I have more evidence of the same kind from the region which I described
in "Northern Trails"; but I give these three simply to show that what
one man discovers as a surprising trait of some individual wolf or deer
may be common enough when we open our eyes to see. The fact that wolves
do not always or often kill in this way has nothing to do with the
question. I know one small region where old wolves generally hunt in
pairs and, so far as I can discover, one wolf always trips or throws the
game, while the other invariably does the killing at the throat. In
another region, including a part of Algonquin Park, in Ontario, I have
the records of several deer killed by wolves in a single winter; and in
every case the wolf slipped up behind his game and cut the femoral
artery, or the inner side of the hind leg, and then drew back quietly,
allowing the deer to bleed to death.

The point is, that because a thing is unusual or interesting it is not
necessarily false, as my dogmatic critics would have you believe. I have
studied animals, not as species but as individuals, and have recorded
some things which other and better naturalists have overlooked; but I
have sought for facts, first of all, as zealously as any biologist, and
have recorded only what I have every reason to believe is true. That
these facts are unusual means simply that we have at last found natural
history to be interesting, just as the discovery of unusual men and
incidents gives charm and meaning to the records of our humanity. There
may be honest errors or mistakes in these books--and no one tries half
so hard as the author to find and correct them--but meanwhile the fact
remains that, though six volumes of the Wood Folk books have already
been published, only three slight errors have thus far been pointed out,
and these were promptly and gratefully acknowledged.