Forest Service employee claims wolves "not afraid of people"
"They didn't seem afraid of people," said Ed Holloway, a range management specialist with the U.S. Forest Service after coming across the pack of Mexican gray wolf hybrids with their kill on Sunday. "They weren't as wild as I'd like to see them," he told a reporter from the Silver City Daily Press in a Dec. 29 story.
Holloway was driving back from an archery hunt in the Arizona/New Mexico border region when he came across the hybrids. The first he spotted was eyeing a group of horses in a corral, while another sunned nearby. In all, he watched six of the animals for 15 minutes, and claimed they were in no hurry to leave the area were they had just killed a pregnant cow.
When finally they left, Holloway told the Daily Press, "What worried me more than anything is that the wolves were going right down there into the cow camp ... where there's pickups and trailers and new construction, and all sorts of activity."
"If it took more than 15 minutes for these animals to back away from full grown men, I shudder to think what the results would have been were a child or small woman in the party," said G.J. Sagi, outdoor writer and friend of the Tucson man forced to killed a wolf to protect his family nearly two years ago.
"Couple the fact that these hybrids are capable of taking down cows and elk, which weigh significantly more than humans, with refusal to back away from a kill for a full 15 minutes -- despite the presence of hunters -- and it's painfully obvious it's only a matter of time before one of these chance encounters turns deadly again."
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For more information, contact Guy Sagi, who was nicknamed America's most notorious outdoor writer by animal extremists after he came to the aid of his family friend, by calling 520/584-0300.