The Wolf (Book 1)

Hunters

I let out a howl purely out of joy and soon after I begun Chris joined in. I stopped howling and opened my eyes as I started to run forwards towards the path down to the lake. Chris was following closely behind and I couldn’t feel better right now.

As the wind rushed through my fur and the scent of Mule Deer filled my nostrils, at least I thought it was Mule deer, I could taste freedom, this was how it felt, to be free.  To run as yourself, with no worry of being found, killed, or tracked by anyone. Freedom, freedom was what I had sought out my whole life and now that I had it, I had no intention of letting go. I felt stronger than before though, it was weird, it was as if being here gave me more strength than I ever had as a wolf.

I quickly looked back at Chris to check up on how he was, and from the expression on his face he was feeling the same thing I was feeling right now, a sudden rise in strength, speed and agility.

I remembered that when we took the path back up from the lake to camp the path went in one direction before then making a right angle turn to the right towards the lake, so theoretically if we cut through the forest it would be a lot quicker and save us some running.

I made my decision and veered off the path and through the forest. The trees were nicely spaced out and the ground was soft dirt with a thin layer of pine needles and some pine cones here and there. As I ran forwards I tried to visualise where I would end up, and whereabouts at the lake we would come to, but most importantly when the forest would end and where the clearing would start.

As I leapt over a fallen down pine I heard the call of a female Mule Deer, wait, how did I know it was female? It was strange, telling an animal by the sound it made, as a human I had never been able to do so, probably because I had no experience but as a wolf it was like listening to someone talk and from their voice being able to know if it was a man or a woman talking. Ahead of us the line of trees seemed to stop so I slowed down in order not to make too much noise in case the Mule Deer were near the lake; last thing I wanted was the deer to know we were here before we had a chance to pick one.

That was a dumb thought because I already knew the deer would be near the lake, I could smell them, and hear them for that matter of fact now we had stopped running. I lowered my body into a stalking position as I crept towards the edge of the clearing with Chris following behind me like he always did, mimicking my movements precisely to make sure he wasn’t detected.

In my sights were a small herd of Mule Deer. I did a quick headcount and counted two males, five females, and four younger ones, a total of eleven deer. I scanned the herd and to my disappointment they were all nice and healthy. Fortunately for us, there was an older female who seemed like an ok prey to go take down, not that we couldn’t take down any of them because we could, I managed to take down a male Red deer back in the UK and he weighed a ton, so how hard could Mule Deer be.

I took on step forwards out into the open and made a break for it. I still worked in metric sometimes and I guessed they were only about 100 meters away. The doe I wanted to take down was at the side of the lake and I didn’t really see any trouble with hunting her down.

To my surprise the deer all started to run for their lives before were even 75 meters away, how did they know?  In the UK they ran when you got close...

Then it all clicked into place, this was Idaho, the prey here knew about wolves unlike in the UK, these were smarter than the dumb deer we had back home. Why did I just call the UK home? It wasn’t my home anymore.  I growled slightly, angry at the fact I called the UK home and for the fact that now they were running away. Chris and I were now side by side, it must have looked pretty cool, two wolves running towards some deer, like the sort of thing you saw on documentaries.