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

Farley recounts being five years old and entranced with three catfish he tried to keep alive. He put them in his grandmother’s toilet. In the middle of the night, she discovered the presence of the fish, which scarred her for life but also stirred Farley’s interest in creatures further down the food chain and how he could champion them.

He details his training as a biological scientist in Canada who receives a summons to Ottawa to work for the Canadian government in the Dominion Wildlife Service. While some of his colleagues study things like tooth decay in groundhogs, Farley finds himself assigned to investigate wolves. Canadian sportsmen had claimed that wolves killed so many deer that hunters had nothing to hunt.

Having received his orders to leave Ottawa and go to a very remote region to study wolves, Farley charters a plane to fly to Churchill, Manitoba. His superiors assign him a large amount of government gear such that the twin-engine plane can’t hold any more passengers. The list of materials, which he calls his “desiderata,” contains many superfluous things he knows he will never use, including weapons, traps, and poison gas.

He searches around Churchill to find a bush pilot who will take him into the wilderness. As he waits, he interviews people in town who say they are wolf experts. Much of the information they give him about wolves is bizarre, ludicrous, and unhelpful. He writes, “I discovered that, although wolves reputedly devour several hundred people in the Arctic Zone every year, they will always refrain from attacking a pregnant Eskimo” (24). Farley says that he got drunk and filed a report based on the information he learned in Churchill, which is still part of the official lupine project report.

A new pilot with a decrepit airplane, formerly a military training aircraft, lands near the beer hall where Farley spends a fair amount of time. He convinces the pilot to take him northwest, where he can study wolves. The skis on which the plane lands are mechanically unsound, with one side of the hydraulics continually collapsing. Once loaded, the plane has a difficult time taking off. Farley has not told the pilot that the canoe strapped to the bottom of the plane contains dozens of cases of beer. Once in the air, the plane cannot ascend above 300 feet. They fly northwest for three hours in dense cloud cover and descend from the clouds to discover they are only about 30 feet off the ground. The pilot lands on one ski. After dumping Farley and his desiderata and without turning the engine off, the pilot turns around and takes off.

Left alone on a frozen lake, Farley consults his instructions. He is to establish a permanent base and make contact with wolves, study their habitat and the distances they travel, count how many there are, and record how they behave. Told he is to travel by canoe, Farley realizes that, with the lake frozen, travel by canoe is not an option.

He sets up his radio to report in and seek new instructions. Though the radio has only a 20-mile range, due to atmospheric conditions he picks up a short-wave operator in Peru who speaks a little English. Farley conveys a 10-word report to relay to his department in Ottawa. It goes to the wrong department. Months later, by accident, someone realizes the message is from him and forwards it to the right people. Because it came from Peru, his superiors believe Farley is in Tierra del Fuego, near the southern extremity of South America. They respond by sending several messages to report to Ottawa immediately, although no message ever comes to him. His radio battery dies after six hours.

The howling of wolves in the distance terrifies Farley. He decides to hide underneath the upturned canoe and hope the wolf pack will pass him by. When the wolves come upon his gear and sniff around, he hears the voice of a human being. Peeking out from under the canoe, he sees a young man with 14 huskies.

The young man Farley sees is Mike, an 18-year-old trapper who is both white and Inuit. He learns Mike is one of only a few humans in a 10,000-square-mile area. Farley contracts with Mike to transport his desiderata to Mike’s cabin on the shores of a nearby river. He rents Mike’s cabin as a staging area for the project throughout its duration. Mike is uneasy with Farley, whose scientific gear only makes him more suspicious. He cannot fully grasp why Farley is there. Soon Mike leaves, saying he is going to see his family.

With the spring thaw, the nearby river floods the cabin with about a foot of rancid water. In response, Farley goes to the other side of the river and pitches a tent. While residing there, he hears a husky pup groaning late one evening. Stealthily tracking the sound, Farley climbs up a bluff and comes face-to-face with a fully-grown arctic wolf lying six feet away and staring back at him. After some time looking at one another, the wolf springs to its feet and runs away. Rather than going to his tent, Farley goes to the cabin and sleeps atop the table.

His encounter with the wolf disrupts Farley’s sleep throughout the night. The next morning, he decides to pursue the wolf and locate its den. Taking his rifle, he crosses a bog and finds the wolf’s tracks. When he sees the size of the wolf’s prints, Farley realizes the paws are six inches across. The recognition of the wolf’s massive size makes him much less enthusiastic about tracking it, plus he did not bring his compass.

Farley goes back to the cabin to clean it up and read his information regarding the arctic wolf. In addition to its massive size, the wolf has jaws and teeth capable of grinding down the bones of any mammal. Farley determines that he will go out again the next day and hunt the wolf. He travels with his compass, rifle, shotgun, and binoculars. After crossing the bog and climbing the rocky bluff, he uses binoculars and sees a sandy esker. By chance, he notices one, then two plume-like objects moving in concert. He discovers that these are the tails of two wolves.

As he watches them play, Farley understands they are a mated pair. He watches the female wolf disappear into a den. Walking higher up the bluff to get a better view, Farley realizes the male wolf sees him and watches him closely. This startles Farley, who backs down the hillside and returns to the cabin.

Determined to observe the wolves from a hidden location, Farley places a high-powered binocular telescope behind a rock face 400 yards from the wolf den and conceals himself so he can look over the rocks surreptitiously. Throughout the day, he sees no activity around the den. In the afternoon, he stands up to relieve himself and realizes the two adult wolves are about 20 feet away. Apparently, they have been watching him the entire time. Indignant, Farley shouts at the wolves, who rise and trot away.

Feeling foolish and undignified, Farley decides the next day to go over to the esker himself and examine the wolf’s den. This time he takes his rifle, pistol, binoculars, and camera. Farley discovers the den is so well hidden that he almost walks past it. As he stands above it, he sees four cubs that are so cute he does not realize they are wolves at first. Suddenly he hears the cry of an adult wolf, startling him so that he slides down the sandy surface of the esker, almost falling backward, and then almost falling forward. In the process, he jams his rifle barrel in the sand, clogging it and rendering it useless. When he comes to rest at the bottom of the esker, Farley looks around and sees three adult wolves gazing down at him curiously. In a huff, he gets into his canoe and paddles away.

Farley recognizes that the wolves are observing him instead of him studying them. He decides that many of his instructions are pointless, and much of the information given to him about wolves is inaccurate. Farley determines he will become an unbiased observer of the wolves.

To observe the wolves, Farley takes a tent and a few items and sets up in reasonably close proximity to the den to observe them without interfering. The fact that they always seem to know exactly where he is and do not care that he is watching them bothers Farley. Since it is mosquito season, Farley spends most of his time in the tent, watching to the extent he can.

Soon he tires of their ignoring his presence. He decides to intrude into their area. Much as a dog marks its territory, Farley marks a three-acre plot around his tent, part of which crosses one of the wolves’ regular paths. When the alpha male wolf smells what has happened, he sits down and thinks the situation over. He stares at Farley’s tent, then rises and marks his own path, leaving space for Farley but showing the area the human should not enter.

After establishing their mutual boundaries, Farley settles in to make observations. He eventually discovers from Mike that the area’s human residents long knew about this family of wolves and others before it. Wolves inhabited this den for many generations. Apparently, foxes first hollowed out the den, then continued to live in the area, though they had other dens. Foxes sometimes took food from the cache that the wolves kept hidden in crevices about half a mile from their den.

As he watches, Farley gives names to the wolves. He becomes intrigued by their distinct personalities and behaviors. George, the alpha male, is the stoic, perfect father to the wolf cubs. Angeline is the mother who is beautiful and very tolerant of the wolf cubs. Uncle Albert is the third mature wolf. Often, he rushes to the rescue of Angeline when she has had too much of the playful chewing of the cubs.