Up North, the Cry of 'Wolf' Echoes With Anticipation

"Isn't it great to be living on Earth when this reoccupation is occurring?" asks Harrigan, slapping his dashboard. "The woods are filling up again."

No one has charted the wolf's precise path south into New England. Thousands of wolves reside in northern Quebec, in the Laurentian Mountains and the arboreal forests that stretch north until yielding to tundra.

Wolves run 75 to 90 pounds and live in packs of about six, New England wildlife biologists say. Each pack is run by an alpha male and female, who are the fraternity and sorority presidents of the Canis lupus world. They brook no challenge. Young wolves -- known as dispersers -- wander off. A few cross the St. Lawrence River, probably on winter ice.

From there, the wolves wander south into to the hills of southern Quebec, just north of New England. At least one pack seems to have formed there.

It is not known how many wolves take the next step and walk into Maine and New Hampshire, although they can roam 500 miles. The only sure clues are a bit sad: In 2001, a hunter mistakenly killed a wolf in the Adirondacks, and a trapper caught one near Bangor, Maine, in 1996.

But reliable sightings -- that is, those made by trained woodsmen and biologists during the day and under no influence of a fine whiskey -- have grown exponentially. Many wildlife biologists in New England agree wolves stray in at least occasionally.

"Everyone assumed they couldn't get across the St. Lawrence -- well, they did," said Peggy Struhsacker, wolf team leader for the National Wildlife Federation.

Struhsacker is the Sherlock Holmes of the Canis lupus crowd, tracing every sighting of the four-legged ghosts, double-checking facts. She is carefully skeptical. "Some appear to walk through," she said as she stood in that forest outside Errol, N.H. "What we don't know is if a female has met a male and set up shop."

The search is complicated by the rugged land, a place of few roads and many bogs and moose wallows (literally, a pool of water and moose urine). Struhsacker points at the firs and dark-green tamaracks and the Magalloway Mountain ridges running toward Maine.

"So this is the kind of place I'll walk in and, howl," Struhsacker says.

Howl?

"I howl. In hopes that the wolves will respond."