CALL OF THE WILD.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19382, 17 July 1926, Page 2 (Supplement)

CALL OF THE WILD.

A WOLF DOG'S RAVAGES. £40,000 WORTH OF DAMAGE. AN ELUSIVE HALF-BREED. For ten years the ranchers of Texas have teen trying to catch a wild dog which has been one of the most terrible sheep and cattle murderers ever known in the sheep country. There has long been a price of 300 dollars -on his head. At last he has been captured and slain. It was very well known who he -"was, though no one ever saw anything of him except his bloodstained trail. His mother was a hound belonging to a rancher of the Texas border, Mr. M. H. Hughes. About eleven years ago she formed a friendship with a big wolf, ran away with him, and made her home with the pack. She was a good dog, a peaceable stay-at-home, the last dog anyone would expect to leave a comfortable home for the wild. Mr. Hughes caught sight of her once or twice, but she never returned home. Some months later Mr. Hughes found a litter of the dog's puppies not far from the ranch, and decided to bring one up. For ten years he has been regretting this kind deed and wishing he had killed the whole litter. The wolfdog disappeared like his mother before

he was fully grown. Once or twice ranchers saw him in his late puppy stage running with a huge grey wolf, who obviously gave him an excellent training. Then he set up business on his own account and became a famous bandit.

The half-breed had Vi great hunting ground. No one ever knew where he was from one end to the other of a hundred miles square until they saw that their flocks had been raided.; But another dog knew. Now and again the wolf-dog ran close by home, where there was another hound who knew quite well that the half-breed was his master's mdrtal enemy and his own.

This dog was a long-eared hound, a blood relation of the half-bieed, and occasionally he would find the trail of the wolf-dog and follow it up. Unseen by human eyes then a terrible battle would take place, and the ranch hound would crawl home with his ears in ribbons and his body mangled, but still alive and only longing for another encounter.

It seemed that neither dog nor man could kill that son of the renegade hound of the Hughe3 ranch. He becamo a by-word in the district for his cunning dealing with traps, his instant knowledge when poison lay, in wait for him. The years went by; hundreds of sheep, lambs and calves were killed by him. Ranchers watched for him in vain.

Then the case was taken up by a man, an expert trapper, whose duty it is to fnard the ranches from murderous animals. Ie studied the ways' of the wolf-dog, saw how deftly he had dealt with the traps laid for him, and began to devise

a snare that would perplex the formidable bandit.

After several months' patient labour he has succeeded. The wolf-dog is no more and the ranchers are at* rest. It is certainly quite time he was killed, for during his career he has been responsible for at least £40,000 worth of losses on the Texas ranches.