Out motoring one day last December Mayor Peter E. Demarest of Oakland, N. J., encountered a pack of wild dogs trailing a deer. With a single bullet in his gun he brought down the dogs' leader, a powerful 150-lb. mongrel shepherd. Another dog in the pack viciously charged the Mayor, who had to leap into his car, bang shut the door. Last week he sought revenge.
With 22 other huntsmen, including an oldtime Michigan wolf hunter, Mayor Demarest set out into the snow-covered hills. Breaking up into groups of four or five, the party tramped 15 miles through tangled underbrush, climbed rocky ledges, threaded swamps. They came back that night with one year-old wild dog. Explained Dr. Philip Gootenberg, president of New Jersey's Consolidated Sportsmen: "The dogs made fools of us. They are smarter than wolves. When we retraced our path we found the snow broken with prints. They had been following us. One pad print was more than three inches wide. . . ."
Several packs of wild dogs have been ranging northern New Jersey's game-filled Ramapo Mountains for some 15 years. Dwellers on lonely farms or town outskirts have shivered at the sound of their baying in the night. Hunters have found their trail in the hair & bones of many a deer and rabbit. In their veins runs the blood of abandoned or runaway pets—German shepherd, Airedale, collie, hound. Members of one pack are apparently crossed chow and hound, look like big red foxes.
Each mongrel generation has grown wilder and more cunning. Hated for their destruction of game, they are also feared because an outbreak of rabies among them might ravage the whole district. As their next move, New Jersey sportsmen last week planned to set steel wolf traps through the Ramapos.
Fine Dogs
In the canine social scale, the extreme opposites of New Jersey's wild dogs (see above) were six elegant creatures who paraded under the bright lights of Manhattan's Madison Square Garden one night last week. From 2,240 entries in the Westminster Kennel Club's 57th annual show these six, chosen best of their breeds and classes, had reached the final competition for the title of Best in Show, finest U. S. dog. The dogs seemed to know it. Gravely circling the green-carpeted judging ring, they appeared oblivious of the 5,000 spectators and of each other.