Desperate for food after a grizzly bear ravaged his garden, Tom Oar embarks on a last-ditch deer hunt. Marty Meierotto begins to establish his winter trapline, breaking fresh trail in the uncharted wild. In the Ruby Valley of Montana, Rich Lewis pursues a marauding wolf pack that has slaughtered a neighbor's cattle. And in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, Eustace Conway must deal with Scout, a careless intern with "a dose of city boy in him."