Never Cry Wolf

Never Cry Wolf Summary | Plot Summary

Farley Mowat is chosen by his Department to investigate the slaughter of large quantities of caribou in the arctic. According to polls conducted on trappers and hunters in the arctic, the increase in caribou murders is directly correlated to a rise in the number of arctic wolves, which kill without purpose.

Farley, left alone in the arctic to study the murderous habits of wolves and to determine just how vicious the wolves are, meets a half-Eskimo, half-white trapper named Mike who allows Mowat to use his cabin as a base of operations. Mowat soon finds a wolf den located near the cabin and begins studying the habits of the wolves that live there. After several face-to-face encounters with these wolves, Farley begins to see them not as the murderous predators of myth, but as rational, conservative and family-oriented beings.

Farley is later joined by one of Mike's friends, an Inuit named Ootek, who has peculiar, wolf-like abilities, including the ability to understand wolves. Farley and Ootek further study the wolves, traveling by canoe to investigate the vast wilderness of the arctic. After studying the conservative hunting habits of arctic wolves, Mowat discovers that a far more deadly and vicious animal is responsible for the slaughter of the caribou.