The Last Stand of the Pack: Critical Edition (Timberline Books) - Softcover

Carhart, Arthur; Young, Stanley

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1607326922 ISBN 13: 9781607326922

Verlag: University Press of Colorado, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

This critical edition explores the past and future of wolves in Colorado. Originally published in 1929, The Last Stand of the Pack is a historical account of the extermination of what were then believed to be the last wolves in Colorado. Arthur H. Carhart and Stanley P. Young describe the wolves’ extermination and extoll the bravery of the federal trappers hunting them down while simultaneously characterizing the wolves as cunning individuals and noble adversaries to the growth of the livestock industry and the settlement of the West. This is nature writing at its best, even if the worldview expressed is at times jarring to the twenty-first-century reader.

Now, almost 100 years later, much has been learned about ecology and the role of top-tier predators within ecosystems. In this new edition, Carhart and Young’s original text is accompanied by an extensive introduction with biographical details on Arthur Carhart and an overview of the history of wolf eradication in the west; chapters by prominent wildlife biologists, environmentalists, wolf reintroduction activists, and ranchers Tom Compton, Bonnie Brown, Mike Phillips, Norman A. Bishop, and Cheney Gardner; and an epilogue considering current issues surrounding the reintroduction of wolves in Colorado. Presenting a balanced perspective, these additional chapters address views both in support of and opposed to wolf reintroduction.

Coloradans are deeply interested in wilderness and the debate surrounding wolf reintroduction, but for wolves to have a future in Colorado we must first understand the past. The Last Stand of the Pack: Critical Edition presents both important historical scholarship and contemporary ecological ideas, offering a complete picture of the impact of wolves in Colorado.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Andrew Gulliford is professor of history and environmental studies at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. He has twice won the Colorado Book Award and the Arizona–New Mexico Book Award. He also received the National Individual Volunteer Award from the US Forest Service for wilderness education and a certificate of recognition from the Secretary of Agriculture for “outstanding contributions to America’s natural and cultural resources.” He is the author of America’s Country Schools, Sacred Objects and Sacred Places, and Boomtown Blues and editor of Preserving Western History and Outdoors in the Southwest: An Adventure Anthology.

Tom Wolf is the author of Ice Crusaders, Colorado’s Sangre de Cristo Mountains, In Fire’s Way, Arthur Carhart, and La Guadalupana. He has taught at Brandeis University and Colorado College and worked for the National Park Service, the Wyoming Outdoor Council, and The Nature Conservancy.

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The Last Stand of the Pack

By Arthur H. Carhart, Stanley P. Young

University Press of Colorado

Copyright © 2017 University Press of Colorado
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-60732-692-2

Contents

Foreword STEVE LEONARD, TIMBERLINE SERIES EDITOR, 
Introduction TOM WOLF, 
The Text of The Last Stand of the Pack ARTHUR H. CARHART AND STANLEY P. YOUNG, 
Wolf Reintroduction: Historical and Current Issues, 
The Past and Future of Wolves in Colorado ANDREW GULLIFORD, 
Reasons Not to Reintroduce Wolves into Colorado: A Rancher and Biologist Responds TOM COMPTON, 
The Great Divide: Wolves in Colorado? BONNIE BROWN, 
The Wolf in Colorado: Destruction to Restoration MIKE PHILLIPS, NORM BISHOP, AND CHENEY GARDNER, 
About the Contributors, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

Old Lefty of Burns Hole

I: FROM THIS — RENEGADES

Soft sounds filled the night. Murmuring winds, the yip-yap of far-distant coyote, the mellow hooting of an owl — and the soft pad of wolf feet.

The four-year-old led. He had mastered the fighting gray demon that for years had headed the pack. The old leader now ranged alone. He had been one of the greatest fighters on the range. But his teeth were worn down. He had become what the wolfers call a gummer. This new wolf surpassed the old leader. Never in all the upper valley of the Colorado had there been such a strong back, rangy body, deep chest in a wolf.

They traveled quietly. Occasionally a whimper or a snarl came from the pack. They foraged beside the trail as a matter of habit, but the leader stuck to the runway. They were crossing a ridge between cattle feeding grounds.

Faint man taint came on the breeze. The leader stopped, stood motionless. His mane bristled. His lips came back from his teeth in a silent snarl. The others fidgeted. The leader's delicate nostrils moved, sniffing. He started forward cautiously.

One instant there was quiet. The next, raucous turmoil!

From the path there leaped a thing which clenched the left forefoot of the four-year-old. Steel jaws set on the sinews and bone, just below the dewclaw.

The sagebrush swayed as the pack fled scurrying. The leader leaped, fell, turned, bit snarling at the thing that held his paw. He plunged. Again he was thrown, savagely. He attempted to sink his teeth into this unknown torture that had so suddenly leaped out of the solid earth.

But the trap chain was solidly wired to a rock. There was no give to it, no swivel permitting it to turn. There were not even offsets in the jaws. They cut in. Already the flesh was torn by the wolf's first instinctive hurtling leap.

The wolf lunged back toward the trail along which a moment before he had trodden in safety. He circled, tugging, thrashing through the low scrub brush within the radius of the chain.

He stopped, panting. Then another wild dive. Sinews and flesh tore. The big wolf sickened.

He lay down a moment, ill and dizzy. The circulation was cut off. The paw was numbing. The pain eased.

Slowly, cautiously, the wolf wavered to his feet, tried to sneak away from the trap. So long as he was quiet the trap was quiet. When he moved, it moved. It hurt him with every motion.

Rage — animal rage — unreasoning, fierce, without check, surged through his wolf soul. He dived, stumbled, fought the trap, slammed it against the rocks near the trail, gnashed at it with slavering mouth, cut his lips, left blood-flecked foam on the cruel biting metal jaws. The trap held. His fighting madness continued.

Long he fought the trap in blind fury. It was dive, twist, plunge, stumble, shake the imprisoned foot, turn and snarl, bite, kick out with his other legs, lay panting for a moment and then up in a wild scramble in an effort to escape the thing that held him.

The bewildered pack came back. They whined, came in to help, but were turned on and snapped at by the frantic leader. They slunk through the brush only to return, fascinated by the spectacle.

Dawn paled the eastern horizon. It limned the castellated peak to the southeastward across the wide river. Still the fight raged intermittently. There was not the crazed plunging of the first hour. Instead, there was dogged persistent tugging, turning, twisting. This continued perhaps for hours. The leg was numb. Occasionally the wolf stopped to lick where sinew still held him. The bones had been broken in that first wild, hurtling scramble ending with the taut jerk of the chain. The sinew was not so brittle, would not break. Nor would it cut like the flesh and skin.

Twisted many times, frayed a little, cut a bit by the sharp edges of the trap, the tendons still refused to give release. Instinct alone prompted him to twist and turn.

Clear dawn climbed up from beyond the ridge. The red flame of the sun ball mounted over the Gore mountains. Day life of the range started. A rabbit came loping down the trail, stopped, leaped in frenzied fear as he sighted the bedraggled, gaunt form in the trap, kicked his stout hind legs in fright, and sped away like a ghost thing through the sage. Magpies came to bicker and curse, waiting for the wolf to die. They would be there before the trapper. At least the wolf's eyes would be a feast for the magpies if they did not peck through the protecting hide and rip at the flesh. Meanwhile they flapped and cawed and screamed and said vile things to each other in the manner of magpies.

The pack was gone. With morning it had sought safety in the higher slopes.

Morning and afternoon both came and waned. But the stout heart of the wolf would not permit surrender. Rests were more frequent. The fight continued fiercely, even though subdued. The trap cut more deeply. The twisted chain was knotted. The strong body got more purchase with its lunges even though they were more feeble.

Evening was near. It brought no truce. Occasionally the tired wolf would lie and pant, with lolling tongue. Then the struggle would start again.

Evening cool came into the shadows. The sun set. New vigor and just a little new courage came to the wolf. He spun, plunged, bit at the leg, leaped groggily, tugged — He stumbled forward and lay panting as the last shred of frayed tendon fiber cut through.

He was free. But in the trap was that big, well-formed wolf foot.

He struggled up, limped a few feet, looked back through the deepening dusk at that bloody stump in the trap. Then he lifted his blood-stained head and whined. It was a new sharp note. Hate, the vicious hate of man and his chattels, had seared into the soul of that wolf.

He had escaped. But he was a sick wolf. He stumbled, hobbled, stopped for breath, licked his poor maimed stump where blood oozed from the end around the broken bone. After each stop he struggled up and on. The will of a leader, a conqueror, drove him ahead. That power did not lie in his brawn alone. There was some of it lodged in his stout wolf heart.

He reached half shelter beside the clear stream in the next ravine. Here he lay for many moments resting and lapping up the cold water that helped to allay the fever that had started to flow through his veins. The left stump was tongue-licked, once, twice, hundreds of times, in an effort to allay the pain. Repeated licking kept it clean, finally started it toward healing.

His mate came. She whined, ran away, then returned, trotted anxiously beside him as he limped toward secure higher country. Painfully, he forced his way through the brush away from trails. He distrusted trails, distrusted everything. The second dawn came. He slept in the sun by...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: University Press of Colorado
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2017
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1607326922
• ISBN 13: 9781607326922
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 280
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: preigu; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; 49078; Deutschland