Yet even the slaughter wrought by man in certain localities does
not seem adequate to explain the scarcity or extinction of wolves,
throughout the country at large. In most places they are not followed
any more eagerly than are the other large beasts of prey, and they
are usually followed with less success. Of all animals the wolf is
the shyest and hardest to slay. It is almost or quite as difficult to
still-hunt as the cougar, and is far more difficult to kill with hounds,
traps, or poison; yet it scarcely holds its own as well as the great
cat, and it does not begin to hold its own as well as the bear, a beast
certainly never more readily killed, and one which produces fewer
young at a birth. Throughout the East the black bear is common in many
localities from which the wolf has vanished completely. It at present
exists in very scanty numbers in northern Maine and the Adirondacks; is
almost or quite extinct in Pennsylvania; lingers here and there in the
mountains from West Virginia to east Tennessee, and is found in Florida;
but is everywhere less abundant than the bear.
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