Paul was running the dogs when a doe jumped out and fell into the snow. It was a beautiful white tailed deer and the snow was around two feet deep. The deer appeared to be frightened and the dogs were reacting to her fright. He saw why she was scared. Wolves were present. They were hunting the doe in a pack. The dogs tried to follow but he was able to wedge them. He watched the terrified doe. The wolves were finally on top of the doe. Watching the wolves kill the large animal was terrible. He had not seen it before and the experience was so awful that Paul said he would always remember it.
"Wolves do not kill "clean.” It is a slow ripping, terrible death fro the prey "(6)
He watched the wolves tear her apart piece by piece while she was still alive. He had to hold the dogs back. He yelled at them to leave her. The wolves noticed him once the deer was down. They studied him. He realized that he should not have yelled. It was out of place. The wolves were covered in blood as well as the snow.
Paul began to realize then that wolves were just wolves. They did not know they were wolves and that:
"they were not wrong or right, they just are."(8)
Form the experience with the wolves, came the desire for Paul to learn more about nature and animals.
"And it started with blood."(8)
To make some money Paul decides to trap for the state. He was running traps on foot by himself. He was not very successful trying to accomlish laying trap lines on foot and in snow on skis. He had some friends hwo hard about his problem and so one of them gave him four dogs named Storm, Yogi, Obeah, and Colmbia. They also gave him a broken sled. He had no idea how to run dogs but once he fixed the sled he started to learn.
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