Interesting wilderness story if true

Brutus

Brutus

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West of most places....and in Alberta
I was browsing the web looking up old frontier stories of Canadian & American wolf attacks on humans when I came across this poster on ebay dot com regarding this tale:

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The Alaskan Mail Carrier, a Great Image by N.C. Wyeth Used to Advertise a Coalinga, California Meat Company. A rich color lithograph which was made to go on the top of an advertising calendar. It depicts Robert Henderson, widely reported to have been the source of the lead which led to discovery of gold in the Klondike in 1898. He was a mail carrier who crisscrossed the expanse of Alaska delivering mail to the towns and mining camps. Depicted here is a real event from Henderson's life, when he held off a pack of wolves with his revolver on a frozen Alaska lake.
 
Forget about the gun, I want the moustache. ;)

I can easily imagine that happening, a single guy crossing the wilderness would be a tempting target for most predators.

I had firmly resolved to move getting a revolver a few spots down on my shipping list, and now it's back up near the top.
 
Neat story, and possible. Interesting it hasn't really happened since in a century and more due to a prevalence of wolves though, though I met a Canadian with video of being charged by a wolf from a pack. They scattered at the shot. I've been near wolves too many times to count, never any such excitement, that said in 1898 perhaps they were less afraid of us. I spend about 60% of my life working alone deep in wolf country with my job, I'll update if I live through such an exciting tale. ;) Nothing quite makes a guy comfortable like a firearm though when alone.

Love the image.
 
On a completely tangential matter, Coalinga California may be the single worst smelling town I've ever tried to sleep in. At least wolves, you can shoot.
 
That appears to be a six shot Colt SAA he is holding, his holster a Mexican double loop common in CAS events.
Count the rounds missing in his belt and then the number of dead wolves around him.
He did some pretty fast reloading under dire stress .....
 
Back in 2004 I was up north of Whitecourt working on a piece of equipment (I'm an offroad heavy equipment mechanic). I had a black lab that always rode with me. I used to run him on the back roads, he would follow my truck for many miles. Anyway I had finished working on a dozer and I was sitting in the cab of my truck, drivers door open doing paperwork. I heard my dog yelp from a long way off and I looked up and he was about 300 yards coming at a HARD run towards me, with 2 wolves in tow. My lab used to be able to do 50 km/h beside the truck for close to a km before he slowed down, and he was doing every bit of that. He had about a 20 yard head start on the wolves and they were closing the gap pretty quick. I was yelling and hollering at the wolves and just as everyone reached the truck the wolves slowed down and my lab jumped in the open door, cleared me and piled up hard into the passengers door. I slammed the drivers door shut and the 2 wolves just sat 5 feet outside my window for close to 10 minutes before they wandered off. Afterwards I noticed my lab was missing his nylon coller, so he made contact with the wolves at some point.

In 1996 I was working on a dozer west of Rainbow Lake on the BC border. It was about 3am and I was coming back to Rainbow and I had to cross over a frozen creek. My service truck rear axle broke through the ice. I had passed another dozer about 2 or 3 km back so I got out and started the walk to go get it. The snow was very crusty and after walking about a km I could hear more crunching then I thought I was making. I stopped and I would hear "crunch, crunch, chrunch" then it would stop. I would start walking agin and I would go a few paces and the extra crunching would start again. I had a flashlight but it was just about dead, and it was not able to illuminate anything more then 10 yards away. Needless to say the hair was pretty rigidly upright on the back of my neck. I kept going along and more and more crunching became noticable. My flashlight died completely. It sounded like a Macey's day parade by the time I got to the old D6. I got it fired up and started walking it back towards my stuck truck. As soon as I flipped the lights on I saw a bunch of shadows disappearing into the night. Wolves. I counted over a dozen sets of tracks following me.

I am not a big fan of wolves at all.
 
SwL_Wildcat said:
Back in 2004 I was up north of Whitecourt working on a piece of equipment (I'm an offroad heavy equipment mechanic). I had a black lab that always rode with me. I used to run him on the back roads, he would follow my truck for many miles. Anyway I had finished working on a dozer and I was sitting in the cab of my truck, drivers door open doing paperwork. I heard my dog yelp from a long way off and I looked up and he was about 300 yards coming at a HARD run towards me, with 2 wolves in tow. My lab used to be able to do 50 km/h beside the truck for close to a km before he slowed down, and he was doing every bit of that. He had about a 20 yard head start on the wolves and they were closing the gap pretty quick. I was yelling and hollering at the wolves and just as everyone reached the truck the wolves slowed down and my lab jumped in the open door, cleared me and piled up hard into the passengers door. I slammed the drivers door shut and the 2 wolves just sat 5 feet outside my window for close to 10 minutes before they wandered off. Afterwards I noticed my lab was missing his nylon coller, so he made contact with the wolves at some point.

In 1996 I was working on a dozer west of Rainbow Lake on the BC border. It was about 3am and I was coming back to Rainbow and I had to cross over a frozen creek. My service truck rear axle broke through the ice. I had passed another dozer about 2 or 3 km back so I got out and started the walk to go get it. The snow was very crusty and after walking about a km I could hear more crunching then I thought I was making. I stopped and I would hear "crunch, crunch, chrunch" then it would stop. I would start walking agin and I would go a few paces and the extra crunching would start again. I had a flashlight but it was just about dead, and it was not able to illuminate anything more then 10 yards away. Needless to say the hair was pretty rigidly upright on the back of my neck. I kept going along and more and more crunching became noticable. My flashlight died completely. It sounded like a Macey's day parade by the time I got to the old D6. I got it fired up and started walking it back towards my stuck truck. As soon as I flipped the lights on I saw a bunch of shadows disappearing into the night. Wolves. I counted over a dozen sets of tracks following me.

I am not a big fan of wolves at all.
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I know both those areas well, and still work quite a bit in exactly the border area you mention west of Rainbow. Good wolves there. I've come back on my tracks when going to walk in headers that are a good hike, and have found wolf tracks following them. Always interesting out there, I think their curiousity is insatiable and they're investigating 90% of the time. That said, a shot sent their way maintains good inter-species relations and dynamics. I've dealt with several of the more curious ones.
 
SwL_Wildcat said:
Back in 2004 I was up north of Whitecourt working on a piece of equipment (I'm an offroad heavy equipment mechanic). I had a black lab that always rode with me. I used to run him on the back roads, he would follow my truck for many miles. Anyway I had finished working on a dozer and I was sitting in the cab of my truck, drivers door open doing paperwork. I heard my dog yelp from a long way off and I looked up and he was about 300 yards coming at a HARD run towards me, with 2 wolves in tow. My lab used to be able to do 50 km/h beside the truck for close to a km before he slowed down, and he was doing every bit of that. He had about a 20 yard head start on the wolves and they were closing the gap pretty quick. I was yelling and hollering at the wolves and just as everyone reached the truck the wolves slowed down and my lab jumped in the open door, cleared me and piled up hard into the passengers door. I slammed the drivers door shut and the 2 wolves just sat 5 feet outside my window for close to 10 minutes before they wandered off. Afterwards I noticed my lab was missing his nylon coller, so he made contact with the wolves at some point.

In 1996 I was working on a dozer west of Rainbow Lake on the BC border. It was about 3am and I was coming back to Rainbow and I had to cross over a frozen creek. My service truck rear axle broke through the ice. I had passed another dozer about 2 or 3 km back so I got out and started the walk to go get it. The snow was very crusty and after walking about a km I could hear more crunching then I thought I was making. I stopped and I would hear "crunch, crunch, chrunch" then it would stop. I would start walking agin and I would go a few paces and the extra crunching would start again. I had a flashlight but it was just about dead, and it was not able to illuminate anything more then 10 yards away. Needless to say the hair was pretty rigidly upright on the back of my neck. I kept going along and more and more crunching became noticable. My flashlight died completely. It sounded like a Macey's day parade by the time I got to the old D6. I got it fired up and started walking it back towards my stuck truck. As soon as I flipped the lights on I saw a bunch of shadows disappearing into the night. Wolves. I counted over a dozen sets of tracks following me.

I am not a big fan of wolves at all.
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Yeah, some of our customers in Whitecourt are said that they have wolves coming up to the running processors! Not bothered by the noise at all.
 
APS said:
Yeah, some of our customers in Whitecourt are said that they have wolves coming up to the running processors! Not bothered by the noise at all.
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And they are tough to kill. I had 2 black wolves coming down the road one day a few years back. I saw them coming a ways off so I got into an ambush position behind the edge of the log deck downwind and waited. When they were about 15 yards away I stood up with my 870 with triple 0 buckshot. Hit the one square in the shoulder and rolled him over hard into the long grass beside the road, the other one took off. I figured he was toast as I saw lots of hair. I looked for him for over an hour but couldn't find him. I started walking back to the truck and the other one stepped out of the ditch 20 yards away and started growling at me. I hit him and rolled him over. Same thing, could not find him. A while later they were both seen running through the cutblock, 1 had a good limp. That was the last time I bothered to pack buckshot, it's slugs only now.
 
They're not actually hard to kill, lightly built animals evolved for travelling and speed, the shot placement had to be off. Somebody will argue me they're not lightly built, but the very well are, I'm talking in bone structure, skin thickness, etc compared to heavier game. They die like anything, even to a .223, have more than a little of experience with them in that regard. Good friend kills them (big, Peace / Athabasca wolves) with a .22 Magnum all the time, trapper, they die rapidly. 000 buck placed right will kill them within a handful of yards.
 
7mm should do the trick. Had a pack of 4 come out on a knoll that I was on. They didn't notice me until i stood up. Bolted into the bush, but I saw them circling. When the 1st one showed up in the clear, a 7mm broke her spine. The rest took off really fast through the bush. Couldn't take another shot. She wasn't hard to find. It was bang flop.
 
When I used to work in Inuvik I did a lot of snowmobiling and saw wolves occasionally. A couple of times at night (most of snowmobiling seemed dark their) I had a wolf would run out in front of me. It happened to a couple of other guys I used to go snowmobiling with as well. So I asked a native Indian co-worker I had who was a bit of a jokester about why they do this. He told me it was to get you to slow down so his buddies could get you. Never did have any problems with the wolves but a funny story nonetheless.
 
When I was a kid I was a great Russell Annabel enthusiast; he wrote wilderness tales of the Alaskan bush from the late '40s to the '70s. In one yarn the Alaskan wolves which he held to be the largest and most ferocious in the world, were compared to European wolves. "If the Alaskan wolves are so ferocious, why is it that Alaskans are never reportedly killed by them; when the European wolves were know to kill many peasants?" He replied that the peasants in Alaska carried guns and knives and knew how to use them.
 
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