This painting is by Gerard Rysbrack, and like many middle and late eighteenth century paintings, it is amazing in its anatomical correctness.
The head of the wolf is so much larger than that of the hounds. It is also a significantly larger animal.
But more amazing to me is how the artist got the wolf color correctly. The common wolf (Canis lupus lupus) usually has a tan muzzle that has some white points around the lips. (Compare with this living specimen of the same subspecies.)
Hounds of this type that grapple with the big game hunting wolves of the northern parts of Eurasia and North America generally have a high mortality rate. Although the hounds may have been used to hunt deer and wild boar, their lives have never depended upon killing such dangerous prey. The wolf, by contrast, has evolved to kill these animals– and must engage in this sort of dangerous fighting virtually every time it wants to eat fresh meat. As a result of its lifestyle, the wolf has much more practice fighting than the dogs do.
Furthermore, the hounds do not have the physical adaptations, such as the big teeth, jaws, and muscles that control the jaws, that the wolf has. Humans have also selected for floppy, pendulous ears in their scenthounds, which is makes the dogs look very civilized and cute. However, in this context, it gives the wolf more of an opportunity to grab the dog by the ear and jerk its scalp off, which is one reason why many livestock guardian dogs have their ears cropped.
(Here is a photo a bear hound that a wolf scalped in this fashion. Warning: graphic image. And here is another that survived.)
Traditionally, the dogs used to hunt wolves were not scenthounds. Most wolf hunting breeds have either been sighthounds or mastiffs. (Or in the case of the Irish wolfhound and Spanish lebrel– a combination of sighthound and mastiff). Sighthounds were used to hunt wolves because they could catch a wolf on the run before it had a chance to stand and fight. Although sighthounds are slighter animals than wolves are, if they can catch and hold a wolf before it can fight them, they would have the advantage.
The Russians would use packs of scent hounds to find the the wolf, and then they would release two or three borzoi to catch it, which they did by grabbing it by the ears or neck and holding it in a very similar fashion to the way catch dogs hold feral pigs. Then the hunter would ride up and dispatch the wolf.
Mastiffs and sighthounds with mastiff in them would actually try to kill the wolf. However, it takes a big, tough dog to kill a wolf in a battle. In proportion to their body size, dogs have smaller heads and teeth than wolves do, so it was necessary to breed really big dogs if someone wanted them to fight wolves. This is probably the main selection pressure that drove the Irish wolfhound to its great size. If we are to believe saga and ancient texts, Irish wolfhounds were originally larger dogs than they are today, and their fighting prowess was renowned. They were known for beating fighting bulldogs and mastiffs in dog fights, simply because they were no challenge compared to a wolf. The Spanish lebrel (a type of Spanish wolfhound) was so expert at grappling with wolves that they were used in war and in genocidal campaigns against the indigenous people of the New World.
Using packs of scenthounds against wolves was much less efficient than using sighthounds, sighthound/mastiffs, or mastiffs, but it may have been deemed more sporting in the eighteenth century. Nobles kept packs of hounds that were bred to look uniform. The dogs in the Rysbrack painting look very similar to foxhounds that one would find throughout the British Isles, but these dogs have been put after an animal a little harder to dispatch than a little red fox.
Many dogs died hunting wolves. Today, whenever bear hounds are run in wolf country, a few dogs never return. These dogs are scenthounds and are very ill-equipped to defend themselves against a wolf and certainly are no match for a pack. Of course, dogs that run black bears have a hazardous occupation anyway, but although they can put a single black bear into a tree, they can’t fight a wolf that really wants them dead.
