# Man with baseball bat versus wolf **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [February 3, 2015, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-with-baseball-bat-versus-wolf/711767 "2015-02-03T22:38:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2015, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-with-baseball-bat-versus-wolf/711767/81 "2015-02-10T22:04:22Z")
Human can win, easily if he has a steady nerve. But only if it’s a single wolf (they hunt in packs) and the wold doesnt get the jump on him. Human can beat a Mtn Lion also, same way- except the Cougar will almost certainly attack by ambush. In North America, there are mighty few unprovoked wolf attacks on humans. _Before Carnegie’s death, there had never been a single verified case of a fatal attack on a human by a wild wolf anywhere in North America._ > **[Death of Kenton Joel Carnegie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenton_Joel_Carnegie_wolf_attack)** > > Kenton Joel Carnegie (11 February 1983 – 8 November 2005) was a 22-year-old Canadian geological engineering student from Ontario on a work term from the University of Waterloo who died in a wild animal attack while he was walking near Points North Landing in Saskatchewan, Canada. Waste dumping attracted black bears and timber wolves to the region. According to a trucker who said he met Carnegie in the cafeteria a few days before his death, he had passed around close-range photographs of large w... > **[wolfattackfatality.pdf](https://www.adfg.alaska.gov/static/home/news/pdfs/wolfattackfatality.pdf)** and in both of those, apparently multiple wolves. ---
**Author:** ![CannyDan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cannydan/32/548_2.png) [@CannyDan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CannyDan)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2015, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-with-baseball-bat-versus-wolf/711767/82 "2015-02-10T23:06:00Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > Other people arrive at the scene but too late to save the guy. Seems very plausible to me. OK, fair enough. It’s been a fun discussion and I don’t want to spoil it now. But let me say this. We’ve engaged an interesting hypothetical, and explored some of its ramifications. But I think that in requiring real world examples to support our humble opinions we may be going too far. We know that there isn’t a single predatory species on the face of the earth that can make a living preying on humans. And we know that this has been the case since the rise of Cro Magnon, if not earlier. Oh, any large individual predator might take an occasional person. Some, like the legendary Tsavo man eating lions, even made a habit of it. But this is a dead end, quite literally. Because man, as I mentioned before, is the animal that can hate. We (generic ‘we’) hated those lions, and we wouldn’t cease our efforts until they were destroyed. Just as, throughout our history, we have inflicted a similar Darwinian punishment upon any and every creature that dared to display a taste for human flesh. All large predators extant today are the survivors of this influence. Beyond that, wolves were once the stuff of which nightmares were made. Wolves and wolf-inspired monsters inspire fear and loathing even today. More than any other predator, wolves have been killed, indeed persecuted, at the slightest hint of aggression toward man or his livestock. Modern wolves may be killed when exhibiting no aggression at all, their mere presence being enough to set off long held antipathy toward them. (See airplane hunting for wolves or any of several ‘animal-channel’ programs set in Alaska if you are in doubt.) Humans have displayed continuing, abiding hostility toward wolves in ways and to an extent never seen by bears, lions, tigers, crocodiles, sharks, or any others. I don’t think it would be incorrect to term man’s treatment of wolves as bordering on extermination. So I am not at all surprised that there aren’t very many well documented and clearly interpreted wolf-on-human encounters. Given this background I am not going to even attempt to support my assertions with real-world cites. I hope that’s alright. I doubt we could find a sufficiently motivated wolf to fit my interpretation of the hypothetical anywhere on the planet. I’m happy to admit that these are merely my own humble opinions, in keeping with the forum. I’m sure they’re worth at least as much as anybody is paying for them. 😉 And I’ve had fun thinking them through. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2015, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-with-baseball-bat-versus-wolf/711767/83 "2015-02-11T15:35:28Z")
Two points: First, I know the saying is, “It’s not the size of the man in the fight, but the size of the fight in the man.” But realistically, wouldn’t a six foot tall guy have a better chance than one a foot shorter? Second point (possible slight hijack) In Joan Aiken’s novel **The Wolves of Willoughby Chase** , the setting is an alternate history in which (among other things) it’s the late 1800’s and there are lots of wolves in England, which regularly prey upon humans. And yet the humans have rifles! This plot point bothered me a lot. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2015, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-with-baseball-bat-versus-wolf/711767/84 "2015-02-11T15:44:54Z")
Does man really hate wolves? Wolves were the first species we ever domesticated. ---
**Author:** ![CannyDan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cannydan/32/548_2.png) [@CannyDan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CannyDan)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2015, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-with-baseball-bat-versus-wolf/711767/85 "2015-02-11T16:12:52Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Does man really hate wolves? Wolves were the first species we ever domesticated. I don’t know how authoritative [this site](http://www.wolfweb.com/history.html) is, and it has problems with some of its links. But the assertion echoes mine. > [@](#): > > Wiping out Wolves - a history. > By means of hunting with horses and dogs or trapping in pits, traps and cages, wolves were completely wiped out in England by the early 1500s. Scotland killed its last wolf in the mid-1700s. Most European countries eventually finished off their wolf populations soon after. A few still live in eastern Europe, India, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Middle East. No one knows how many survive in Russia and China. Most wolves in North America are found in Alaska and Canada and hunters, from whom most of our knowledge of this shy creature comes from, say they are now almost impossible to find… > > This extreme attitude toward wiping out wolves can be seen to the fables and legends about the animals that originated in the Middle Ages and still survive today. In the Middle Ages, wolves were also thought to be in league with the forces of evil, many legends connected the wolf with Satan and the dark powers of the supernatural world. [National Geographic](http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/wolf/) says much the same. > [@](#): > > Wolves are the largest members of the dog family. Adaptable gray wolves are by far the most common and were once found all over the Northern Hemisphere. But wolves and humans have a long adversarial history. Though they almost never attack humans, wolves are considered one of the animal world’s most fearsome natural villains. They do attack domestic animals, and countless wolves have been shot, trapped, and poisoned because of this tendency. > > In the lower 48 states, gray wolves were hunted to near extinction, though some populations survived and others have since been reintroduced. Few gray wolves survive in Europe, though many live in Alaska, Canada, and Asia. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2015, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-with-baseball-bat-versus-wolf/711767/86 "2015-02-13T19:10:00Z")
> [@Love\_Rhombus](#): > > Here’s a slight hijack to the original question: could a man with a baseball bat present [prevent] a motivated wolf from killing him? He stays back and reacts to the wolf’s attack by keeping the bat in a guard position and making quick swings? It seems like that would be easier. Assume this is in the open in broad daylight and the human is reasonably fit. We have a citation of a case where a man with an ax held a wolf at bay for a half hour until other people arrived. Motivated, dedicated wolf to stay despite various blows from the ax. So yes, you can, for a while. But how long can you keep that up? When do you get tired? When do you eat, sleep, take a dump? If you think help will be along in a reasonable time frame, then it might be a reasonable strategy. If you don’t think help will be along for a few days, you need a better strategy. > [@CannyDan](#): > > Whatever, **Irishman**. I think you’ve now moved into ‘special pleadings’ territory with your examples. In human MMA, the combatants seem to strive for choke outs whenever they grapple, which is some variable significant percentage of the match. But precious few matches are actually ended by choke outs, because muscular combatants avoid them with some regularity _even though they can’t bite_. Insert into this scenario a skull about 11 or 12 inches long, with an elongated muzzle, filled with inch-plus canines and meat-slicing incisors and premolars, and I think “grappling for a choke out” takes on a whole new meaning. YMMV. I’m not saying it would be easy, I’m saying that if I’m ever attacked by a lone motivated wolf but I don’t have a gun or big knife in my hand, I’m going to do _something_, and trying beat the wolf with a bat is one plausible strategy. If the wolf gets inside my swings, I’m going to change to a different strategy, whether that is trying to control the head to get to a position for a choke out, or whether that is to jump up and down on the ribcage to see how many ribs I can take out, or whether that is to stuff my fist down the wolf’s throat while I try to gouge out its eyes. Of those strategies, I vastly prefer the choke out method over the “let the wolf eat part of me” method. Now if you ever find yourself in that situation, you’re welcome to take the strategy of “meh, the wolf’s going to win anyway, I’ll just let him eat me.” > [@](#): > > To re- re- visit your examples,… I’ve already explained what I think about each of those examples, how they are relevant to the discussion, what they show about the success rate of encounters. > [@](#): > > Confirmed? No, not a single instance. > > Plausible? Sure. I never denied that it could happen. > > Likely? Hardly. Nothing offered so far contradicts this conclusion. In this, I think we are reasonably in agreement. > [@Dendarii\_Dame](#): > > I remember reading years ago (and I’m not sure of the book’s title) about a woman who came to the defense of a neighbor’s kid who was being attacked by a cougar. [snip] > > Also remember reading (I think in the same book) about a lion being used as a photo prop with kids in a mall (yeah, that was a brilliant idea) and when it attacked a child, somebody “remembered reading somewhere that you should grab it by the ears”, which he did until somebody got the child away and somebody else showed up with a gun. The strategy that I use when attacked by a house cat is to jam a finger into the side of the mouth between the teeth. The cat tries to bite down, bites its own cheeks, and stops biting. This works exceptionally well because cats’ back teeth are pointy, just like their front ones. One of the Penn and Teller TV shows had the premise of showing 5 incidents, but only one of them was the truth and the other four were lies. You had to pick the true one from the lies. One of the stories discussed a case of a trainer being attacked by his mountain lion, and fighting it off by jamming his hand down its throat. That was a lie. During the discussion, the actual method proposed by that trainer was my “make the cat bite itself” method. YMMV. > [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > But the key question is whether there are any instances of adult men with clubs being attacked by lone wolves and not surviving? Certainly. The wikipedia page I linked has several cases where someone was attacked and killed, and then people hunted down and killed the wolf afterwards. I didn’t include them, because I was looking at the plausibility of surviving, not the plausibility of getting eaten. > [@CannyDan](#): > > Beyond that, wolves were once the stuff of which nightmares were made. Wolves and wolf-inspired monsters inspire fear and loathing even today. More than any other predator, wolves have been killed, indeed persecuted, at the slightest hint of aggression toward man or his livestock. Modern wolves may be killed when exhibiting no aggression at all, their mere presence being enough to set off long held antipathy toward them. (See airplane hunting for wolves or any of several ‘animal-channel’ programs set in Alaska if you are in doubt.) Humans have displayed continuing, abiding hostility toward wolves in ways and to an extent never seen by bears, lions, tigers, crocodiles, sharks, or any others. I don’t think it would be incorrect to term man’s treatment of wolves as bordering on extermination. So I am not at all surprised that there aren’t very many well documented and clearly interpreted wolf-on-human encounters. While wolf attacks on humans in North America are rare, that was not the case in Europe. There’s a reason that fairy tales talk up the “Big Bad Wolf”. It was suggested one of the reasons European wolves were more human aggressive was the practice of nobles feeding serfs to the wolves. Not sure if that has merit. > [@adaher](#): > > Does man really hate wolves? Wolves were the first species we ever domesticated. While wolves did get domesticated, that took place well before any form of “civilization”. Humans simultaneously took in wolves that were less aggressive and then bred them for our use, while at the same time hunting and killing those that were human aggressive to provide protection. The better we got at being able to kill them, the more we did so. ---
**Author:** ![Count\_Blucher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Count\_Blucher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Count_Blucher)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2015, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-with-baseball-bat-versus-wolf/711767/87 "2015-02-13T19:35:38Z")
“Is it a North American Gray Wolf or a Eurasian Gray Wolf?” “I dunno.” _ **Arrrrrrrrgh!** _ ---
**Author:** ![Fotheringay-Phipps](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/d9b06d/32.png) [@Fotheringay-Phipps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fotheringay-Phipps)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2015, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-with-baseball-bat-versus-wolf/711767/88 "2015-02-13T19:39:37Z")
> [@Irishman](#): > > Certainly. The wikipedia page I linked has several cases where someone was attacked and killed, and then people hunted down and killed the wolf afterwards. I didn’t include them, because I was looking at the plausibility of surviving, not the plausibility of getting eaten. I asked specifically about “adult men with clubs being attacked by lone wolves” (the case at hand). I didn’t see any. Perhaps you can specify which instance you meant. ---
**Author:** ![Critical1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/3e96dc/32.png) [@Critical1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Critical1)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2015, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-with-baseball-bat-versus-wolf/711767/89 "2015-02-13T23:34:19Z")
MMA fights aren’t a great analogy, The purpose there is to determine the best of 2 closely matched (in both weight and skill) fighters. If I found myself grappling with a wolf going for an super quick choke would be down the list somewhere. Instead I would just lay on it while controlling the head and let it wear itself out. Even at 135# I have 100# on it. I could easily control the animal under those conditions. Surviving to get into that position is another story. I do agree if you hit a wolf in the face with a home run swing you are going to win this fight. As has been pointed out wolves are fast as hell and very very intelligent. Miss that swing and this fight is going to hurt a lot at the very least. The bat would be best for blocking and choking if you could get the wolf to the ground. If you could achieve full mount (not sure how effective this would be vrs a wolf) you could pound its head in using the bat up and down instead of the usual swing (big hard stabs in the face with a blunt bat) All of this is speculation, given enough trials we could come up with a point spread and start betting but up front my guess is the wolf wins uninjured enough to live a long wolfie life at least 4 out of 10, the human maybe 2 or 3 in ten, and both end up dead at some point soonish the rest of the time. (dead human and injured wolf who can no longer hunt for food being the most likely, but dead wolf and human who bleeds out after the fight would be some of the outcomes) ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2015, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-with-baseball-bat-versus-wolf/711767/90 "2015-02-14T14:47:26Z")
> [@Fotheringay-Phipps](#): > > I asked specifically about “adult men with clubs being attacked by lone wolves” (the case at hand). I didn’t see any. Perhaps you can specify which instance you meant. Fair enough. No, I don’t have any cites. I don’t know many men who wander around wolf country with a baseball bat in hand. ---
**Author:** ![MrsTime](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d26b3c/32.png) [@MrsTime](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrsTime)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2015, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-with-baseball-bat-versus-wolf/711767/91 "2015-02-14T15:35:51Z")
It is most unlikely to happen…[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_wolf\_attacks\_in\_North\_America](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wolf_attacks_in_North_America) Note the dates of the attacks. ---
**Author:** ![toofs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/4491bb/32.png) [@toofs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/toofs)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2015, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-with-baseball-bat-versus-wolf/711767/92 "2015-02-16T04:22:31Z")
A friend of mine killed an attacking rottweiler with his skateboard. He connected with the dog’s head. The dog immediately fell on its side, twitching and foaming at the mouth. It died very quickly. A full strength swing with a baseball bat will break bones. See the Mexican cartel murder videos that used a bat. Man with bat wins. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/man-with-baseball-bat-versus-wolf/711767.md?page=4)