Wyoming History: How The Custer Wolf Got The Best Of A Famed Outlaw Hunter

It was 1920 and the white wolf continued to roam the region, seeming to mock the government hunter who had been tailing him for eight long months.

Despite his white fur, stockmen knew that he was a small grey wolf terrorizing the countryside that had been nicknamed the Custer wolf for the county he claimed as his own in the Black Hills. He was a lone wolf flanked by two coyotes that acted as his lookouts and added to the wolf’s mystique.

The hunter who stalked him, Harry Percival “H.P” Williams, had earned the nickname “High Powered” for his shooting skill with his Springfield rifle. He was a former cowboy and had a reputation in Buffalo, Wyoming, for run-ins with the Hole-in-the-Wall gang and other notorious characters in his early years.

He was also known as one of the best trappers and wolf hunters on the government payroll and had been called in to once and for all end the Custer wolf’s reign of terror.

The Custer wolf had eluded others at every turn and was on a destructive spree that spanned over 100 miles.

The Infamous Wolf

The Custer wolf first appeared in South Dakota in 1911 and almost immediately became a menace.

“The Custer wolf’s early history is a blank,” wrote John Dickinson Sherman for The Fulton Democrat. “The territory terrorized by the Custer wolf is about 60 miles long by 40 wide. Anywhere in this territory — here tonight and the next night on the other end of it – the Custer wolf was at home.”

For nine years, this wolf ran through the Black Hills, killing cattle and causing an estimated $25,000 in damages and loss to local ranchers, valued at nearly half a million dollars today.

The main area terrorized by this wolf was Custer County, South Dakota. In the early part of the 1900s, the wilderness had already been transformed into a popular tourist destination and by 1920, Wind Cave National Park alone had over 26,000 visitors and over 8,000 private automobiles which all went through the Custer wolf’s hunting ground.

“Credulous people said he was a charmed thing,” humorist and poet Dixon Merritt wrote. “Others attributed his immunity to a wisdom greater than beast ever before possessed.”

Merritt was employed with the U.S. Department of Agriculture when he was hired to write a press release about the Custer wolf. His story was picked up by hundreds of papers across the nation and quoted verbatim, especially his over-the-top prose that described the fear that had been incited by the wolf.

He had said that there was not a man throughout that region who did not feel a shiver run down between his shoulder blades. When alone or in the dark, these toughened men of the west thought of this grey devil of the desert and everyone feared him because of his uncanny elusiveness and killing ability.

For nine years this wolf had lived as an outlaw, Merritt wrote.

The Custer wolf was seen as the cruelest and most successful animal outlaw the range country had ever known. When he killed for food, he was known to take the best animals for himself. Other times, he killed for the mere sake of killing and would wound cattle, breaking their legs, biting off their tails, mutilating them in unspeakable ways.

“His cruelty was surpassed only by his cunning,” Merritt said. “Here tonight, tomorrow night he devastated a range half a hundred miles away.”

The Custer wolf loped through every kind of danger and spurned them all. He sniffed at the subtlest poison and passed it by. The most adroitly concealed trap was as clear to him as a mirror in the sunshine. Old hunters, unerring shots, drew the bead on him and saw him glide away unharmed.

In 1916, the wolf’s mate had been killed. He never took another and many people believed that he devoted himself to revenge for her death. He was the embodiment of a lone wolf.

After his mate was killed, he then attached to himself two coyotes, not as equals, but as servants, according to Merritt. The Custer wolf never permitted them to come near him, and they could feed from his kills only after he himself had finished. They travelled far out on his flanks, giving him warning of approaching danger and adding to the atmosphere of mystery that surrounded him.

Tall tales began to circulate and people began to believe that he was not a wolf. They believed that nature had perpetuated a monstrosity, half wolf and half mountain lion, possessing the craftiness of both and the cruelty of hell.

In public opinion he had all the qualities of the werewolf of old-world legends.

The Hunter

Poison, dogs, trappers and sportsmen hunters had all failed to catch the elusive wolf. A bounty of $500, $9,000 in today’s dollars, was placed on his head. Yet no one was able to collect it.

At one point, a large group of riders had formed a circle around the wolf and closed in. He still managed to escape and some of the stockmen announced in resignation that they would have to board the wolf for the rest of his life. In desperation, others more hopeful sent for a government hunter.

In March 1920, the USDA sent High Powered Williams from the Bureau of Biological Survey to capture the wolf. He was told to stay after the Custer wolf until he was taken, no matter how long that would take.

Shane B. Dunning, a history columnist for the Powder River Examiner in Montana, wrote that Williams was an excellent horseman born in Colorado who came to Buffalo, Wyoming in the early 1900s.

“Williams worked for several area ranches and even had a run-in with Arapahoe Brown, the man who led the attack against the Invaders in the Johnson County War,” Dunning wrote.

Another time, according to Dunning, Williams had a run-in with Tom O’Day, a known member of the Hole-in-the-Wall gang.

Dunning wrote that while at the Sheridan Inn, Williams hung a new hat on the rack before entering the dining room. When he exited, the young cowboy discovered that his hat was gone.

“Tom O’Day has your hat, he’s drinking and mean,” the proprietor of the inn said. “Don’t bother about it, I’ll get you another hat.”

Williams didn’t listen and had a ‘discussion’ with the infamous outlaw. When that didn’t produce results, he punched O’Day.

“Right from my knees, up under the jaw and he went down and out,” Williams later said. “I picked up my hat, took the gun off him and handed it over to the bar keeper.”

At the time, he was oblivious to the fact that Tom O’Day was a notorious member of the Hole-in-the-Wall gang. The two would meet later in a saloon, where the outlaw acknowledged being in the wrong and apologized.

“He was a pretty good guy”, Williams recalled.

It was this same type of tenacity to recover his hat that made Williams a determined hunter. Like other cowboys, Williams had spent his winters trapping predators for bounties, and he quickly developed a reputation for being an effective wolfer.

By 1920, he was employed by the USDA Biological Survey’s Predator Control program and had several other hunters working for him such as George Ostrom, a future pioneer artist who learned to draw wolves during his time with Williams.

While adept at using traps, Williams’ preferred method of killing wolves was his Springfield rifle. That was how he earned his nickname “High Powered” Williams, a play on the “H.P.” initials he often used instead of “Harry Percival.”

Williams believed that the Custer wolf was especially dangerous because another hunter had killed his mate and cubs four years prior. This had made him a ‘lone wolf’ and extremely unpredictable.

The Final Hunt

Williams took with him a bunch of traps but, as the old wolf was known to be trap wise, he expected to depend mostly on his rifle. As things turned out he required both the traps and the rifle to get the wolf when he was finally taken, after eight long months, on Oct. 11, 1920.

In January 1921, Dixon Merritt released his famous press release, “The Custer wolf is dead.”

“He was the master criminal of the animal world,” Merritt wrote. “Throughout the region around Custer South Dakota that day, the telephone lines were busier than they were on the day the armistice was signed.”

Merritt recorded the story of the hunt in William’s own words when the predatory inspector reported the facts to the Biological Survey.

When Williams first went to the country where the wolf ranged, he tried to find fresh tracks, but without success. He asked some of the men who had lost stock just where the wolf made his headquarters in their section. They said the wolf may have had quarters anywhere within a section 40 miles wide and 65 miles long.

Williams went into the hills west of Pringle and found that the wolf was staying around some old dens in the Pelgar Mountains.

To attract the wolf, Williams scented up the soles of his shoes and started stringing out his traps.

The wolf got on his tail that night and showed signs of excitement as he thought it was in the presence of a possible mate in his neighborhood. He followed the scent entirely around the line and then, returning to the Pelgar Mountains, cleared out two old dens, and made a new one which ran back into the hill for about fifty feet.

Hide And Seek

On April Fools Day, Williams had his first glimpse of the wolf but was unable to get a shot at him. The coyotes were indeed acting as the wolf’s bodyguards, traveling from 100 to 200 yards on the flank of their master. They would warn him of danger by taking flight.

At first, Williams did not shoot the coyotes, worried that the shots would alert the wolf. However, when he realized that they were warning the wolf of his presence, he finally shot them, hoping that he would then catch the Custer wolf off guard.

The wolf instead played hide and seek with him. After making a kill, he would go some distance, back track a few rods to a point where he could keep under cover and watch the hunter on his trail.

“Though this is a common trait of a bear,” Williams said. “I have never before known a wolf to do it.”

All through that spring and into summer, Williams was taunted by the wolf that kept just out of range. He disappeared during the month of July when he was nearly caught in a trap and scared off. Then he reappeared in the area, killing and wounding a small herd of cattle.

Williams found some of these cattle, took the trail of the wolf and followed him all day on a fresh track. This led up to the mouth of a canyon and, knowing that the wolf would be taking a sleep after his big fill, Williams tied his horse and started in.

Just then two horsemen rode up at breakneck speed and called to Williams that they had found a yearling steer killed by the wolf. Williams motioned them to go back but they did not understand what he meant, and he was forced to return to meet them.

When he returned to the trail, he found the place where the wolf had bedded down to sleep. The noise made by the horsemen had given him the alarm and he had gone back down the canyon very close to Williams and escaped.

In October, he stepped into another trap and once more, escaped.

Reign Of Terror Ends

Williams set more traps and this time, one of his traps got a good grip on the Custer wolf.

He ran with it about 150 yards when the hook caught on a tree, but this did not stop him. He broke the swivel on the trap and ran on with it on his front foot.

“I trailed him three miles, got a shot on him and got him,” Williams said. “He had been so lucky I was afraid the gun would fail to shoot, but it worked okay.”

Once he had the Custer wolf, Williams realized that the scourge of the Black Hills was smaller than the average male wolf, weighed 98 pounds and measured just six feet from tip to tip; 11 inches from toe to hock and had a tail 14 inches long.

“His teeth would be good for fifteen years longer,” Williams said. “He broke some of them off on the trap but aside from that they were in good condition. He is an old wolf with a fur that is almost white.”

Williams was heralded as a hero after his longest wolf hunt was now over. He had a deep respect for his prey and saw it as his job to protect the cattle and men that were being terrorized by this lone wolf.

In an ironic twist of fate, one of his hunters who worked side by side with High Powered Williams to kill these wolves, became a wolf advocate. George Ostrom had helped track the Custer wolf, Wolf Mountain wolves and the Black Thunder wolves.

He learned their habits and decades after the hunts of the 1920s, he assisted in locating the descendants of the wolves he and Williams had killed.

As for the Custer wolf, his legend lives on and he will always be remembered thanks to the prose of Dixon Merritt, who wrote the first wolf obituary in the history of the West.