Author Gary Paulsen lives an outdoor life; he’s hunted game with rifle and bow; he never thinks twice about the lives he took until he nears age 40. While driving a dogsled along a frozen lakeshore, he watches as a deer leaps out of the bushes, followed moments later by a pack of brush wolves. The doe crosses the lake, but the ice gives way, and she falls in. She scrambles back out, but the wolves are on her. They tear her apart where she stands.

Despite his years in the woods, Paulsen has never seen a predator kill another animal; he finds the brutality horrifying. Without thinking, he yells at the wolves. They stop and notice him and his dogs for the first time. The alpha wolf rises on its hind legs and stares at the author. At that moment, he realizes he doesn’t really know the wilderness at all.

Paulsen’s family lives with him in a cabin in the woods. Struggling to feed them, Paulsen gets a job hunting beaver for the State of Minnesota, which suffers from a major invasion of the creatures. He sets up a 20-mile trap line, but he must walk or ski it, and it’s not enough to make ends meet, so he acquires four