One day early in the winter a trader burst into my cabin in a state of great excitement.

“Listen,” he said challengingly, “you’ve been screaming for proof wolves butcher the herds. Well, hitch up your team and get out to Fishduck Lake. You’ll get your proof! One of my trappers come in an hour ago and he seen fifty deer down on the ice, all of ’em killed by wolves—and hardly a mouthful of the meat been touched!”

Accompanied by a Cree Indian companion I did as I was bid, and late that afternoon we reached Fishduck Lake. We found a sickening scene of slaughter. Scattered on the ice were the carcasses of twenty-three caribou, and there was enough blood about to turn great patches of snow into crimson slush.

The trapper had been correct in stating that no use had been made of the carcasses. Apart from some minor scavenging by foxes, jays and ravens, all but three of the animals were untouched. Two of those three were bucks—minus their heads; while the third, a young and pregnant doe, was minus both hindquarters.

Unfortunately for the “proof,” none of these deer could have been attacked by wolves. There were ho wolf tracks anywhere on the lake. But there were other tracks: the unmistakable triple trail left by the skis and tail-skid of a plane which had taxied all over the place, leaving the snow surface scarred with a crisscross mesh of serpentine lines.

These deer had not been pulled down by wolves, they had been shot—some of them several times. One had run a hundred yards with its intestines dragging on the ice as a result of a gut wound. Several of the others had two or more bullet-broken limbs.

The explanation of what had actually happened was not far to seek.

Two years earlier, the tourist bureau of the Provincial Government concerned had decided that Barren Land caribou would make an irresistible bait with which to lure rich trophy hunters up from the United States.^*6 Accordingly a scheme was developed for the provision of fully organized “safaris” in which parties of sportsmen would be flown into the subarctic, sometimes in Government-owned planes, and, for a thousand dollars each, would be guaranteed a first-rate set of caribou antlers.

During the winter sojourn of the caribou inside the timberline they feed in the woods at dawn and dusk and spend the daylight hours yarded on the ice of the open lakes. The pilot of the safari aircraft, therefore, had only to choose a lake with a large band of caribou on it and, by circling for a while at low altitude, bunch all the deer into one tight and milling mob. Then the aircraft landed; but kept under way, taxiing around and around the panic-stricken herd to prevent it from breaking up. Through open doors and windows of the aircraft the hunters could maintain a steady fire until they had killed enough deer to ensure a number of good trophies from which the finest might be selected. They presumably felt that, since the jaunt was costing a great deal of money, they were entitled to make quite certain of results; and it is to be assumed that the Government officials concerned agreed with them.

When the shooting was over the carcasses were examined and the best available head taken by each hunter, whose permit entitled him to “the possession of only a single caribou. If the hunters were also fond of venison a few quarters would be cut off and thrown aboard the plane, which would then depart southward. Two days later the sports would be home again, victorious.

The Cree who accompanied me had observed this sequence of events for himself the previous winter while acting as a guide. He did not like it; but he knew enough of the status of the Indian in the white man’s world to realize he might just as well keep his indignation to himself.

I was more naпve. The next day I radioed a full report of the incident to the proper authorities. I received no reply—unless the fact that the Provincial Government raised the bounty on wolves to twenty dollars some weeks afterwards could be considered a reply.

24

The World We Lost

THE PROBLEM of how I was to make my way south to Brochet from Wolf House Bay was resolved one morning when Ootek burst into the cabin to announce that he had seen an aircraft. Sure enough, a Norseman plane on floats was lazily circling over the tundra to the west of us.

I had long since given up hope that the pilot who had brought me to Wolf House Bay would ever return, and so the sight of this plane sent me into a dither of excitement. Remembering the smoke generators with which I had been supplied, I ran to get them. To my surprise they worked. A mighty coil of black and oily smoke went soaring into the high skies and the Norseman (which had disappeared to the west) reappeared, homing on my signal column.

It landed in the bay, and I went out by canoe to greet the pilot, a narrow-faced and unprepossessing-looking young man chewing a wad of gum. He had much to tell me.

As the months had passed without any word from me, my Department had grown increasingly disturbed. Not only had they received no wolf reports, but some four thousand dollars’ worth of Government equipment had vanished into the tundra void. This was serious, since some inquisitive member of the Opposition might at any time have got wind of the matter and asked a question in the House of Commons. The possibility of being accused of carelessness in the handling of the public funds is a bogy which haunts every Government department.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police were therefore asked to find me, but clues were scarce. The pilot who had taken me into the Barrens had since gone missing on a flight over the Mackenzie district and the police couldn’t find any trace of him, let alone discover what he had done with me. Eventually, and after a great deal of sleuthing, the police got hold of the rumor circulating in Churchill to the effect that I was a Secret Service agent who had been sent to spy on the floating Russian bases at the pole, and they so reported to Ottawa, adding that they did not like being made mock of, and the next time the Department wanted something found, it had better be honest with them.

The pilot who had landed to investigate my smoke signal had not been sent to look for me but was engaged in a prospecting survey, and his discovery of me was purely fortuitous. However, he agreed to carry a message back to his base informing the Department where its equipment was, and suggesting that a plane be sent to pick it up immediately, before the freeze-up came.

With Mike’s assistance the pilot took advantage of the landing to top up his gas tanks from drums carried in the fuselage. Meanwhile I departed to complete some unfinished business at the wolf-den esker.

In order to round out my study of wolf family life, I needed to know what the den was like inside—how deep it was, the diameter of the passage the presence (if any) of a nest at the end of the burrow, and such related information. For obvious reasons I had not been able to make this investigation while the den was occupied, and since that time I had been too busy with other work to get around to it. Now, with time running out, I was in a hurry.

I trotted across-country toward the den and I was within half-a-mile of it when there was a thunderous roar behind me. It was so loud and unexpected that I involuntarily flung myself down on the moss. The Norseman came over at about fifty feet. As it roared past, the plane waggled its wings gaily in salute, then lifted to skim the crest of the wolf esker, sending a blast of sand down the slope with its propeller wash. I picked myself up and quieted my thumping heart, thinking black thoughts about the humorist in the now rapidly vanishing aircraft.