The daily morning journal and courier., 1895-02-01
4 DAKOTA WOLF HUNT.
Novel Sport, With Lots of Excitement and
 Spice of Danger.


 Years day with a grand wolf hunt or : Rock Island.
 Rock Island is an oblong tract neal
 the middle of Devils Lake. It is about two miles long and mile and a hall wide. It is barren of shrubbery, but scattered over it are heaps of huge
 powders, among and under which, ir
 the winter season, the prairie wolves find shelter. The fact of these bowl
 ders being on that spot of land that
 was evidently cast up from the midst
 of the lake by a natural disturbance
 gives rise to wonder, since one may
 travel for miles and miles over the Da-
 lsota prairies in all directions and not
 find stone as large as a hens egg.
 The Dakota prairie wolf is not dan-
 gerous creature to meet unless he hap
 pens to be suffering from hunger and
 is backed up by number of his llki
 then he is apt to make it warm for q
 man whom he manages to corner. The
 animals are a great pest to the farmers
 and stockmen, for they prey upon their
 calves and pigs unmercifuly. They
 generally prowl in packs of from six to
 twenty, and they do the greatest dam age on those wild, stormy nights, when
 it is worth mans life almost for him
 to walk dozen yards from his door.
 It is almost impossible to trap a wolf. He is one of the keenest of four-egged animals and will avoid a pitfall or a covered steel trap as carefully as if he had received secret instructions con- cerning their whereabouts. The farm CTS make some headway against them with poison, but this method of exter- imitation is not approved generally, for it endangers the lives if valuable domestic animals.
 In winter, when Devils Lake is fro- zen over as smooth as a barn floor and the ice Is from one to two feet thick, the wolves make their headuarters on Rock Island. They gather there by hun dreds, and every night the chorus of their short, sharp yelps sounds weirdly over the frozen lake. The excitement attending the Dakota wolf hunt is probably not equalled by any sport known to the nimrod, since the game is large, wary, swift of movement, and full of tricks. There is an clement of danger in it, too, for when the wolves l are cornered they will fight with the desperation of mad dogs. It now and l lIlSII udppellS JIldI d WOll lluulCi SOillco off the field with his clothes badly torn and his flesh lacerated by the claws or teeth of an infuriated animal but there has never been fatality resulting l from the sport
 | The hunting party gets together at given point on the shore of the lake about noon, and they come from all quarters. It is not an unusual thing to see one hundred and fifty men engaged
 in wolf hunt. Each man carries ri- | tle and a couple of revolyers. Some are on foot and some on horseback. The horses ridden are usually the little, wiry Indian pony or mustang that can run all night and all day and not get tired. When the party is ready to, march 1t starts out across the ice in the direction of the island. The horsemen are stationed around the island as near | to each other as 1t is possible to place them and complete the cordon.
 The men on foot form in the shape of the letter U across the island. Some of them carry horns, others tin pans, and when everything is ready the men move in the direction of the boulder heaps, blowing the horns pounding the pans and yelling like fiends. The rack ct rouses the wolves lying among the rocks and they dash from cover. Some of the animals are in burrows. These are smoked out, and it is but a very short time before there Is plenty ofl game running helter-skelter, looking for new cover.
 At the northwest extremity of the is- land is a clear spot, and 1t Is the aim of i, Ar A@ sc. open space, where they may completely surround them. The men gradually advance up the island drumming, howl | ing and firing off their guns, and the bewildered wolves flee before them un til they are driven beyond the rocks
 It is not until the animals are sur rounded at the upper end of the island that the real fun begins. They dash here and there to find an opening through which it is possible to escape, | They are rendered frantic by the con tinued blare of horns and the horrible | yelling, and In their excitement snap and snarl at each other like lot of ! surly CUTS. Occasionally a hunter takes a shot at one and brings him | down, and in this way the ranks of the | beasts are thinned out until from a | possible thirty or forty but seven or eight remain. These are preserved for | the horsemen on the ice, who are gene | rally the best marksmen in the party |
 The frightened beasts are given an ! opportunity to escape. The circle is | broken with the opening so calculated | that the wolves will flee to the ice | They immediately dash through, and | the horsemen remain inactive until | they have passed beyond their circle; | then they give chase. The wolf, with | it's sharp claws is swift runner, even on smooth ice, and when the Ice is cov- cred with a slight coating of snow he is capable of making wonderfully quick time but, as fast as he is, the little mustangs are able to keep close to his heels in a straightaway race, but the wolf has the advantage of being able to make quick turns, and that is what he does.
 Every wolf hunter mounted on horse is proud of his craftsmanship, and it is the aim of each one to shoot an animal in the head, which. from horse back, is no easy matter. To shoot one through the body, these men claim, re- quires no skill, and so it often happens that several hours are consumed in the