner: Rancher helped rid farms of howls in the night

During a time when Northwest Houston farms were pestered by wolves snatching up chickens and calves at their liking, one local rancher, Charles Grisbee, stepped up and sent a message to the predators: Wolf Corner. Grisbee, a dairy farmer with a ranch off Jackrabbit Road, started hanging dead wolves in the 1950s at the corner of FM 1960 and FM 529, which became known as Wolf Corner. “He would do this because wolves were getting the baby calves and lambs,” said Celeste Haltom, Grisbee’s niece. “He was very proud of it because he was helping all of the other farmers and ranchers.” At the time when Grisbee hung the wolves, Harris County collected a bounty on wolves, foxes and other wildlife. The county began collecting the bounty in 1955, according to a Houston Chronicle article published in 1970. Hunters who turned in the ears of the animals they killed to the county clerk would receive $5 for each kill. “On Jan. 1, 1970, Grisbee collected $140 for 27 wolves and a fox killed in the Cypress area during 1969,” the Chronicle article reported. “He has earned $645 in bounty money in the last four years.” Despite the large payoff, Grisbee, who had been hunting wolves to protect local farm animals for about fifty years, told the Chronicle he hunted the wolves as a hobby, not for the money. “I help out people who call, and it mostly just pays for the gasoline,” he told the Chronicle in 1970...more