Never Cry Wolf: The Amazing True Story of Life Among Arctic Wolves

“As you may have possibly heard, my predecessor supplied the Minister with an explanation of the situation in which it was his contention that there were fewer deer because the hunters had increased to the point where they outnumbered the deer about five to one. The minister, in all good faith, read this fallacious statement in the House of Commons, and he was promptly shouted down by the members howling liar and wolf lover.”

Here, Farley’s supervisor tells him the fate of another conservationist who tried to suggest that wolves were not responsible for the loss of 75% of the great northern caribou herds and that, in fact, hunters cause the precipitous drop. The supervisor’s underlying message to Farley is that, if he wants to remain in the good graces of those above his rank and keep his position, he should conduct his study in such a way that it supports the prejudice of the hunter/trapper lobby, regardless of whether it is factual. Thus, from the beginning, Farley confronts a hindrance to his study of The True Nature of Wolves.

“Churchill was then full of missionaries, prostitutes, mounted policemen, rum-runners, trappers, fur smugglers, ordinary fur traders and other interesting characters, all of whom, so it developed, were authorities on wolves. […] From these sources I received some fascinating information, most of which had never been previously recorded in scientific literature. I discovered that, although wolves repeatedly devour several hundred people in the Arctic zone every year, they will always refrain from attacking a pregnant Eskimo. […] The trappers whom I interviewed informed me that wolves are rapidly destroying the caribou herds; that each wolf killed thousands of caribou a year just out of blood-lust, while no trapper would think of shooting a caribou except under the most severe provocation.”

Stranded in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, on the western shore of Hudson Bay, while looking for a plane to take him further into the wilderness, Farley spoke to many in the remote frontier town. Though all eagerly offered him information, most of what he records in this passage turns out to be completely false. Above all, healthy arctic wolves had never attacked a human, and the fur traders and trappers typically slaughtered hundreds of caribou annually. This misinformation, as comically as Farley records it, leads to an inaccurate understanding of wolves.

“With commendable and rather surprising acumen, the senior man had identified me as the probable originator of the message; but this only led to the posing of a new and even more disturbing mystery, since no one could be found who would admit to having authorized me to go to Tierra del Fuego in the first place. The upshot was that a series of urgent messages were dispatched to me through the Canadian Consul in Chile, instructing me to report to Ottawa at once.

None of these messages ever reached me, nor could they have so even if they had been sent by a more direct route, for the battery in my radio was only good for six hours use...”

Farley’s initial intention, even before his scientific work on The Lupine Project began in earnest, was to write an expose of the incompetence and absurdity of those governmental officials who planned and supplied his mission. The narrative is full of such examples of Governmental Inefficiency that Farley plays off humorously. Underlying the ineptitude of the project, he implies, is sending him—a complete novice with no knowledge of the terrain, subject, or serious research background—into the field where danger lurked, not from wolves but from the weather extremes and total lack of support.

“The young man who owned the dogs was, so it developed, a trapper of mixed Eskimo and white parentage who possessed a cabin a few miles away. It was ideally suited to serve me as a permanent base camp. Apart from a small band of Eskimos including his mother’s family, living 70 miles away to the north, this young man, whose name was Mike, was the only human inhabitant in an area of some 10,000 square miles. This was excellent news, for it ensured that my study of the wolves would not be adversely affected by human intrusions.”

Farley intends his last comment here in his characteristic ironic humor. Just before this chapter, Farley hid fearfully, believing Mike’s approaching huskies were wolves and that they intended to devour him. The notion that, in an area of 10,000 square miles, there are less than 80 human residents conveys that no human help or resources will be available to Farley. He is alone. He cannot contact his superiors. He is incredibly fortunate to have encountered an Inuit man who knows how to survive in the wilderness and will share his shelter with Farley.

“My head came slowly over the crest—and there was my quarry. He was lying down, evidently resting after his mournful singsong, and his nose was about six feet from mine. We stared at one another in silence. I do not know what went on in his massive skull, but my head was full of the most disturbing thoughts. I was peering straight into the amber gaze of a fully grown Arctic wolf, who probably weighed more than I did, and who was certainly a lot better versed in close combat techniques than I ever would be.”

As is reflective of most of his observations of wolves, Farley blunders into this initial encounter with a wolf. He assumed he was hearing a husky pup and, unarmed, followed the sound over a bluff only to encounter a massive wolf. At this point, Farley still assumes that wolves attack, kill, and eat humans. As with subsequent encounters, however, he learns that wolves do not harm people.

“The male wolf, who had been loafing about the foot of the esker after the departure of his wife, instantly saw me. In three or four bounds he reached the ridge of the esker, where he stood facing me in an attitude of tense and threatening vigilance. As I looked up at him my sense of exhilaration waned rapidly. He no longer seemed like a playful pup, but had metamorphosed into a magnificent engine of destruction which impressed me so much that the neck of my flask positively rattled against my teeth.”

Farley once again stumbles onto the sight of a mature wolf pair, whom he names George and Angelina. He marvels at the tender playfulness of their relationship. When Angelina disappears into a shadow, Farley realizes he has also discovered their den. This is his initiation into the actual behaviors of wolves, all of which contradicts the informal and official information given to him about wolves. 

“My thoughts that evening were confused. True, my prayer had been answered, and the wolves had certainly cooperated by reappearing; but on the other hand I was becoming prey to a small but nagging doubt as to just who was watching whom. I felt that I, because of my specific superiority as a member of Homo sapiens, together with my intensive technical training, was entitled to pride of place. The sneaking suspicion that this pride had been denied and that, in point of fact, I was the one who was under observation had an unsettling effect upon my ego.”

Readers may perceive Farley’s book as a “right-sizing” of the relationship between humans and wolves. In this passage, he expresses for the first time the notion of a different perspective of Canis lupus, which necessitates a closer investigation of The True Nature of Wolves. Farley repeatedly expresses the idea that Western European migrants to North America chronically underestimate and misunderstand these animals. The author’s tone throughout the book is humorous and ironic. However, Farley’s tone is quite serious in the Preface, written 30 years after the original manuscript.

“…one of the facts which had emerged was that they were not nomadic roamers, as is almost universally believed, but were settled beasts and the possessors of a large permanent estate with very definite boundaries.

The territory owned by my wolf family comprised more than 100 square miles, bounded on one side by a river but otherwise not delimited by geographical features. Nevertheless there were boundaries, clearly indicated in wolfish fashion.”

This passage is one of many in which Farley contrasts the typical assumptions about the behavior of Canis lupus against his actual observations. As the narrative progresses, Farley reveals patterns of wolf behavior demonstrating their intelligence, communication, mutual cooperation, parenting skills, and other surprising facets of their natural actions.

“…I was later able to discover from Mike that they had been together for at least five years—or the equivalent of 30 years in terms of relative longevity of wolves and men. Mike and the Eskimos recognized the wolves in their area as familiar individuals, and the Eskimos (but not Mike) held the wolves in such high regard that they would not have thought of killing them or doing them any injury. Thus not only were George, Angeline and the other members of the family well known to the Eskimos, but the sight of their den had been known for some forty or fifty years, during which time generations of wolves had raised families there.”

Elsewhere in the text, Farley stresses the monogamous nature of wolf “marriages,” as he calls them. He also reports that wolves are capable of living far longer than dogs, something that their pack behaviors support. That the Indigenous Americans knew of their den location over generations reinforces the notion of Indigenous Americans in the Arctic Ecosystem as being co-habitants and even partners with the wolves in the region’s ecology. Farley points out that the only person who does not share the inhabitants’ respect for wolves is Mike, who is both a trapper and white as well as Inuit. Needing to support his own family and more than 15 sled dogs, Mike kills several hundred caribou annually, plus foxes and other large animals. Thus, he views wolves, at best, as competitors.

“The idea of wolves not only eating, but actually thriving and raising their families on a diet of mice was so at odds with the character of the mythical wolf that it was really too ludicrous to consider. And yet, it was the answer to the problem of how my wolves were keeping the larder full.”

By this point in the narrative, Farley knows that the caribou migration is months away, and there seems to be no food available for the wolf family. Only when he observes Angeline eat 23 mice in one hour does he realize that, seasonally, rodents are the wolves’ primary food source. To test the theory that a large mammal can live on mice, he restricts himself to a mouse diet and even offers a recipe and preparation tips. Though he records these events humorously, Farley is aware that he is conducting cutting-edge scientific research.

“It was during the final stages of my mouse diet that Mike returned to his cabin. He brought with him a cousin of his, the young Eskimo, Ootek, who was to become my boon companion and who was to prove invaluable to me in my wolf researches. However, on my first encounter with Ootek I found him almost as reserved and difficult of approach as Mike had been, and in fact still remained.”

Much as Farley blunders into salvation from the winter weather courtesy of Mike and his dog team and stumbles into discovering his wolf pack and their den, he lucks into a major contributor to his research project, Ootek, for whom the wolf is a personal totem. Ootek, though Mike’s cousin, is diametrically Mike’s opposite in every respect: he understands, respects, and apparently even communicates with the wolves, interpreting the meaning of their actions to Farley.

“Later, when I had learned some of his language and he had improved in his knowledge of mine, he told me that as a child of about five years he had been taken to a wolf den by his father, a shaman of repute, and had been left there for twenty-four hours, during which time he made friends with and played on terms of equality with the wolf pups, and was sniffed at but otherwise unmolested by the adult wolves.

It would have been unscientific for me to have accepted all the things he told me about wolves without auxiliary proof, but I found that when such proof was obtainable he was invariably right.”

Acutely aware that such a claim would receive extreme skepticism by both scholars and the average reader, Farley does not attempt to defend Ootek’s claim of having experienced a sleepover with wolf pups directly. Rather, he states what the narrative relates: Ootek invariably tells the truth, has a deep knowledge of wolf behavior, and all his testable observations about wolves turn out to be valid. This is the author’s way of expressing the belief that the “Ootek in the wolf’s den” story is accurate.

“Kaila heard, and he said ‘My work is good. I shall tell Amorak [the spirit of the Wolf], and he shall tell his children, and they shall eat the sick and the weak and the small caribou, so that the land will be left for the fat and the good ones.’

And this is what happened, and this is why the caribou and the wolf are one; for the caribou feeds the wolf, but it is the wolf who keeps the caribou strong.

I was slightly stunned by this story, for I was not prepared to have an unlettered and untutored Eskimo give me a lecture, even in parable form, illustrating the theory of the survival of the fittest through the agency of natural selection.”

Here, Ootek tells Farley the Inuit myth of how the wolf and caribou came to be ecologically linked. The first woman draws all the creatures out of a hole in the earth, the most important being the caribou. Because there is no creature to strengthen the weakening herds, the caribou falter, so the wolf comes to cull the deer. The myth stuns Farley because it accurately portrays the ecological balance between the two large mammals. While this contrasts completely with the conventional understanding of the role of wolves, it describes Farley’s ultimate findings closely.

“He also told me that wolves have the same general outlook toward pups that Eskimos have toward children—which is to say that actual paternity does not count for much, and there are no orphans as we use the term.”

This passage begins a trove of insights about wolves that Ootek shares with Farley. In particular, he discusses how wolf packs accept strays, both pups and adults, from other packs, meaning the Canis lupus species tends to be inclusive rather than exclusive. Ootek says that while humans can rescue orphaned wolf pups when no pack is around, a human infant—contrary to legend—could not survive among wolves. This is not because wolves are not accepting but because humans are not as hardy as wolves.

“It was Ootek who saved the day, and possibly Albert’s life as well. He convinced Mike that if he released Kooa all would be well. She would not run away, he explained, but would stay in the vicinity of the camp with the wolf. When her period of heat was over she would return home and the wolf would go back to his own kind. […]

[…] [O]ne morning, we found Kooa lying at her old place in the dog line looking exhausted but satiated.”

When one of Mike’s female huskies, Kooa, comes into season, Farley and he decide to breed her to a wolf because Mike wants to raise the pups as sled dogs. The experiment succeeds, though the mating pair become inseparable. Ootek’s observations that their relationship would naturally come to an end hints at his recognition that, similar as they might appear, wolves and dogs are distinct species with different, nuanced behaviors.

“With infinite caution, George slithered closer and closer to the unsuspecting sleeper. When he was ten feet from Albert—who was still dead to the world—George drew his hindquarters up under him and, after pausing long enough to fully savor the moment, launched himself in a tremendous leap while at the same time letting loose a terrifying roar.”

George, the alpha male, pounces on the sleeping adult Albert, then runs away as Albert chases him, soon drawing Angeline into the game. This is one of several instances Farley records indicating that the wolves possess distinct personalities, enjoy playing tricks on one another, and know how to relax and play. For Farley, this behavior is in direct contrast to the long-standing human perception of wolves as simply ravenous predators whose only interest is killing.

“A semiofficial estimate of the wolf population of Keewatin had already been made by the competent authorities on the basis of information received from the usual trapper-trader sources, and the given figure was 30,000 wolves. Even with my sketchy grasp of mathematics I was able to work this out as an average of one wolf to every six square miles. […]

[…] On the other hand, we traveled for three days through what looked like good wolf country on the Thlewiazi River and never saw a footing, a scat, or a hair of a wolf. Reluctantly, and recognizing that it was not going to endear me to my employers, I was forced to revise the population estimate downward to 3000, and at that I was probably guilty of gross exaggeration.”

Ironically discounting his own observations and abilities, Farley demonstrates that the Canadian government, using the casual, self-serving estimates of hunters and trappers, greatly over-estimated the wolf population. Using numbers that overestimated the wolf population by 90%, the government convinced itself it had what Farley’s supervisor called “the wolf problem.” This allowed the government to justify the extermination of wolves using methods such as strychnine poisoning, explosive traps, and airplane flyovers.

“Epidemic disease is the overriding factor which ensures that, even if other controlling factors fail to operate, the wolf population will not become too large for the capacity of the prey animals to maintain it. On those rare occasions when the general balance is upset (often as a result of man’s interference) and wolves become too abundant, they soon begin to weaken physically as food grows scarce and malnutrition grades into outright starvation. At times such as these devastating epidemics of rabies, distemper or mange invariably appear among the wolves, and their numbers are surprisingly reduced to a bare survival level.”

This passage reveals the depth of Farley’s understanding of the Canadian arctic ecosystem. The wolves protect the health of the caribou by preying on the weakest members of the herd. When the wolves overpopulate or when the numbers of the caribou decline, the ecosystem responds by culling out the number of predators. As Farley notes, the gravest disturbances in this natural rhythm are intrusions by human beings.

“When caribou were hard to find, different techniques were used. Several wolves acting in concert would sometimes drive a small herd of deer into an ambush where other wolves were waiting; or if caribou were very scarce, the wolves might use a relay system whereby one wolf would drive the deer toward another wolf some distance away, who would then take up the chase in his turn. Techniques such as these decrease the caribou’s natural advantages, of course, but it was usually still the weakest or at any rate the least able deer which fell victim to the pursuing wolves.”

After noting that a typical caribou can outrun the fastest wolf, Farley describes the multiple techniques used by wolf packs to trick, trap, or exhaust the deer. For their part, the caribou behave casually around visible wolves until they sense the pack is about to mount an attack. The author emphasizes the surprising degree of organization, delegation, and intricacy used by the wolves in singling out certain deer.

“Of the sixty-seven wolf-killed caribou which I examined after the wolves were finished with them, few consisted of anything except bones, ligaments, hair and offal. […]

[…] Fresh kills, where the whole carcass was available for examination, were hard to come by; but on a number of occasions I reached the deer almost as soon as the wolves had killed it and, with inexcusable gal, shooed the wolves away. They went timidly enough, albeit unhappily. Several of these deer were so heavily infested with external and internal parasites that they were a little better than walking menageries, doomed to die soon in any case.”

During the season when wolves hunt caribou, Farley treks across the tundra with Ootek and records the behavior of the packs. In addition to learning the hunting strategies of the packs, he also confirms the beliefs of the Inuit that wolves hunt the weak, sickly, or elderly deer, culling the herd and thus improving the overall health of the caribou.

“There is no authentic report of wolves ever having killed a human being in the Canadian North; Although there must have been times when the temptation was well-nigh irresistible.”

This quote is a footnote Farley uses to comment on having found a sailor’s button inside a sample of wolf scat. As he jokes about the source of the button, he wants to make clear that humans do not need to fear the arctic wolf. His overriding concern is the irony that, while humans have built a mythology around the wolf as a deadly hunter of people, the wolf has a much greater, more practical reason to fear the human.

“The war against wolves is kept at white heat by the Provincial and Federal Governments, almost all of which offer wolf bounties ranging from ten dollars to thirty dollars per wolf; and in times when the value of foxes and other furs is depressed this bounty becomes in effect a subsidy paid to trappers and traders alike.

Much is said and written about the number of deer reputedly slaughtered by wolves. Very little is said about the actual number of wolves slaughtered by men. In one case a general falsehood is widely and officially disseminated; in the other the truth seems to be depressed.”

Farley plays offs the reality of arctic wolves in the ecosystem against the false assumptions accepted by the government. He describes a sort of uncanny conspiracy between private hunters and trappers and governmental institutions. Ironically, the general ignorance and misunderstanding of the ecosystem, as Farley points out in the Preface, leads to the destruction of the environmental balance upon which outdoorspeople ultimately depend.

“As the local game warden aggrievedly described the situation to me: the local people have been able to kill 50,000 caribou each winter as recently as two decades passed, whereas now they were lucky if they could kill a couple of thousand. Caribou were becoming scarce to the point of rarity, and the wolves were unanimously held to blame. My rather meek remonstrance to the effect that wolves have been praying on caribou, without decimating the herds, for some tens of thousands of years before the white man came to Brochet, either fell on deaf ears or roused my listeners to fury at my partisanship.”

Farley uses an example of the illogical denial expressed by white citizens living in the wilderness community of Brouchet, Manitoba. Farley angers the locals by pointing out that wolves had not previously decimated the caribou herd, despite preying on them for millennia. Obviously, however, if hunters killed 50,000 deer annually out of herds that numbered only 400,000 at most, the herd population could not sustain such losses without being drastically reduced. Farley’s point is that the hunters did not want to face the ecological results of their own actions. By contrast, the Inuit had recognized the balance between wolves and caribou for centuries, wisdom possessed by Indigenous Americans in the Arctic Ecosystem but lacking among white immigrants.