Sheep may safely graze

Sheep may safely graze
Whilst the shepherd is watching.
Where the wise and good rule
Peace will also reign there
And there? will be peace throughout the world.

From the from the Hunt Cantata, #208. Music by JS Bach, text by Salomo Franck

One reason that our sheep graze safely is that there are now no wolves to devour them. Man has persecuted the wolf in Scotland for hundreds of years. In 1427, in the time of James I, the Scottish Parliament passed an act requiring lairds to hunt and kill wolves. Wolf hunting was at times a Royal sport and in 1528 James V attended a hunt for wolves, foxes and wild cats organised by an Earl of Atholl. In 1577 James VI ordered that wolves should be hunted three times a year following severe losses of cattle from wolf attacks in Sutherland. This constant persecution over the centuries eventually took its toll and the wolf was virtually extinct by the end of the seventeenth century. Many people claimed to have killed 'the last wolf in Scotland'. Pennant, writing in 1775, said that the last wolf was killed in 1680 near Killiecrankie by Sir Ewan Cameron of Locheil. Another story tells that the last wolf was killed in 1743, two years before the 'forty-five' Jacobite rising, on the upper reaches of the River Findhorn in Moray. A large wolf, was reported to have killed two children and Mackintosh of Mackintosh assembled a hunt and the wolf was killed by a gillie named Eagan Macqueen of Poll a'chrocain.

Close inspection through the stalker's telescope will confirm the total absence of wolves.