HOW INDIANS KILL WOLVES.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVI, Issue XV, 11 April 1896, Page 402

HOW INDIANS KILL WOLVES.

The northern Indians, particularly in the Hudson bay region, and the Esquimaux, possess a fiendish ingenuity in their method of capturing game, and their way of applying it for killing wolves is horrible. They take a flat piece of flint a foot or so long, and clipped to extreme sharpness at the edge. This they fasten to a wooden stake, which they drive into he ground firmly, so as to leave the blade of flint projecting above the surface. Then they cover the blade all over with a good-sized piece of fat from seal or other such animal, which freezes. Now, the wolf-catching apparatus is complete, so that the person who sets the trap has only to come back again in a day or two and gather his prey without any trouble. The wolf has an insatiable appetite for blood, and it is of this weakness the hunters take advantage. A little while after the trap described is set, along comes the wolf. It is hungry and likes the piece of fat, and so it is thawed by the warmth of his tongue ; it tastes better. Presently its tongue comes in contact with the sharp edge of the flint, and is cut. It tastes the blood, not knowing it is its own, and the flavour drives it wild. Eagerly it licks and licks it, lacerating its mouth and becoming more frenzied in the desire for its own life fluid. Meanwhile other wolves have come up and have begun to lick at the fat, cutting their own tongues and becoming in their turn wild at the taste. Presently the bait is surrounded by a pack of ravenous and crazy animals, which soon turn upon one another and fall to devouring each other, until the merciless flint is the centre of a struggling mass of ferocious combatants fighting for very life. At his leisure the hunter appears upon the scene and skins the dead beasts for market. The skins cost him nothing save the trouble of removing them and the value of the hunk of fat. The stake with the first blade is ready to be set again for other victims.