A collection of stories about growing up in Red River County, Texas in the 1940s and 1950s.

Saturday, October 29, 2005

Wolf Hunt

by Douglas Fodge


From left: Douglas Fodge (age 9), Russ Fodge, local farmer (name unknown), Mack Fodge (age 16), local farmer

It had been one of those summer days that often occurred in Texas. You know the kind; hot, hot, hot to the extent that it could cause mental confusion. City dwellers liked to talk about it being hot enough to fry an egg on a sidewalk, but since cement wasn’t available anywhere near us, even on the roads, we relied on other foolproof indications. One good indicator that the heat was approaching the century mark was when cattle waded into a stock pond during the day and soaked shoulder-deep in the water, but I didn’t really need this evidence. I was exhausted from hauling buckets of water in that heat to the hogs and dogs.

Daddy housed female hounds individually when they were in estrus, and since they were in large crates on long legs about eight feet in the air the females couldn’t exactly go for a stroll to the ponds for drinking water. Naturally, if the females weren’t secured they might mate with males of dubious derivation, and the resulting offspring were true marvels to behold. However, the real treat for me was watching the old sows when I poured water into their water trough and on the ground where once there had been mud. Naturally, in the hot sun their mud puddles had dried to adobe consistency, but after a few buckets of water soaked the soil and Ms. Sow’s snout had rooted a while, the hard-packed adobe was converted into mud. Inevitably Ms. Sow would turn toward me, smile and sink into her newly developed, cool loblolly. “As happy as a sow belly deep in mud” refers to the expression of satisfaction on a hog’s face on such occasions, and I can attest to the fact that it was, and probably still is, second to none in the animal kingdom.

These were the days during one of the worst droughts that Texas had suffered during recorded times, and from 1949 to 1956 nearly all of the 250+ counties in Texas suffered. Many experienced far greater devastation than we in the far northeastern corner of the State. I often attributed the very presence of the subject of this story in our county, wolves, to the fact that they were attracted from drier parts of the state because we had greater amounts of water and rabbits than others during those years. In any event, it was hot and dry, and the daily impact of the oppressive heat and drought was taking its toll on our family and on all our neighbors. Cattlemen had lost entire herds due to dehydration. Fortunately we still had some water in our stock pond, and the Big Pool was just across the fence on Mr. Reynolds’ property, for emergency purposes only.

After a day of toiling in the hot sun with those water buckets and all the other chores around a farm, mostly attended to by the older members of my family, all of us were bone-tired by nightfall. However, heat built up in the house during the day and went away with the speed of a sloth’s gait at night. Thus, one tossed and turned endlessly in attempts to escape the sweat that developed on any part of the skin that wasn’t exposed, and even exposed skin was hot. Early in the evening Mama suggested that I move to a makeshift pallet in front of the entry doorway in the front of the house. If any breeze developed I would be the first to feel it. This was about the best suggestion possible, and I readily accepted.

Even if a breeze never developed, I might be able to hear the whip-poor-will (Caprimulgus vociferous), hoot (probably Bubo virginanus) and screech owls (Megascops asio) voicing their opinions from the woods in front of the house. Birds were about the only animals that resided in this patch of woods since there weren’t any nearby waterholes for terrestrial species to use. After I settled and all was quiet, I could hear singing wafting over the treetops, and I guessed that it was probably the choir from the church on the other side of the woods. However, as luck would have it, the hoot owls cranked up loudly, probably at some interloper into their territory, and drowned out the bass parts of the choir, but even today I can close my eyes and practically hear the singing; man-oh-man could they sing. I even imagined that Suzy, my fishing mentor, was smack-dab in the middle of the congregation, if not the choir, and undoubtedly she was praying for rain to keep the bass alive in the many ponds she fished. In fact, all the black, white and brown congregations throughout the region had been praying for rain for months. I was too young to care much about the welfare of hogs, dogs, cattle etc., but big fish to catch was a matter of great importance. However, the concerted efforts weren’t making much difference as nary a drop fell for weeks on end.

That night we had every door and window open wide (the ones that weren’t jammed permanently shut due to settling of the house). However, it probably didn’t make much difference whether all orifices were open or closed as you could practically see the stars at night by just looking through the cracks in the outer wall or ceiling – this predicament sure made it interesting to stay warm during the wintertime or dry when it rained. After a seemingly infinite amount of tossing and turning on a hard floor, I finally drifted off to sleep. However, sometime in the wee hours of the predawn I was shocked awake by Daddy vaulting out of bed, about eight feet away, while simultaneously yanking on his hunting gear and talking loudly (many of the Fodge clan had powerful vocal cords and were capable of being heard above the roar of a freight train). He was asking Mack and Mama to get out of bed and help him. “Buck has jumped a pack of wolves, and we better get some other dogs out there to help him or the wolves will catch and kill him for sure.” During a quiet interlude, I heard Buck (or some hound, since I couldn’t distinguish their voices) barking on trail somewhere east of the house, probably less than a half-mile away. Almost as if they had awaited a cue, wolves started howling, and it seemed like their howls came from all four directions. Members of the pack were undoubtedly separated on different hunting forays for small game, or any edible game, and they were coordinating their actions to take Buck apart – boy did we have a surprise in store for them.

In short order, Daddy finished tying his hunting boots, and he asked Mama the whereabouts of his flashlight. Mama calmly explained (how she managed to remain calm was beyond me, but she did) “now Russie you know good and well that no one dared touch your hunting flashlight, and it is probably wherever you last laid it in the weeds or on the porch”. And, with that hint Daddy lunged for the doorway, announcing in flight that his flashlight was probably on the front porch where he had been sitting earlier in the evening. His first giant step landed partially on the pallet and in my midriff, and of course he stumbled and fell forward as neither was very firm footing. Although he was as agile as some of the animals he hunted, this unexpected problem resulted in his knee landing on my chest, and his upper body fell beyond me and through the screen door. His next exclamation was, “here’s my flashlight”. Then, he asked me if I wanted to go hunting with them, as he scrambled to his feet and rushed off the porch to go unleash some of the hunting dogs and tether others. This was Daddy’s way of making amends for having practically mashed me into the flooring. Since I wasn’t hurt too badly, I scrambled up and started getting dressed for some fun since there wouldn’t be much sleeping anyway, what with all the commotion that was sure to develop.

I had been reading about wolves in some of Daddy’s hunting magazines. These weren’t your modern-day Macho magazines, although there was the occasional story in them about fellows who hunted practically bare-handed for Mountain Lions or Tigers, but mostly they were very factual, almost scientific, descriptions of lots of things associated with hunting, including detailed information about the genetics of hounds and the latest information about veterinary medicine. Undoubtedly these magazines provided my first exposure to science. One such magazine was The Hunter’s Horn – everyone should buy a few issues for their personal library!

Wolves came in many varieties, and we had the Texas Red Wolf (Canis rufus) in the 40s and 50s in East Texas, but we also had many coyotes (Canis latrans) encroaching from the west into Mr. Wolf’s territory. Male Red wolves could reach 80 pounds weight and the females weren’t far behind, but the coyotes were a distant 25-35 pounds, perhaps. Additionally, we had feral dogs-wolf-coyote hybrids in our area. Prior to the years of the drought, the Red Wolves, coyotes and feral half-breeds had been rarely found in Red River County, but by the early to mid-1950s they appeared, although I’m not 100% certain that any of the large wolves were full-blooded Red Wolves. Although they were considerably smaller than the Red Wolf, the coyotes were better adapted to their environment, and there were far greater numbers of them. The coyotes interbred with the wolves and the feral dogs to the point that soon the Red Wolf was all but gone and a hybrid variety of wolf had taken its place. Today, the only Red Wolves in existence are in zoos. The mid sized hybrids were plentiful, and they were even more capable of surviving in our area than the coyotes. They had some of the characteristics of all their ancestors, but chiefly they were mid-sized, displayed a range of hair colors, but many had the long snout of their coyote ancestry. Soon they were in such abundance that they became a problem.

Under most conditions, wolf packs had well-defined territories, but of course at the fringes of the packs they often interbred and fought over a variety of issues. Their range could be a radius of many miles, dependent largely on the amount of game and water and competition for these items. If game and water were scarce in their territory, they might cover as much as 20-25 miles during a night of hunting. It wasn’t hard to marvel at how well conditioned they and the hounds were.

Wolf pack ranges and foraging habits were well known to the hunters, and on any given night the hunters often drove or walked to a particular territory to let their hounds lose for a night of fun chasing the local wolf pack. The wolves, for their part, were mostly intent on finding something to eat and since there was plentiful small game but very little larger game, such as deer, the packs tended to split each night into small hunting groups. Their howling was a simple means to communicate with each other about the success of the hunt for food and other crucial matters. Thus, if one turned a pack of hounds lose in a wolf pack’s territory, in a matter of no more than an hour the hounds would cross the path of some hunting group, and a hunt was on.

When the increasing numbers of hybrid wolves depleted the rabbit populations and calves began to be killed, the farmers and ranchers took matters into their own hands, and their initial actions often didn’t involve hunters. They either purchased poison (strychnine etc.) and baited traps with deadly meats or bought specialized shotguns that could be baited and loaded with ammo. These devices killed lots of wolves and many a good hunting dog as well. Although hundreds of wolves were killed in this manner, and the people hung the dead animals on fence posts as warnings to other wolves, the hybrid wolf population thrived because the effect was a thinning of their population enough to allow all the rabbits to repopulate the territory. Moreover, few adult wolves were killed since they were too smart for such trivial entrapments, and this frustrated the farmers and ranchers. Eventually Daddy and other hunters were encouraged to bring their hounds to run the wolves off the ranches. Once the killing devices were inactivated they complied with the requests, and the wolves often did relocate because of the constant agitation from the hounds and hunters.

To an outsider, the rapid-fire preparations for a hunt involving just my family would have been outrageous, totally chaotic and full of sheer bedlam. Wolves howling, everyone feverishly racing to and fro, and Buck hot on the trail of something in the distance was sufficient inducement to have raised Daddy’s adrenalin level to a very high level, and the hounds reacted similarly and they were in a high-pitched fever to get going. Imagine the noise a pack of
hounds could make barking and howling at the top of their lungs and vocal cords in anticipation. To top it all off Daddy frequently blew his hunting horn to encourage Buck’s venture. [Blowing a hunting horn is not a lost art. Two Fodge men, nephew Lloyd and brother Robert, can blow a hunting horn properly.] I suspect Daddy signaled for Buck to hold the course and that help was on the way, but who knows what the devil Buck heard – he was intent on catching one of those wolves and boxing it’s jaws!

Buck probably needed a supporting cast, since he was an oversized Beagle, about 17” tall at the shoulder and perhaps 20 pounds in his prime, but he was full-sized in spirit and determination – a little salty dog. [Regulation Beagles came in two AKC size classes: 13” and 15”.] Buck joined the Fodge household via a trade between Daddy and another hunter, Tom Crow, family friend, foxhunter and craftsman of hunting horns, from Blossom, Texas (named originally Blossom Prairie by Davy Crockett). Daddy traded an untrained, young hound to Mr. Crow in exchange for Buck. Mr. Crow traded a good hunting dog for an untrained hound because he couldn’t catch Buck. Buck shunned the human hand as much as possible, but a couple of times he allowed Mama (no one else needed to try) to feed him and tend to his wounds – naturally, the rest of us watched from a respectful distance on those occasions. To bring Buck to his new home, Daddy had ridden the bus to Blossom, coaxed Buck on a hunting foray, and then the two of them walked the 6 to 8 miles to our house, taking a cross-country tour of course. Every time for years later that Buck’s former owner came for a visit he heard the latest exploits of Buck from Daddy (Daddy could flat out tell a good story, including mimicking all the voices of his hounds on trail and what they did in a race.). This prompted Mr. Crow to inform Daddy that he had traded the untrained hound for a yellow tomcat, and the tomcat was also useless. This was good-natured jesting, and although Mr. Crow was a trusted friend, no one believed the bit about the tomcat.

We occasionally had other Beagles, but of course none were quite like Buck. One other notable Beagle that got to go on a few hunts was Judge, although I can’t recall if he was on this hunt. Judge was about 9” tall, and he might have weighed 8 lbs (size of a toy Poodle), but his short legs couldn’t navigate the tall grass and weeds so he had to hitchhike – in one of the large pockets on Daddy’s hunting jacket. When the hounds treed an animal Daddy would set Judge on the ground, and he would proceed to bark orders in his deep bass voice to everyone in sight – hence his name. He always prompted lots of laughs, and once Daddy carried Judge to town to prove to other hunters that such an animal actually existed.

In contrast, Buck had a fine, chop-mouth and after I received some instruction I could recognize him even in a large pack of hounds. This time Buck was hot on the trail of something, and we all imagined that it must be a wolf. Soon there was a virtual army of supporting cast on the way. As each hound was unleashed it ran immediately in the general direction of Buck’s voice, and each barked about every time its right front foot hit the ground, so the sound effects were like a freight train roaring and clanging along tracks through the night. With about a dozen hounds strung 20-30 yards apart, this was enough to scare the fangs out of any wolf, or so I hoped.

Shortly thereafter we marched off in the middle of the predawn night with a low-hanging quarter moon on the horizon providing some dim light. Daddy walked by the moonlight, or sometimes carried a kerosene lantern, in an effort to save the batteries in his flashlight. Naturally he could see at night, as did Mack, but I stumbled and fumbled my way along in an effort to keep apace. Mack had a couple of big males (fightin’ dogs) on leashes, and they practically pulled him along, all 135 lbs with rocks in his pockets. I believe that Mack was about 16 at the time, and I was perhaps 9.

We had walked about a half-mile by the time most of the hounds joined Buck. They followed his voice and ran at full speed, but Buck had to stop and sniff the ground to locate and follow the prey. Since all were fairly well trained hounds they were not easily distracted, and if a hound consistently was distracted by some other game trail during a race, it soon became a candidate for the trading block. About another half-mile of walking, and we were on Mr. Sample’s property headed toward the Bagwell highway, and this turn of events caused some concern since automobiles and hounds chasing an animal didn’t mix very well. Abruptly, however, the barking of the lead hounds seemed to change directions, at first eastwardly, then toward the north and finally toward the northwest. Daddy told us to stop, and I liked that. After a few minutes, he exclaimed aloud “it looks like it might not be a wolf that Buck jumped or it could be a young wolf and he wants to get back with the main pack in the west, over beyond Mr. Pollan’s place. Mack, asked/added “maybe, but we heard a lot of wolves howling.” Daddy responded with a command, “Mack, I want you to take the two big dogs and head over across the Midway road just north of Red Hill and wait on the race to come to you. When they get close, I want you to turn the dogs lose, and they’ll catch whatever it is pretty quickly and kill it. Whatever animal they are chasing is circling around and will probably come straight at you.” This command was given with such certitude that Mack turned immediately and was out of sight in the dark in a heartbeat, the answer to his original question & statement somewhere in the partial ether.

Since he had from 1 to 1.5 miles of distance to cover and not much time to get there, Mack was in a hurry. One thing for certain, my family had plenty of stamina and a little walk of a mile or two was nothing to them as they often walked more than 10 miles on a hunting trip. Their walking was done with heavy clothing, boots, and perhaps each even carried a heavy hunting rifle and occasionally held a hound or two on a leash – no need for gymnasium workouts if you did that all your life. I had shorter legs than the others, and I had to struggle to keep up with any of them. Fortunately for the next half-hour we would walk a short distance and then stop to discern the direction the hounds were taking. During these interludes I usually shuffled about in the dark, since I was nervously looking over my shoulder because I was concerned that something was going to jump me from behind a bush.

We followed the race in a general circular arc and along the way Daddy occasionally yelled encouragement or tooted different signals on his hunting horn to the hounds. These also alerted Mack about our position, and he was undoubtedly nearing the designated spot by this time. I occasionally yelled along the way as well, but my yells were made when limbs and branches whacked me in the face or I stumbled over something, and there was plenty of opportunity for such. Daddy would have walked straight over the peak of Mt. Everest in order to keep apace of his hounds and track the details of the race. However, knowledge that the animal was racing toward the pack for protection was comforting to me because it meant that Mama Wolf probably wasn’t behind every bush I encountered.

Another half-hour of walking and it was perfectly clear that the prey was headed straight at Mack’s presumed position, and Daddy picked up the pace. It was all I could do to keep up with him since he was about 6’1”, and I was less than 5’ at the time, but I wasn’t going to stray too far behind. There’s no substitute for a fear-inspired adrenalin flow to increase one’s strength and stamina! About the time we got even with the Big Pool, just south of Mr. Pollan’s farm house, we heard Mack unleash the two fresh hounds and they began immediately to bark as if they were sight racing after the prey (that’s what I was told). Now he picked up the pace toward the sound, and although Daddy was about 50 at the time and smoked roll-your-own cigarettes around the clock, it was all I could do to keep pace. While I huffed and puffed to keep up, the prey must have been frightened out of its wits since it took the hounds on an extended tour up through the pines on Red Hill and then back around to the west and then north generally toward the original destination, or what I perceived as its original destination. This was good because Daddy slowed to a fast walk, and I caught up. By now the dawn was lighting up the surroundings, and I could see better, which was somewhat comforting.

Finally, the prey circled back west of Mr. Pollan’s house; such was its fatal mistake. I could hear Mack yelling instructions and encouragements to the hounds, and just about the time we crossed the Midway Road, the barking changed to baying. This meant that the hounds had surrounded the prey, and occasionally I could hear a hound let out a squeal. Soon we arrived on the scene, and the hounds had indeed backed the prey, an almost grown wolf, into the side of a dry creek bed. Its backside was actually protected by the steep bank of the dry creek and by roots protruding from a tree growing partially out of the bank. The hounds charged the animal from a span of perhaps 45 degrees, if that, and they were paying the price and weren’t making much headway toward capturing or killing the wolf. Naturally, Buck was in the middle of all this, but he was pretty cautious with his charges.

It was a riveting experience, and every time a hound lunged at the wolf, the wolf’s head swiveled that direction faster than your eyes could follow. I would hear the squeal of the hound as the wolf’s long pointed snout and jaws snapped shut on its head, ear, jowl etc. About the only moving parts in the fight were the wolf’s head swiveling to and fro and hounds lunging into the fray. Daddy concluded that there were too many hounds lunging at the wolf and that they were interfering with each other, and the wolf would eventually slash most of them. Thus, he and Mack began to leash hounds and tie them to bushes away from the fight to make space for a few hounds, including those Mack had leashed for the duration of the race. Once most of the hounds were out of the way, the smaller number of hounds continued the fight. Of course, Buck was still in the fray as he was impossible to catch, but he was pretty smart and kept out of the way of both hounds and wolf.

Since the noisy fight transpired within about 50 yards of the Midway Road, several farmers driving to Detroit heard the noise and stopped, and soon they crowded about to watch the fight. With more room to operate, it wasn’t really much of a fight since the hounds would charge as one, with about the same mentality of linebackers of a football team. They didn’t seem to care how much the wolf bared his teeth nor how deep the teeth sank into their flesh, they went for the kill. Eventually they wore down the wolf and then about as quickly as one could sing the first line of the The Yellow Rose of Texas, one hound grabbed the flank of the young male wolf, and when the wolf turned to pare this offense another hound grabbed the wolf by the nape of the neck, and in a matter of seconds the fight was over.

The rest of the hunt was centered round getting the hounds back home, fed and tended to. Daddy inspected each one of them and patched up their wounds, mostly with some kind of salve and kerosene. The hounds were tired from chasing the wolf roughly 5 or 6 miles and after a few licks of their wounds they went fast asleep, even in the hot weather. Such was the experience of a young fellow in rural Texas bereft of telephones, running water, movie houses, electricity, radios, TVs, and other modern appliances. It’s too bad that others have not had an opportunity to experience such events and activities.


This is a portion of Red River County, Texas showing the birthplaces of Russ Fodge and Sons. The purple line is the track of the wolf hunt. Before the mid 1950's none of the roads were paved, with the exception of US 82.