by Peter Twitchell
I’m just going to repeat a story I was told recently, and then comment on it.
Three men were out in the field not too long ago. They were tracked and stalked by a pack of wolves. They had a gun or guns in their cabin but they’d been out all day without a weapon.
The thought of becoming prey to a pack of wolves was probably the last thing on their minds.
I’m 69 years old now and this is the first time in my life I’ve ever heard of men being hunted by wolves.
Everyone who is a hunter has always told me they chased down wolves, and killed wolves, never the other way around.
As the sound of a pack of wolves became louder, the three grown men realized that they were the prey. Reaching their cabin they tried desperately to unlock the padlock to the cabin which was built without windows maybe to retain heat in the dead of winter or keep unwanted guests out of their dwelling.
The man telling me the story became emotional as he said in the dim light of the evening revealed a pack of wolves in a frenzy 50 feet away!
The padlock to the door was frozen solid and the men desperately took turns trying to thaw out the frozen, high end padlock, for added security.
As the wolves running and growling drew closer to the entrance to the cabin, the bloodcurdling growling of the wolves drawing closer, the padlock swung open.
The man who shared this story, thought in another minute the wolves would have been on top of them. He grabbed the loaded shotgun in the arctic entryway and fired a round above the wolves.
At that point the wolves were eaten by the silence of the darkness. The man telling me this story appeared to be tormented by his experience, dry mouthed and paled by the ordeal.
I switched to the summer’s fires that scorched our beloved Alaska landscape, and the fact that much of the wolves food source of big game was driven away from the wolves’ hunting grounds.
