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. They were much more likely to gnaw off the lariat
with which the horse was tied, than to try to molest the steed himself.
They preferred to prey on young animals, or on the weak and disabled.
They rarely molested a full-grown cow or steer, still less a full-grown
buffalo, and, if they did attack such an animal, it was only when
emboldened by numbers. In the plains of the upper Missouri and
Saskatchewan the wolf was, and is, more dangerous, while in the northern
Rockies his courage and ferocity attain their highest pitch. Near my own
ranch the wolves have sometimes committed great depredations on cattle,
but they seem to have queer freaks of slaughter. Usually they prey
only upon calves and sickly animals; but in midwinter I have known one
single-handed to attack and kill a well-grown steer or cow disabling its
quarry by rapid snaps at the hams or flanks. Only rarely have I known it
to seize by the throat. Colts are likewise a favorite prey, but with us
wolves rarely attack full-grown horses. They are sometimes very bold in
their assaults, falling on the stock while immediately around the ranch
houses. They even venture into the hamlet of Medora itself at night--as
the coyotes sometimes do by day. In the spring of '92 we put on some
eastern two-year-old steers; they arrived, and were turned loose from
the stock-yards, in a snowstorm, though it was in early May. Next
morning we found that one had been seized, slain, and partially devoured
by a big wolf at the very gate of the stockyard; probably the beast had
seen it standing near the yard after nightfall feeling miserable after
its journey, in the storm and its unaccustomed surroundings, and
had been emboldened to make the assault so near town by the evident
helplessness of the prey.

The big timber wolves of the northern Rocky Mountains attack every
four-footed beast to be found where they live. They are far from
contenting themselves with hunting