Camper Who Shot Mexican Wolf
Worries About Risk To Others

By David Bowser

TUCSON, Ariz. — Richard Humphrey and his family are going camping this week.

That wouldn’t be big news, but the family’s last camping trip spawned a full-blown federal investigation.

It was Humphrey who last spring shot and killed one of the government’s reintroduced Mexican gray wolves after it attacked the family dog and menaced their camp.

Originally from Wichita, Kan., Humphrey joined the U.S. Air Force in the early 1960s and was stationed in Arizona from 1962 to 1965. Later, after a tour in Vietnam as a civilian defense worker and then in Guam at an Air Force satellite tracking station, he returned to Tucson to work for the U.S. Postal Service. It was here that he and his wife, Helen, settled to raise their two daughters.

They lead a quiet life in a middle class neighborhood. With firm religious beliefs, their lives are family-oriented, and much of their free time is spent outdoors.

Humphrey’s oldest daughter is involved in the Junior Ranger program at Saguaro National Park at Tucson.

"She's the first Junior Volunteer they ever had at Saguaro," Humphrey says proudly. "They used her as a guinea pig to see if it would work. She loves to work with kids. She loves the out-of-doors. She's very experienced in the out-of-doors."

The family often goes camping together. It was on such a camping trip, to celebrate Humphrey's retirement as a letter carrier, that this quiet man was thrust into the blinding light of controversy.

It began about 7:30 a.m., April 28, near Four Bar Mesa in the Apache National Forest where the family had pitched camp the night before. Humphrey was cutting firewood when he looked up to see what he first thought was a dog.

But it wasn’t a dog. It was a Mexican gray wolf, one of 11 such animals that had been reintroduced to the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest less than 30 days before.

The Mexican gray wolf had been extinct in the American Southwest for half a century. A cooperative venture between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Arizona and New Mexico game departments, various zoos and other federal agencies returned three groups of wolves to this rugged terrain on March 29. Humphrey was aware of the stories in the local newspapers but thought the wolves had been released farther north. He was surprised to find them at a campsite he had been using for 20 years.

As he watched, a second wolf came out of the trees. They appeared to be stalking him.

He backed up to his tent, alerted his family and loaded his rifle.

Humphrey says he expected the wolves to be gone when he stepped out of the tent, but they had come closer. He yelled, and they moved away slowly, circling the camp.

The campers watched the wolves for about an hour, catching glimpses of them through the dense scrub oak. Finally, they heard the wolves off to the east of the camp on a ridge, howling.

"If you ever hear them, you won't mistake them for a coyote," he says. "It's completely different. It's louder, just a different tone."

Coyotes have a higher pitched yap and bark, he says.

"These things have a big howl."

A few minutes later, they heard the wolves farther down the canyon, apparently moving away. Humphrey didn't know at the time if it was the same pair or more wolves. He kept wondering what they were doing down here below the Mogollon Rim in the junipers. He had read that they'd been released north around Alpine. He thought they were just passing through and that was the end of it.

By mid-morning, Humphrey had started working with the girls on their lessons in the tent.

"We home school," he explains.

Helen had gone over to a nearby stream to read a book. Suddenly, she says, she was overcome with a feeling of dread. She stood, raced back toward the tent and yelled for her husband.

The girls later would say that their mother's voice sounded frantic.

As Humphrey emerged from the tent, Helen told him to get the rifle.

Together, they walked a few yards to the west of the tent. Beyond a dilapidated house that had fallen in, there was the sound of a scuffle in the leaves behind a juniper.

Humphrey yelled. A wolf sprang from the tree and ran off, away from them. As Helen watched the running wolf, Humphrey looked back at the tree to see a second wolf come around from the other side toward him and his wife.

As the second wolf closed on him, Humphrey raised his rifle and fired. Through the four-power scope, he says all he could see was hair.

The wolf spun around, Humphrey says, as the first bullet apparently hit a leg. Humphrey fired again, and the wolf headed into the trees.

The Humphreys' Australian Shepherd, Buck, came out from behind the juniper, dragging his right front leg. As Humphrey followed the wolf, Helen went back to the tent to take care of the dog, which was bleeding profusely.

Humphrey found the wolf 30 or 40 feet away, seriously injured. He went ahead and ended its suffering.

They loaded the dog, which had suffered a broken leg and a chewed-up belly, into their Ford Bronco and headed south toward the community of Clifton, Ariz., looking for a veterinarian. Along the way, they found a road crew with a radio. Humphrey told them what happened. The story was radioed to the highway department's office, which in turn called the Arizona Fish and Game Department.

A few miles down the road, they found a Forest Service employee and a construction worker with a cellular phone. The process was repeated, and the construction worker gave them directions to a veterinarian in Clifton.

"Our main concern was to get to a veterinarian," Humphrey says. "We didn't know how badly Buck was hurt."

When the Humphreys arrived in Clifton, the veterinarian wasn't there. They used a phone at a nearby Circle K convenience store to call a veterinarian in Safford, Ariz., and borrowed a pencil from the clerk to write down directions. They went on to Safford, some 100 miles from their campsite.

On the way, the Humphreys' youngest daughter noticed that in the excitement her mother was still holding the pencil they had borrowed from the clerk.

"She was worried because that wasn't our pencil," Helen says.

By the time the dog was treated and a cast placed on his leg, the family returned to camp some $325 lighter (by mid-July, the bills had climbed to close to $1000), and Humphrey found he was being investigated for killing the wolf.

This tall, studious-looking man with more the air of a college professor than a hunter, returned home and kept to himself the next several months as federal officials continued their investigation.

Environmental activist groups were outraged. Local newspaper accounts of the incident were mostly derogatory, Humphrey said.

After officials announced that no charges would be filed against Humphrey, activist groups in the area claimed it was a whitewash.

Finally, Humphrey broke his silence.

"I want to set the record straight," he says.

What upsets Humphrey, he explains, is that he didn't know there were wolves in the area where he camped. He says he wasn't warned, and worries that campers and hikers in the area could be in danger.

Initially, Humphrey and his family planned to go to Black River and Snake Creek, but when they got to the turn-off, the road was blocked with three feet of snow. They backtracked from the 9000 foot elevation where they had planned to go to a campsite Humphrey had used for 20 years about 6500 feet high.

"When we pulled off the highway, there was no indication of wolves being in there," Humphrey says. "There were no signs. There were no warnings. No people. Nobody monitoring them. Nothing. That night, we never heard them howling."

Most wild animals are afraid of human beings, he said, and will run when approached by people. He said the wolves he encountered did not appear to be afraid of man.

"They acted like stray dogs," Humphrey says.

"We could see them standing there," Helen says.

"We just stood there and looked at them and thought, ‘this is weird,’" Humphrey says.

When he yelled at them, the wolves moved off slowly among the trees.

"They never seemed to react much to his voice," Helen says.

"If it had been a different kind of animal, we would have really thought something was wrong with them," she adds. "Rabies or something."

They looked sick, Humphrey says.

"If that had been a lion or bear or coyote, we would have shot it even without a tag," he confirms. "They acted strange. They were too close, and they weren't afraid of us."

Investigators verified that wolf tracks were less than 50 feet away from the Humphreys' tent.

The Humphreys also didn't know how many wolves they were facing.

"We thought there were more wolves up there," Helen says. "We had no idea how many there were."

"I thought to myself, ‘I can't let that wolf get any closer,’" Humphrey says. "It was on us just like that. They had talked about releasing five or six at a time, and I thought, ‘if there are five or six, we're in trouble.’"

That afternoon after the shooting, the Humphreys retraced their steps, going back to the campsite. They stopped at the Circle K convenience store in Clifton to return the pencil they had used earlier in the day and met the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service investigator, who was there getting ice.

The agent said he didn't have time to take a statement then, Humphreys says; he wanted to get to the campsite before dark.

Other officials were already at the campsite when the Humphreys returned. They had located the wolf's body through the radio collar.

After looking around, the investigator came down to the Humphreys' tent and began filling out his report on the hood of their Bronco in the waning light of evening.

"The first thing he said was that this is not a criminal investigation," Humphreys says. "He said if I wanted a lawyer, we could do it later. I said I had nothing to hide."

When Humphrey asked if that was a release site for the wolves, the inspector told him no.

"He probably had the same information that I had," Humphrey says.

By the time the investigator finished questioning them that night, it was well after dark. The Humphreys had planned to leave, but with the big tent, it takes two hours to pitch or break camp, so they stayed that night.

"We never heard them that night," Humphrey says. "Apparently, there was just the one.

The Humphreys’ learned there had been just two wolves in the area.

"I'd shot the male," Humphrey says. "The female was still there."

Wolf biologists who came the next morning said their directional finders indicated the female was about 400 yards away, east of the camp.

The inspector who had questioned them that first evening had speculated that a ruling would be made on the shooting, but instead, when the agent called Humphrey at home a week and a half later, he said he wanted to bring his supervisor and ask more questions.

Humphrey said the tone of the man's voice worried him, so he called a friend, Guy Sagi, who publishes an outdoor newspaper. Humphrey knew Sagi because Sagi's father was on Humphrey's old mail route.

"He used to stop and check on my father," Sagi says. "He's a great guy. As nice as you can get."

Sagi arranged to join Humphrey for the interview with the federal agents. Sagi also brought Dave Hardy, a local attorney and former assistant district attorney.

Sagi videotaped the interview.

Humphrey asked if there were dog bites on the wolf.

"Whatever wolf was on Buck's leg would have suffered some dog bites," Humphrey says.

He was told that officials didn't check for dog bites in the autopsy.

Within three days, they captured the female that remained in the area of the camp. She later gave birth to a pup, but it died.

Humphrey and his family kept quiet during the investigation and wanted to stay out of the limelight following the dropping of charges, but they finally decided to go public with their story to set the record straight and in hopes of keeping harm from coming to hikers and campers in the Apache National Forest.

"If somebody was hurt, it would have been our fault because didn't say anything," Humphrey says.

There were no signs warning of wolves at the trail heads as the hiking trails move off from the highway into the forest, they note.

By mid-July, there were still no signs except for the immediate areas north of Humphrey's campsite, where two of the three groups of wolves were released. Horses graze where the Humphreys had camped. Nearby, the piñon and juniper woodland gives way to broad pastures where cattle graze.

"I feel like a victim," Humphrey said. "I feel like the wolf and I were both victims."

"We are so grateful God saved Buck," Helen says, "but it could have been our girls ... or one of us."

A second round of releases is scheduled for the area next spring, according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials.