“You can’t outrun him!”
“I don’t need to outrun him, I just need to outrun you!”
Professional fighter? I’ll agree. Now, let’s substitute that poor wolf with a hungry polar bear.
Irishman,
I accept your correction regarding cougar killing methods. (Other biologists offer that a bite to the top of the neck or head resulting in direct damage to the brain or spinal cord from their extraordinarily long canine teeth is the typical method and “broken necks are common”; still they do “occasionally” bite the throat.) Back to wolves.
So you grapple with the wolf and succeed in the slim but admittedly “nonzero possibility” of pinning it down. You must be holding its bitey part, preventing it from shredding your face or other portions of your anatomy. Given the size of the animal, this requires using both your hands. I don’t see how you could “choke out” the wolf without letting go of its muzzle, at least if the choke-out holds I’ve channel surfed past in MMA matches are any indication. A sleeper hold on the neck puts those canines adjacent to your face. At least the MMA guys aren’t allowed to bite. The wolf is under no such inhibition. Now what? Let go and grab for your cudgel?
Summary of cited encounters:
[ul]
[li]Man deflects first attack with club, then uses a knife on the wolf’s second lunge.[/li][li]Wolf savagely bites one of five men who are trying to drive it away, specifically the man who grabbed it by the neck. It then is shot by another man.[/li][li]Man attacked by wolf hits it repeatedly and holds it at bay for 25 minutes with an ax. “Several” additional men eventually kill it with picks and shovels.[/li][li]Group of people of undeclared size drive off wolf pack that “approached” them “by shouting, waving, and throwing clods of frozen dirt”, in the course of which one wolf jumps at one human ineffectually. (The assertion that the otherwise “undeterred” wolves turn and cowardly run off after their leader is bested in a chest bumping contest leads me to doubt the veracity of this tale.)[/li][li]Man attacked by wolf manages to hold it off until he can “discharge his weapon”.[/li][li]Two men deflect wolf intent on attacking captive caribou, one man bitten on leg, multiple punches are ineffective. Eventually second man bludgeons wolf unconscious with a heavy object swung by a strap, first man bludgeons it some more (“Just making sure!”) then stabs it to death with a knife.[/li][/ul]
I don’t want to play “appeal to authority” with me as the authority, because I have little experience with wolves. I’ve had occasion to observe a number in captivity, and also to “handle” a few of them. That consisted of assisting in capturing them from a large outdoor enclosure, confining them into cages, and transferring them into transport cages. In my game, this is “little” experience. Certainly far, far less than my experience with, say, venomous reptiles. But I’ve seen first-hand what a 110 pound wolf can do to a goat hindquarter (teaser bait) with a single bite, and suffice it to say it left me with a healthy respect for their ability to cause tissue damage. I’ve not tried to strike one with a cudgel, but I have tried to employ a catch pole (metal pole with a noose at one end, used to snare then control an animal’s head) with distinctly indifferent success. They’re just too wary, quick, lithe, and have too great a range of vision. I think the suggestion that someone could deliver an aimed strike to a charging wolf’s head, or shove the end of the club into its mouth, can only come from someone who has never seen a live wolf make a fool out of the human handler. And this without adding in any “attack” or “bite ferociously” element to the equation. But that’s just me, and we should ignore it.
Instead let’s look at the cites you’ve so kindly brought to our attention. Two are one-on-one encounters, and they are ended by a knife or a firearm. Three others involve additional people and either edged weapons (ax, picks and shovels, knife) or a firearm. The other account involves behavior that doesn’t sound like an attack, and is resolved in a manner that leaves its actual meaning – or even its veracity – in question. None demonstrate a lone human fighting off a determined wolf with a bat.
I am left to wonder if there are other, uncited instances where a lone human with a club went toe to toe with a wild wolf, and they remain uncited because the human ended up as lunch and the wolf didn’t write an autobiography.
So I conclude that your final paragraph is a fair summary. In a one on one encounter, given a motivated wolf and a single human armed only with a club, the human has a chance of surviving the encounter. Not a particularly good chance though, and if I were a betting man, my money would be on the wolf every time. An occasional match might surprise me, but I’m confident I’ll come out the long term winner. Because given the totality of the circumstances, as you say, “Without a firearm, you’re fairly screwed.” 
I did this as a lad, too. Hit him in the flank. I was able to check my swing a bit, but it still hurt. I feel bad about it, still, when I remember it.
Cannydan, your posts are fascinating and appreciated, and leave me wondering, just what the hell exactly IS your job?
Why, thank you very much! (For the “fascinating and appreciated” part.) I’ve always admired your knowledge and posting style too.
As for the question, I’m fortunate to have the best job in the world! I get paid to run my mouth and play with animals. Why, I can even rationalize the occasional SDMB thread as a “professional outreach opportunity”. 
Here’s a link.
A typical sleeper hold is delivered from behind, with one arm around the throat, the other around the first arm’s wrist and then around the victim’s head from the other side. You control the head with both arms, preventing the victim from being able to turn his face toward you in order to bite your face. Of course, I’m not guaranteeing you can pin the wolf in a position and then shift to a traditional sleeper hold.
Rather, I’m thinking of a modified attack that pins the wolf starting from the back but turning it somewhat on it’s side, using your full body weight to hold it down. One hand is pressing on the head and directing the muzzle. The second arm is across the throat, with that wrist under the forearm from the first arm. Press down with both arms, using the first to secure and aid the second in the blood choke across the wolf’s throat.
Well, I certainly don’t have any experience with wolves, and I freely admit that.
A reasonably fair summary of most of the encounters. I believe one of my posts was actually to show counter evidence to my own claim about the ability to wrestle off a wolf. I think my comments highlighted my point for citing each case given. Naturally, I avoided all the ones that consisted of one person witnessing a pack of wolves devour someone else, or wolves being hunted down and shot after they killed someone. I tried to cite only instances where a single wolf was engaged with a single person for a bit, or to show some relevance for being able to bludgeon a wolf.
A few specific comments…
With the caveat that the first blow stunned the wolf long enough to allow the man to pull out the knife. He wasn’t walking around with a drawn knife, but had to pull it from it’s sheath, wherever that was. Depending, that might be a simple one handed pull from a belt sheath, or might have involved pulling the sheath from a bag, or unlooping a leather strap that secures the knife. So, how effective was that strike, and would it have allowed followups to be successful while the wolf was less responsive and less able to avoid?
Yes, but he never delivered a good blow. So, does that mean he would eventually have tired out before the wolf, never getting in a good blow, and losing? Does it mean he eventually would have scored a good hit and then been able to followup with more hits?
Meh, they were undeterred by noise and clods of dirt not hitting them, but decided it wasn’t worth more when the one wolf got knocked down. Speaks to them not being overly committed but more aggressive than running at the first sight of humans.
He wrestled with the wolf and managed not to get bitten and control the head. He couldn’t bring the weapon, presumably a rifle, to aim at the wolf. Discharge of the gun did scare the wolf off. If no gun, could he have managed a choke out like I propose?
The description does not explain how the bludgeoning occurred. How do you get swung on a strap, rather than held in the hands and impacted directly? Yes, it was radio collar, but that doesn’t, in itself, say it was used by swinging from the strap. And the wolf was beaten unconscious by the bludgeoning. It’s fairly reasonable they could have escaped at that point. Or bludgeoned it until the skull was mushy. Or jumped on the ribs and cracked them to bits. Etc.
Yes, we don’t actually have a case of a human defending against a lone but determined wolf only with a bat or other cudgel and living. Nevertheless, we have numerous cases of humans using various methods that show some plausibility to the ability to do so.
I’ve had a dog bite the tip of my ring finger off…it hurt like freaking hell, and made it hard for me to continue in my endeavor to break up the dog fight she was involved in. And this was a puggle, (who, I’m told, have brachycephalic jaws with a bite pressure equal to a German Shephard); she simply bit me with her back teeth (threat neutralized!) and went back to biting and shaking our other dog.
Anyone who would say they could maintain fighting form after a bite from a wolf, when it would consist of lots of long canine teeth, crushing your radius and ulna, and maybe a little bit of shaking, might be overstating their toughness.
Depends. People in Africa have won hand-to-claws fights with lions.
It seems that the tactic most often used against predatory cats in Africa is to feed yourself to them and tear our their tongue. Given what’s happening to your arm while you’re doing that, that shows a lot of fighting spirit on the part of the human:
http://www.badassoftheweek.com/akeley.html
Another guy killed a lion, but then was himself killed by hyenas:
http://bigcatnews.blogspot.com/2007/11/man-kills-lion-hyenas-kill-man.html
In Canada, a man used the same tactic successfully to get a bear to back off. Just grabbed his tongue and pulled:
http://geekologie.com/2013/10/man-fends-off-bear-attack-by-grabbing-it.php
So there ya go. The weakness. Not sure if that will work with wolves though.
I have been told by professional dog and K9 trainers to grab the hind legs of aggressive dogs and forcibly drag them away from the fight, assuming that commands were no longer being obeyed.
The only time I attempted this technique was to break up a fight between two 25lb Shiba Inus. I began reaching for a hind leg, but by the time my hand reached the point where the hind leg had been, the dog had turned 180 degrees, bit my hand, and then resumed it’s fight with the other dog. In the future, everybody gets pepper sprayed.
And yet somehow fucking shambling zombies* manage to overrun the Earth. That’s true Darwinism. Any group of humans that can’t handle zombies deserve to die.
*Fast zombies who move at 12 FPS? THOSE guys I admit could be a problem.
Here’s a slight hijack to the original question: could a man with a baseball bat present 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.
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.
To re- re- visit your examples, the guy hits the wolf with his walking stick, then draws a knife. We don’t know how long it took him to do so, and frankly I don’t care, because apparently it was as soon as he could, and soon enough. Note that, despite having “stunned the wolf” initially, the guy didn’t choose to keep on with the bludgeon, but switched to cold steel coincident with its second rush. Why is that, if the club was so effective?
Ax man held off a wolf for an extended period with a heavy, sharp metal weapon on the end of a swinging stick. He struck the wolf more than once, but without driving it off or significantly damaging it. I’m not sure I’d hire this guy to chop firewood for me. Regardless, the outcome was at best a tie until additional help arrived with more sharp weapons.
I’m still not willing to give the dirt clods more than passing attention. It was a bunch of people, and a bunch of wolves. The only “attack” was the single jumping instance, which is open to further interpretation or frank disbelief. It jumped at her face, showering her with spittle, but its outstretched head and neck somehow had less reach than her folded arms as she leaned backward? Even if we give this full faith and credit, it does nothing to advance understanding of one man, one club, and one wolf.
Let’s take the biologists out of order here. Two guys beat a wolf unconscious using a radio collar, then stabbed it. I’m envisioning swinging the heavy plastic-encased transmitter by the neck strap, and you apparently envision just holding it in hand and banging with it. I’m not heavily invested either way. Bottom line for me is that the first guy got bit and, barehanded, couldn’t do much of anything to the wolf which “would not let go despite repeated punches”. He didn’t break its jaw, nor even its leg. We don’t know if he might have employed a choke out, because at that point another guy intervened and, using a bludgeon in some manner or other, managed to knock the wolf unconscious.
The guy with a rifle comes as close as we get to the one man, one club, motivated wolf hypothetical. He is attacked and taken down despite the fact that he’s holding something that could serve as a club. It could be swung, but it may also be employed in the various other ways (e.g., sideways, or end first) suggested earlier. They roll around on the ground, giving the guy ample opportunity for a choke out, or for employing his club as a bludgeoning, battering weapon. He does at least manage to avoid getting bitten, although we don’t know the length of time involved nor how long it might have continued with no change in results. What we do know is that, despite the apparent success of his tactics with hands and club, he chose to fire the weapon, thus ending the encounter.
So once again, and for whatever it’s worth, I agree with a portion of your summary.
I also still agree that there is plausibility to an occasional human surviving such an encounter. Nevertheless, while we can find multiple instances of human / wolf encounters, there doesn’t seem to be a single case of a lone human surviving a wolf attack armed only with a club and without the intervention of additional people and/or edged weapons or firearms.
Confirmed? No, not a single instance.
Plausible? Sure. I never denied that it could happen.
Likely? Hardly. Nothing offered so far contradicts this conclusion.
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. She beat it with a “one inch diameter wooden stick” until it let go and she carried the kid into the house. To be fair, when the police found the cougar, it appeared to be starving, which was probably why it had gone after a human.
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.
Edit: I think the book may have been A Walk on the Crust of Hell by Jack Markowitz, which was about winners of the Carnegie Medal for Heroism.
How motivated is the wolf? The wolf is hungry, there is little, or no, other prey and you’re looking like Thanksgiving dinner motivated?
What is a guard position? Pointing the bat at the wolf? Holding the bat like a staff (hands at both ends) and keeping the bat between you and the wolf? Holding the bat in a swing ready position?
If you can injure the wolf, it might decide that you were too much trouble and disengage in order to lick it’s wounds or find easier prey.
If a 75lb to 150lb wolf intends to eat you, it can wait for an opening. It could scurry off to take a nap and still track you down. You could sleep in a tree or start a fire - in your spare time. 
It’s possible that a human being could defeat, or kill, a wolf by using a bat, or rock, or knife. It’s hand to hand (tooth?) combat. Are you mentally and physically prepared? You could get lucky.
But the key question is whether there are any instances of adult men with clubs being attacked by lone wolves and not surviving?
Since it’s now been established that wolves will ocasionally attack in such circumstances, if there are no known cases of men failing to survive such attacks, this would suggest that your confidence in the wolves may not be warranted.
Not surviving? As in killed and eaten by a wolf, or wolves, unknown?
I’m hear to tell ya that I was kilt and eaten by a wolf. But I got better.
just kidding.
People are killed by crocs and bears all the time. Lions and tigers too. No wolves, unless they are young or weak. If wolves themselves judge healthy human males as too much for them, I’m inclined to believe them.
What? Is this a whoosh? Are you positing that such an encounter or encounters could have occurred, and been observed by witnesses (so that a record or recital of the event could be made), where the witnesses decided, well heck, “Let’s just wait and see what happens! Looky there, guy’s gone dead. Huh! Who’da thunk it?” 'Cause I’m not seeing many ways to otherwise cite with confidence that “lone man, one club, motivated wolf, guy loses” were the exact circumstances. Said man isn’t going to give testimony now, is he?
Alternatively, I can easily envision a lone person who fails to return from wolf territory, exact circumstances unknown. In fact, I’m willing to bet that the historical record is replete with such. (But I’m too lazy to look just now, in all honesty. ;))
A person turned into wolf scat and deposited at numerous places around the landscape, probably at some remove from the pathetically inadequate walking stick, cane, tree branch, or baseball bat left behind at the initial point of the encounter, isn’t conducive to handy citation. Thus, despite not being able to demonstrate “any instances of adult men with clubs being attacked by lone wolves and not surviving”, my confidence in the wolves remains unshaken.
Other people arrive at the scene but too late to save the guy. Seems very plausible to me.