The Turnbo Manuscripts

by Silas Claiborne Turnbo
1844-1925


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TIEING A GROWN WOLF FOOT WITH A ROPE AND
PULLING IT OUT OF A CAVE ALIVE
By S. C. Turnbo


Mr. J. W. (Jim) Jones, son of Hugh Jones and the present proprietor of the Jones Ferry at the mouth of Music Creek on White River, give me the following account of taking wolves out of a cave on Trimbles Creek in Marion County, Ark. He said that after he had taken 5 young wolves from this cave for 4 years in succession and when the 5th year rolled around, said Mr. Jones, "I concluded to break up the den and one day in the spring of the 5th year I and two sons of Asa Yocum, Mike and John, and Oliver Risley, John Clark and Felix Jones went to the den to make a clean sweep of the young wolves that the old ones were rearing in the cave. I and Felix crawled into the opening and discovered one of the old ones in there which was in a narrow part of the cavern and we crawfished back to the entrance. After we all talked the matter over I got a stout but short pole and a grass rope and with these I and Felix went back into the cave and found that the wolf had crouched down in a crevice of rock and when I crawled in reach of her I placed one end of the pole against the wolf and pressed her against the rock while Felix who was only ten years old tied one end of the rope to one of the wolf’s hind feet. She made but little resistance. After getting her foot tied we both went out of the cave backward again and the other men pulled her out of the den. The animal was so bad cowed that she made no attempt to fight. We kept her a few hours at the cave before we killed her. Soon after we had dragged the old wolf out alive the whelps re-treated further back into the cavern and we were not able to reach them that day but in a day or two thereafter we returned back to the den again and succeeded in slaying three of the young ones and shot and killed a grown one which broke up the den for a few years at least. The total number of young wolves taken out of this cave during the 5 years was 23 whelps and one old one, and the one shot at the cave made a total of 25," said Mr. Jones.

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