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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.
In this, I think we are reasonably in agreement.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
And I’ve had fun thinking them through. 