A wolf pack surrounded hunter in Eura, Finland

[Blightwolf]

I roughly translated the original Finnish article to English. Please excuse any typos/grammatical errors.

A wolf pack surrounded hunter in Eura, Finland
November 1, 2012

Three wolves surrounded hunter Rauli Virta last Monday in Eura. Two of the wolves stood in front of him and the third went around behind him. The wolves were not afraid of gunfire.

Hunter Rauli Virta was hunting deer late on a Monday night when he saw a pair of eyes shining in the dark near the deer feeding trough.

"I thought it was a very brave deer because it didn't move when I walked towards it," Virta says.

The animal was not a deer. It was a wolf.

"The first wolf was on my left side, and the second was on my right side. The third wolf lay down on the ground behind me," Virta retells the events of the night.

Virta stood surrounded by the wolves on a field. A possible exit route to the forest was blocked by the wolf laying behind him. Virta thought it over for a moment and then decided to fire his gun towards one of the wolves.

"The wolf jumped up and walked over to join his pack, giving me a way to escape. But none of the wolves fled the scene, they just stayed where they were," Virta recalls his experience.

The car was about 300 meters away from the road.

Virta has been hunting for 40 years. This was his first encounter with wolves.

Wildlife officer Jari Ruponen came to check the scene approximately an hour after Virta's encounter.

"We investigated both the field and the forest. The tracks were exceptionally clear because there was new snow," says Ruponen.

According to Ruponen, there hasn't been many threatening situations with wolves in the Eura region.

"The situation was threatening, but to be expected. Fortunately, it was an experienced hunter who encountered the wolves, and not a sensitive person."

A pack of four wolves is a different story compared to a pack of nine wolves encountered in Vampula last weekend, according to Ruponen.

"We have at least 3-4 packs in this region and occasional lone wolves," Ruponen estimates.

Source: http://www.maaseuduntulevaisuus.fi/maas ... sa-1.27119

Habituated wolves are not exclusively a problem with North American wolves, as you can see. The phenomenon is spreading and wolves are losing their fear of humans all over the world.