An old time trapper writes as follows: "Water-sets are the best for wolves if the animals are cunning. The proper way to make them is to take a boat — don't walk along the bank but simply load your boat with lots of bait, such as beef head, shanks, entrails, or sheep that have died or have been killed by wolves. Start down the stream, looking for small sand or gravel bars lying just above the water and a few feet long. When one of these is found, run your boat up to it and leave a beef head, a quarter of mutton or such like, and then proceed on down to the next bar and bait it in the same way, keeping on in that way until the bait is gone.
"The wolf is very bait shy. It will take bait that it finds along streams more readily than on land. In a few nights after placing your bait, you will find that the wolves are working on it and have made trails down the bank of the stream to the edge of the water. You will observe that they all take the water at the same place.
Wolf Water Set.
"Now load your boat with plenty of bait as before, but this time take also a good supply of traps, the proper size for wolves, and a supply of clogs similar to fence posts. When you come to the bar, supply it again with bait. Fasten your trap to a clog, set the trap at the edge of the water in the trail and allow the clog to lie the full length of the chain, downstream in the brush. Splash water on the clog to wash it, and also on any brush you touch. Continue thus at the baited places, and you will be surprised at your catch, if you have never trapped that way.
"As for wolves getting scarce in the West, there are some places where the large wolves are decreasing. The coyote is becoming more plentiful every year. They are the worst of the two among sheep and small calves and colts. The sheep men on the desert are paying $40.00 per month to the trappers in eastern Oregon for wolves, besides boarding them and allowing them to keep the pelts. Some trappers are making as much as $150.00 per month. It is almost impossible to poison wolves in this country, but I can trap them successfully several ways."
One of the Minnesota trappers gives the following experience: "In the fall a man brought an old horse to give us for chicken feed, and after butchering it, we hauled the insides, head and feet out into the field along with some manure. After a few days we found that wolves were eating it, so when we butchered the next one, we dragged the insides around and put them in a little gulley and spread manure around; then set two traps, No. 3 Newhouse on both sides of the gulley and three traps down in the gulley near the bait.
"We set these traps on Monday, and on next Thursday father saw a fox running away from the traps, and found it had sprung one without getting caught. I think 4 or 5 wolves came around on Friday night, but they didn't get caught either. I moved one of the No. 3's nearer the bait, and on Friday father bought two No. 2 1/2 Newhouse otter traps. One of these we set where the No. 3 had been, and the other about six rods west of the gulley. We set the two No. 2 1/2 on Saturday morning. On Sunday morning on our way to church, we drove by the traps and found a wolf in the new No. 2 1/2 and a red fox in the No. 3 that I had moved up near the bait. These two traps were not over ten feet apart. On skinning the fox we found marks as if he had been bitten. It weighed 8 1/2 pounds and the wolf weighed 34 pounds.
"The wolves kept coming every other day. The next Friday we found another wolf in the same trap that the fox was caught in. On Friday of the next week we had another wolf in the No. 2 trap. On the next Thursday there was a wolf caught in the other No. 2 1/2 otter trap which was set six rods from the gulley, and that was the last one we caught up to February 15th. They don't seem to come around here now."