County of marker: Harding County
Location of marker: Canam Hwy (US-85/SD-20), Centennial Park, Buffalo
Marker erected: July 3, 2009
Marker erected by: Harding County Chamber of Commerce
Marker text:
Three Toes, The Wolf
Many people say Harding County's two most famous characters are a horse that could not be ridden and a killer wolf tht played havoc with the ranchers. Tipperary was the horse, and Old Three Toes was the wolf.
Three Toes was a ruthless predator of the range. Three toes had age, cunning, stamina, and a killing lust. It is estimated that between 1909 and 1925 he killed over $50,000 worth of livestock. At today's market price, the livestock would be worth well over $250,000.
Three Toes was a large grey wolf of peculiar traits. When chased, he would trot through a ranch yard like a dog. He was unafraid of humans and would watch a lighted window at night as if he yearned for the friendliness of men. Trackers read his signs like a book. Some ranchers wondered if he had once been a cub in captivity or had escaped from a sled team in the northland. Others thought he was born about 1907 right here on the Little Missouri River 10 miles north of Camp Crook.
Harding County of World War I period was fenceless, open range, populated by herds of cattle, horses, and sheep. Ranchers used corrals for cattle and boarded tight stockades with locked doors for sheep. It kept stock from scattering during night storms and provided protection from predators. Three Toes leaped in and out of 7-foot high stockades at will, leaving death and terror behind him.
In 1909 Charley Wilson and Bill Foreman were riding when they saw a wolf limping toward them. The wolf stopped at a distance and lifted a bloody front paw like a dog asking for help. When Wilson pulled a rifle out of a scabbard, the wolf jumped into a gully and disappeared. About the same time Eric Haivala, a rancher, found the pinched toes of a wolf in one of his traps.
In 1912 a dozen sheep were found killed in a locked stockade. The night raider left his trade mark in the blood-muddied patch beside the carcass - a big three toes paw print of a wolf. Thus the criminal became known, and all through his reign of infamy the hand of man was turned against him.
When hard pressed by pursuers Three Toes employed such tricks as circling, back-tracking, breaking circle, leaping over ground or snow drifts that would leave a trace of his passing, then charging into a bunch of cattle or sheep to scatter them so they would obliterate his trail. One time he hid in the carcass of an old horse. Another time being hard pressed by a pack of hounds, he jumped up over a 12-foot bank and left the dogs behind him. Three Toes ws a powerful jumper. One time he made a flying leap across a 30-foot wide chasm to defeat pursing dogs and men on his trail.
Three Toes killed cattle, horses, hogs, and sheep at will. His favorite prey was calves, colts, and lambs. One rancher lost 42 sheep in two nights of raiding and killing. The Haivalas lost several cattle. Lahtis lost 24 registered bucks in a month, and Matt Henry found 24 sheep dead when he opened his locked stockade gate.
In 1923 Three Toes killed $2,000 worth of stock. That was his biggest year. In 1922-23-24, he practically cleaned out the lamb crop around Buffalo, SD. In 1925, Three Toes mate, a she wolf, was caught, and after that he was followed by coyotes that feasted on his kills.
These coyotes took lookout positions around the wolf while he dozed in the sunshine. They covered his trail with their tracks, they got in the way of hunters trying to shoot. Many of these coyote followers were poisoned with bait, shot by ranchers, or trapped, but others always joined up.
The Haivala boys ran Three Toes for 140 miles without getting a shot at him. Another hunter used 7 horses in relays on an extensive chase without results, in fact, the wolf stopped in flight to kill 15 sheep in a corral while the chase was in progress.
John Martin, state hunter, spent months on the job using traps, bait, rifle, and chasing methods. His greatest drive came in 1924 when Martin ran the wolf for three days, covering 200 miles of meandering trail, and almost got him. Three Toes was so exhausted that he fell 6 time and rose to struggle on again. This time, he hit the ice on the Grand River, leaving no trail to follow. When Martin rediscovered the trail Three Toes had tracked up both sides of the river bank to confuse Martin Again.
When ranchers became so desperate that they offered a $500,000 bounty on his scalp, the government's predatory control service sent Clyde F. Briggs, its master wolfer, to South Dakota. In less than two weeks after his arrival at Buffalo, the great range outlaw Three Toes was dead. Young Gus Haivala, the state coyote trapper at the time, who later became sheriff of Harding County, was with Briggs on the hunt. Using special traps in sets of twos, Briggs transplanted a sagebrush near the traps and told Gus, "This is where we'll catch him."
The next day on the morning of July 23, 1925, he caught the old wolf in that very trap set. Three Toes had worn himself out trying to pull his legs out if the two traps and lay in exhaustion when found. Briggs wired his jaws together so he could load him, still in traps, into the back seat of a touring car and bring the "prisoner" in alive. Gus Haivala was in the back seat, with the wolf's head basically in his lap.
Such humiliation of the big, bad wolf would have been the crowning triumph of "man over beast." It was more than Three Toes could endure. Enroute back to Buffalo, SD, Clyde Briggs turned his head to survey the trophy, the wolf's eyes were fixed on him in a dull stare. Briggs stopped the car, but Three Toes was already dead.
On July 23, 1925, Old Three Toes, "Died of a Broken Heart", men of the range said.
The wolf, donated by Wally & Linda Stephens, represents the prairie wolves and the buffalo wolves which roamed this area. The most famous wolf was Old Three Toes, which killed thousands of dollars worth of livestock before he was trapped. He stands on a rock donated by the Gordon Helms family.