Do Not Dance With Them!
Wednesday, November 7, 2007 at 2:52PM 
North America has it’s first documented case of a healthy wolf killing a human in the wild.
A coroner’s jury in Saskatchewan has determined that Ontario university student Kenton Carnegie was killed in a wolf attack.
Carnegie was 22 when he died in November 2005 near Points North Landing, Sask. On a work term for a company at the mining exploration camp, located about 750 kilometres northeast of Saskatoon, Carnegie went for a walk and didn’t come back.
Searchers later found his body surrounded by wolves.
Not that the findings are undisputed. One expert witness, Paul Paquet, testified that it is more likely that it was a black bear that killed Carnegie. However, he did not rule out the possiblity that it was a wolf attack.
Mark McNay, recently retired as head of the research department at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (who happens to be my cousin, and with whom I visited in September when he flew through Whitehorse on his way south), testified that he was convinced that it was indeed a wolf attack. He argued that bears would have been in hibernation at the time Carnegie was killed, and that no bears had been seen in the area for several weeks before the attack, nor were any seen for months after.
In photographs of the site, what Paquet identified as bear tracks were actually wolf tracks, said McNay. The tracks were on the lake’s surface, which had not completely frozen over. When the wolf stepped into the ground and broke through to water, the water came up and made the track larger, leading people to believe it was bear tracks.
McNay said it was also unlikely that two wolves would have eaten the same hair from the dump on the same day Carnegie was killed.
As for the argument that wolves don’t attack humans, McNay said that is not the case anymore because wolves are becoming habitualized and losing their fear of people.
These incidents of wolves and people, predictably, are going to increase,” he said.
Sources: OHS Canada, CBC News
You’ll find more info on agressive and nonagressive wolf-human encounters in this case history (pdf) done for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game by Mark McNay.
Reader Comments (4)
I ran into the same situation with mountain lions. We keep being fed this idea that they are shy and reclusive.They are also becoming habituated to humans and have no predators to worry about. There are more and more cases of mountain lion attacks. I have always been a lone hiker, but these days prefer my husband to go with me. :) We have lots of mountain lions in the hills and Sierra mountain range.
Unfortunately my newfound reluctance to hike alone has resulted in a real weight gain since my husband isn't overly thrilled about hiking. Sigh.
We have mountain lions(and bears) right here in Monrovia. The park rangers always stress neither to bike nor hike alone. This as mountain lions like to chase anything or anyone running. Since they attack from the back the person has no idea what is happening. Somewhere I read or heard to carry an umbrella when hiking and if confronted (and you see the lion) to open the umbrella in the lions face to scare it away.
I had heard about that case on CBC - they interviewed the father. It was heart-breaking.
We don't have wolves but coyotes migrated here over the ice a few years ago. They will go after cats and small dogs and calves but we haven't heard of them attacking humans.
Over the years, there have been at least a couple incidents here where coyotes behaved aggressively toward humans right here in town, one in which the coyote tried to drag a toddler away. Thankfully the mom was right there and the child was dressed in a snowsuit.