A note from Jack: Most of the people we meet as kids do not stick in our memories, especially those who are not members of our family or close friends. The person that stays with you into your senior years, had to have a uniqueness about them, like the man, who is the subject of this story. I have not seen the old wolf hunter in this piece since I was around 12 years old, but I remember him, and his dogs vividly.
As a boy that grew up in the ’40s and ’50s in Sedalia, I remember there were still some people who rode horses in tow, and it wasn’t uncommon to see buggies go by the house. It was as if part of Sedalia was fighting to hold on to its old west heritage.
I was lucky enough to see another part of that old west image before it disappeared, when I met the old Wolf Hunter of Sedalia. He lived at the southern most edge of Sedalia. He was a gaunt, thin man, who was always in dressed too many clothes, even in hot weather. He looked like the stereotypical loner and hunter we see in the movies; not the hero, but rather the dirty guy leaning against a wall in the background, with tobacco stains on his beard. He was true to the type, and was anything but a talkative man, which was probably a byproduct of the solitary lifestyle he had chosen. He would go off alone except for his dogs for weeks at a time to hunt wolves that were still supposed to be in the far north western corner of Missouri in the early ’50s. He told me the wolves days were numbered in the state though, because man was not only killing them off, but was also destroying their habitat. The old man said once, about all that was left were coyotes, and some hunters tried to pass them off as small wolves, to the fur buyers. It was rumored that the he was actually hunting in Kansas illegally where wolves could still be found at the time, but as far as I know he never was caught.
The dogs the old Wolf Hunter used were not the petting variety, and when I got too close to their cages once they proved that point by rushing the gate in an attempt to get to me. The old man laughed for one of the few times I ever saw him do so, and said something about experience being the best teacher. The dogs were hardly more then skin and bones, and I guess a little boy looked like fresh meat to them. The old man said they had to be kept hungry and lean so they could run the wolves to ground. It was not uncommon for him to come home with less dogs than he left with, because he would say matter of factly, the wolves didn’t always lose.
The wolf hunter lived just off Engineer, past Sixteenth, and I can’t be sure of what street it was, but I’m sure it was the last one back then. I don’t remember him having any close neighbors, and that could have been because of his dogs. I gave them a lot of room after that first time myself.
I don’t know if I ever knew his name, he was just a friend of a friend, named Curtis Sennit, who would take me along when he visited the old hunter. One day when we went to visit the house was vacant, and the dogs were gone. Curtis said he thought the old hunter probably moved north where there might still be wolves to hunt. I never saw him again, but I did have nightmares about those dogs for years.
