As I guy who has spent a lot of time in Canada's wilderness these past 40 years, most of it in wolf country, the wolf behaviour depicted in this movie is ridiculous.
It begins with a scene in which a lone timber wolf charges three grown men standing near a truck. No wolf would ever behave like this. Despite all the time I've spent in areas with large wolf populations (with lots of tracks around), I've only ever caught fleeting glimpses of three or four of them,and that's when I was by myself, unarmed and completely vulnerable.
The idea that a pack of wolves would attempt to prey on a group of men is also ridiculous. There has been only one documented predatory wolf attack in North America in the past 200 years, and that involved a large pack and a solitary hiker in Saskatchewan a few years ago.
As any wolf biologist would tell you, you can walk up to a pack of wolves feeding on a fresh kill, completely unarmed, and the wolves will scatter. They'd stay and fight a grizzly, but one whiff/sight of human and they'd quickly turn and run.
The size of the wolves in this movie is another misrepresentation. The biggest timber wolf on record, when they emptied 20 pounds of meat from his stomach, was a male weighing 120 pounds. The average male is around 90 pounds. A lone wolf would be a very poor match for a 200 pound man armed with a knife.
The plot revolved around the wolf's protection of their den. Stupid. Wolves only den when the alpha female gives birth in the spring. And they sure wouldn't be driving the men toward the den in that situation - quite the opposite. Nor do they scatter the bones of all their kills around the den - that would only draw other predators, like grizzlies. Instead, the adults eat at site of the kill and regurgitate the meat for the pups when they get back to the den.
Finally, our so-called wolf expert devised all sorts of idiotic defences against the wolves, but ignored the one thing any group of true woodsmen would do in a similar situation (i.e. facing wolves on crack). That's use their knives to make spears. A group of men with spears would be impregnable to a pack of wolves, no matter how large, as no predator likes to risk injury.
Dumb, dumb, dumb. If you're going to spend millions on a movie, wouldn't it make sense to spend $10 on a good wolf book first?
It begins with a scene in which a lone timber wolf charges three grown men standing near a truck. No wolf would ever behave like this. Despite all the time I've spent in areas with large wolf populations (with lots of tracks around), I've only ever caught fleeting glimpses of three or four of them,and that's when I was by myself, unarmed and completely vulnerable.
The idea that a pack of wolves would attempt to prey on a group of men is also ridiculous. There has been only one documented predatory wolf attack in North America in the past 200 years, and that involved a large pack and a solitary hiker in Saskatchewan a few years ago.
As any wolf biologist would tell you, you can walk up to a pack of wolves feeding on a fresh kill, completely unarmed, and the wolves will scatter. They'd stay and fight a grizzly, but one whiff/sight of human and they'd quickly turn and run.
The size of the wolves in this movie is another misrepresentation. The biggest timber wolf on record, when they emptied 20 pounds of meat from his stomach, was a male weighing 120 pounds. The average male is around 90 pounds. A lone wolf would be a very poor match for a 200 pound man armed with a knife.
The plot revolved around the wolf's protection of their den. Stupid. Wolves only den when the alpha female gives birth in the spring. And they sure wouldn't be driving the men toward the den in that situation - quite the opposite. Nor do they scatter the bones of all their kills around the den - that would only draw other predators, like grizzlies. Instead, the adults eat at site of the kill and regurgitate the meat for the pups when they get back to the den.
Finally, our so-called wolf expert devised all sorts of idiotic defences against the wolves, but ignored the one thing any group of true woodsmen would do in a similar situation (i.e. facing wolves on crack). That's use their knives to make spears. A group of men with spears would be impregnable to a pack of wolves, no matter how large, as no predator likes to risk injury.
Dumb, dumb, dumb. If you're going to spend millions on a movie, wouldn't it make sense to spend $10 on a good wolf book first?