Ghosts on the ‘Frontier’: Interrogating the Possessive Logic of Wolf Killing

ABSTRACT Wolf killing is a social problem that animates the link between settler colonialism, masculinity, and animal harms. While the existing literature primarily understands wolf killing through the logic of elimination, based on the historical extirpation of wolves, we contend that its contemporary iteration may also be understood through an application of Moreton‐Robinson's (2015) white possessive logics. This paper engages in a descriptive and semiotic analysis of 468 contemporary images depicting wolf killing in Canada and the United States. We examine how the manifest elements of these images reproduce the colonial and masculinist dimensions of wolf killing. We demonstrate that (a) the wolf's subjectivity is transformed into property as evidenced by them becoming trophies, (b) the securitization of private settler property is intricately linked with the militaristic nature of wolf killing, and (c) this violence disrupts Indigenous ontological connections to land and more‐than‐human relations. We discuss the implications of this argument and contend that settler models of wildlife management and conservation, in addition to trophy hunting, be understood through the lens of the white possessive logic. This work further extends the contributions of Indigenous studies and critical criminological scholarship to wildlife management and conservation.