The Turnbo Manuscripts
by Silas Claiborne Turnbo
1844-1925
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A WOLF ATTACKS A YEARLING CALF IN THE YARD
By S. C. Turnbo
In recounting incidents of life among the wild beasts in the ante bellum days in Boone County, Ark., Mr. Dave Dunlap, a pioneer settler in the Carrollton hollow in the county mentioned, related the following, "You would say that it is hard to believe when I tell you that wolves would boldly enter into a yard around a cabin and attack stock, but it is true. I have a vivid recollection of this kind myself one bright moonlit night before we had retired to bed. Late in the afternoon we turned a yearling calf into the yard to prevent wolves from killing it. At the time I speak of we were living in the hollow one mile above the Carrollton hollow schoolhouse. That night while we were all sitting around the fire we heard a big racket commence in the back yard. The calf was bleating and we could hear its hoofs hitting the frozen ground while coming around to the front yard. The women rushed to the door and saw the calf running across the yard bellowing loudly with a large yellow wolf clinging to it. The women screamed and made more noise than the calf and wolf did. I snatched my shotgun from the rack and hurried out into the yard, but before I had time to shoot the wolf it released the calf and leaped over the fence into the field. I ran up to the fence with the intention of shooting the fleeing animal before it had time to escape, but a horse that belonged to my brother, William Dunlap, was standing at the fence on the inside of the field and when I pulled the hammer of the gunlock back the clicking noise scared the horse and he wheeled and ran 100 yards just behind the wolf which prevented me from shooting at it. There was not a dog on the place or there might have been more noise made than was. The calf was not seriously hurt but it was terribly scared."
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