However, they live where they come in contact with a
population of rifle-bearing frontier hunters, who are very different
from European peasants or Asiatic tribesmen; and they have, even when
most hungry, a wholesome dread of human beings. Yet I doubt if an
unarmed man would be entirely safe should he, while alone in the forest
in mid-winter encounter a fair-sized pack of ravenously hungry timber
wolves.
A full-grown dog-wolf of the northern Rockies, in exceptional instances,
reaches a height of thirty-two inches and a weight of 130 pounds; a big
buffalo wolf of the upper Missouri stands thirty or thirty-one inches
at the shoulder and weighs about 110 pounds. A Texas wolf may not reach
over eighty pounds. The bitch-wolves are smaller; and moreover there
is often great variation even in the wolves of closely neighboring
localities.
The wolves of the southern plains were not often formidable to large
animals, even in the days when they most abounded. They rarely attacked
the horses of the hunter, and indeed were but little regarded by these
experienced animals.
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