Mowat's book has received criticism relating to the veracity of his work and its conclusions. Canadian Wildlife Service official Alexander William Francis Banfield, who supervised Mowat's field work, characterised the book as "semi-fictional", and accused Mowat of blatantly lying about his expedition. He pointed out that contrary to what is written in the book, Mowat was part of an expedition of three biologists, and was never alone. Banfield also pointed out that a lot of what was written in "Never Cry Wolf" was not derived from Mowat's first hand observations, but were plagiarised from Banfield's own works, as well as from Adolph Murie's "The Wolves of Mount McKinley". In a 1964 article published in the "Canadian Field-Naturalist", he compared Mowat's 1963 bestseller to Little Red Riding Hood, claiming that, "I hope that readers of "Never Cry Wolf" will realize that both stories have about the same factual content."