Arctic wolves are the ultimate predators. Large, almost the size of an adolescent tiger, turquoise blue eyes and fluffy white fur make them exceedingly cuddly, but I would have ta call you a richardhead if you tried to cuddle them.

The startling eyes and the fluff hide an ethos that is emotionless, cold and entirely self-serving. In the environment they inhabit, being Darwinian means the difference between life and death. They are relentless.

If a pack of arctic wolves find you at lunchtime, they will not stop until you are dead. They’ll form a gradually tightening circle around you, starting with a radius of around twenty feet and they’ll steadily close in. When that radius becomes zero, that will be when they have leapt up at you and begun tearing you apart.

The difference between a 500kg grizzly and a pack of arctic wolves is that the bear will kill you because its pea brain tells it you are somehow a threat. Arctic wolves will see you as the day’s lunch, period.

This is wolf country and again, at the cost of repeating myself, you really need to be hunting in a group so that there are others looking out for you. That is, if you wish to come out in one piece.

Alone or even in twos, arctic wolves just might leave you be and slink away if it isn’t meal time, but then they are rarely in twos and almost never alone. Arctic wolves hunt in packs that sometimes number ten plus.

Panicked, you will of course fight back, maybe shoot wildly at ‘em. Go ahead – you might kill a couple and even grievously injure a few more, but they’ll keep coming at you, in a crouching creep, their pace unhurried. Desperate, you will empty your magazine into them and they’ll still be coming at you, only now their jaws will be slightly open and lips pulled way back, baring large jagged teeth, low snarls escaping through large canines. There is no way you’ll have any time ta reload.

In comparison, arctic coyotes (slightly smaller in size, around the same girth as a German Shepherd), don’t forage in such large packs and most likely can be easily shooed away, with just a flashlight, a loud hailer or a shot into the air. Coyotes turn dangerous only when they sense that you are somehow incapacitated, unable to defend yourself – maybe injured.

Coyotes are cowardly and nasty, while wolves are majestic and brutal.

An arctic wolf is an apex predator, like a lion or an eagle or a great white (or a T-Rex during the Cretaceous age). Nothing precedes it in the food chain of it’s environment. Except humans of course. We are nature’s ultimate apex predator, regardless of the environment.

There, now you’ll know a wolf or a coyote when you see one, won’t you? Just don’t be around them when it is supper time. When they are hungry, they don’t give a flying fuck if they like the taste of your flesh or they don’t. They’ll tear you apart anyway.

———————————

Remember I started this series with caribou? Caribou are easy prey – usually oblivious to the danger a hunter poses them. The herds are so close packed, you could close your eyes and squeeze off four shots and you’d have four carcasses on your hands in no time.

But an easy kill spoils the fun of the chase. So you have left your Lapua behind in the shack and brought the TenPoint Vapor, a baby that is similar to the one shown in the image below. The Vapor fell into your lap literally, when your neighbor, Sam, gave up hunting last summer due to his advancing years. Priced at over three grand brand new, he had agreed to part with it for five hundred quid, along with the bolts (arrows) and accessories.

You had joined a shooting range in Brossard, to calibrate the scope and practice “sighting in”. An arrow from a crossbow follows, not a straight line, but a discernible parabolic path and it is important to “cant” (tilt) the aim of the bow in order to hit the target. The need to cant becomes more and more pressing as the distance to the target increases. The crossbow has a sight that helps you in the sighting-in process, but it needs to be calibrated, just like in sniper rifles.

You have of course heard of a branch of physics called “ballistics” that a 16th century Italian professor at Pisa by the name of Galileo Galilei first propounded. The tax-payer funded Yale degree in theoretical physics has ensured that.

The instructor at the Brossard crossbow range had been impressed by your talent. You were a natural, he said.

At a draw weight of 200lbs – the draw weight being the force with which a crossbow propels the arrow forward – the Vapor can kill a moose at 60 yards. When you squeeze the trigger, the latch releases the arrow with a ‘thung!’ The arrow leaps out in a hazy blurr, covering the 60 yards in slightly less than a second. If you get the moose in the neck or even the upper torso, it will pass right through and bury itself in the snow, upto the fletching (the rear fins).

You have chosen your arrows judiciously – Carbon Express – the very best brand in carbon fibre technology – slick, light weight, flexible, unbreakable. At $50 a pop, it is worth every penny, but you got ta practice so you don’t end up shooting it into stone, shattering the broad head.

Yes, the broad head, the business end of the bolt. You have also chosen the broad heads judiciously. They are 125-grain SlickTrick Magnums, blue titanium arrowheads with jagged flanks which look like props from the Lord of the Rings fantasies and slice into bones, arteries and tissue like they were made out of butter.

Some other stuff you have learned over the years, since the Vapor came into your possession – you got yourself an arm rest that you can either stick into the trunk of a tree or upright into the snow. Your TenPoint Vapor is almost as heavy as your Lapua[see Part-1] and if you want to hit the target, you have to have a steady aim, which requires you to rest your arm for the shot.

——————-

Now, where were we. Oh yes, you are around fifty feet from the herd and the caribou appear to be milling around, doing nothing in particular. You can almost hear a ‘Hey, Curly, what you doon tonight, its Friday, lets go get some lichens.’ And the one next to him says, ‘I’m a strictly sedges and shrubs guy, Larry. Besides, I’m hopin’ Tina’ll let me hump her tanight. Its mating season for C’s sakes, I keep tellin’ her.’

You may be close but you still have to be able to kill. That is another golden rule in hunting – be sure you have lined up a shot that will kill. A true hunter isn’t supposed to be a sadist. Caribou don’t go down nice and easy. An injured caribou will start running, the blood pumping out of the wound in spurts that keep pace with the beating of its heart. It will run till it drops dead and that can be five kilometers from where he got hit.

Another cardinal rule – don’t run after a wounded caribou. First of all, running in ankle deep snow isn’t easy and the caribou will outrun you anyway. Second, if this is bear or wolf country (which it normally is), you won’t see one coming, so absorbed you’ll be, trying not to trip over a stone hidden under the snow. Bears and wolves just love to see fear in the prey and they interpret running as a sign of fear. Soon you, the hunter, will be the hunted and you’ll be running for your life.

You have ta take it easy and follow the trail. You cannot miss the crimson of fresh blood on pristine white snow, so you carefully begin to follow the trail of blood, while keeping your senses alert, taking a frequent glance over your shoulder to make sure there are no carnivores behind you.

If you were hunting with a crossbow, it won’t be much use as a defensive weapon, so you always tuck a handgun in the breast pocket of your hunting jacket before you leave the shack in the morning. It is a Glock 34 – nice and tidy, should do just fine. When you are looking around for the downed caribou, you will take it out, arm it and hold it in your hand as you walk. Anyway, if the caribou is still alive when you find him, you’ll need the Glock ta despatch him with a round in the head. You take no chances and you don’t get antsy.

You are of course well aware that hunting with a handgun is illegal. You get caught and you have had it. The penalties are huge. You will definitely lose your hunting and gun licenses, besides being fined in the vicinity of five grand, give or take. But heck, this is desolate country and almost certainly there’s not a soul anywhere within five miles of you, no game wardens or forest rangers around these parts. You got ta look out for yourself.

There is another reason why you need ta take it easy and stay alert, though it doesn’t apply to you so far up north. But if you were in the wild down south of the 45th parallel, it would. During moose or deer season, the forests of southern and eastern Quebec are crawling with hunters, especially the government-owned lands where hunting is free and you don’t have to pay the landlord ta hunt. Another hunter, maybe one of those redneck Rambo-like guys who tote a pint of Jack Daniels in their jacket pocket that they are constantly swigging from, could mistake you for a fleeing whitetail if you were running and you might suddenly watch a third nipple appear in the middle of your chest. That could be the last thing you ever saw.

You love nipples, but three nipples? That is crowd.

———————————-

Listen, what did I tell you in Part-1? Relax and wait for the next part. I’ll post it once I get my thoughts together, know what I mean? Till then, take it easy.