If the wolf was an efficient killer, man proved himself to be even more so. The difference between the two was that while one killed only as much as he needed to fill his stomach, man's lust for blood and greed for the profits to be had from his hunting, knew no limits. When the buffalo grew scarce, he turned his attention to beavers. The hunters and trappers came all the way from the east in boats along the Missouri and it's narrow tributaries. The pelts were shipped back by the thousands to warm the fashionable heads and necks of city folk.
In a few seasons, when the beavers were all gone, they started to go after the wolves, whose skins made warm coats. They would lace the carcass of an animal with poison and leave it on a wolf trail. The next morning they would ride out to the trails and find es them littered with the dead and dying birds or beasts. 'Mere would be wolves, fox, coyotes, bear and bobcats, some of which were still retching and convulsing. Their vomit would poison the grass for years and any animal that grazed on it before the poison had been washed away by the seasons, would die too. Often it was so cold that it was impossible to skin the frozen bodies. The hunters would bury them in the snow and skin them once the thaw came. Evans tells us of the winter of 1877 which had seen one of the longest freezes Hope had ever known. More than two thousand unskinned welves were piled in towers over the wolfer's camps. The thaw came suddenly, and frantic with the fear that a whole winter's booty would spoil, the trappers went to work with their knives. By sunset every single wolf was skinned. Delighted with their triumph, they danced up to their knees in melted snow and wolf blood. As a monument to their da@'s work they later cobbled a whole road with the skulls of the wolves killed that winter.
Eventually the ranchers came with their cattle. They made sure their cattle would be safe by killing any stray wolves the), came across. In their churches on it Sunday it was normal to hear the preacher denounce the wolf as no ordinary varmint, "but the walking apotheosis of all evil". As with all the other extinct animals, the wolves did not stand a chance of survival.
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But, after an age, the wolf came back. It was as if the scent of the slaughter which had lingered on in the soil had drawn him back. By then the Wolf Recovery Program was in place. The idea was to restore a viable breeding population to regions where the animals could be truly wild and live as naturally as possible. Shooting and trapping wolves became a Federal Offence. For the ranchers, this was unacceptable. Since the deer, moose and elk population had been depleted by hunters and loggers, they knew that their cattle were next in fine for the wolves. Those who suspected that the 'flicker of life' in t