The River Findhorn

Popular legend has it that the very last wolf killed in the Highlands (and so the last in Britain), was dispatched by the hunter MacQueen, of Pall-a-chrocain, on the river Findhorn, in 1743. MacQueen himself, who died in 1797, was a giant of a man, and renowned as a deer hunter.

A great black beast had killed two children (shades of the Beast of Gevaudan, same historical period), and the Laird of MacIntosh had called a meeting above Fi-Guithas to seek out and destroy the perpetrator. All were there at the allotted hour except MacQueen. Eventually he arrived.

"What kept you?" asked MacIntosh sarcastically.

"I brought him for you", replied MacQueen, tossing out the severed head of the last wolf from under his plaid.

Harting, from whose British Animals Extinct Within Historic Times (1880) this account is drawn, quotes Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, from 1829, giving what he claimed were MacQueen's own words to MacIntosh (though setting the tale in Moy in Inverness-shire):

As I came through the slochk (i.e., ravine) I foregathered wi' the beast. My long dog there turned him. I buckled wi' him, and dirkit him, and syne whuttled his craig (i.e., cut his throat), and brought awa' his countenance for fear he might come alive again, for they are very precarious creatures.