Timber wolves formerly ranged over most of North America
but no longer exist in the eastern United States. The most formidable of
all the wild dogs of the world, the timber wolf can measure over 6-feet
in length, stand nearly a yard at the shoulder, and weigh as much as
175-pounds.
In Cherokee lore he was the revered “Wa-ya,” the companion
of Kana’-ti, their master hunter, and they would not normally kill a
wolf. Certain hired killers who followed elaborate rituals for atonement
could slay wolves that raided stock or fish traps.
The demise of the wolf began with the arrival of the
colonial settlers, who brought an inbred fear and hatred of the
“blood-thirsty varmint” from Europe and could not tolerate raids upon
livestock. The first wolf bounty was set in eastern North Carolina in
1748 at 10 shillings for each wolf scalp. Bounty hunters pursued their
quarry with guns, dogs and wolf pits. After the Revolution, the bounty
in North Carolina climbed to $5 per scalp.
This intense pressure helped drive most of the remaining
population into the mountains by the early 1800s, where skillful hunters
familiar with the upcountry were required. The brothers Gideon and
Nathan Lewis of Ashe County were the first of the renowned wolf hunters
in WNC. They knew a good thing when they saw one. Locating a wolf den,
one of the brothers would crawl in and secure the wolf pups as bounty,
but somehow the female would always “escape.”
When asked why they never managed to kill a mature female,
Gideon would reply matter-of-factly, “Would you expect a man to kill
his milch-cow?”
The period of the Civil War marked a resurgence of wolves
as many excellent marksmen were pulled out of the mountains or otherwise
occupied by the conflict so that the multiplying wolves became
increasingly brazen. But by the 1880s, they had become a scarce
commodity in WNC. According to Mammals in the Carolinas, Virginia, and
Maryland (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1985) the last gray wolf was killed in
Haywood County in 1887.
That, however, seems unlikely as reports lingered on into
the 20th century, and The Bryson City Times was referring to wolves
being “up around Clingman’s Dome” on into the early 1890s.
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