A Wyoming trapper submits the following: "I send you herewith a photo of a female grey wolf which I trapped in the spring of 1908; this wolf weighed 62 pounds. I caught her in a No. 4 trap, and when I got to within thirty yards of her I shot her with my 33 Special Winchester.
"The grey wolf is a powerful animal, and if a person goes too near them when they are in a trap they are apt to escape, and another thing, their feet are so large that a trap generally catches them by the toes. It is nothing uncommon for a single grey wolf to destroy $1,000 worth of stock in a year. This one that I trapped would have in a few weeks produced 12 cubs; just think of the damage which these thirteen wolves could have done.
"The grey wolf is hard to trap on account of being so powerful; they can kill a large steer or other ranch stock, in the shape of horses or cattle, and they like their meat fresh. I had fifty traps out and trapped 17 or 18 coyotes and several skunk while I was trying to catch this wolf.
"Here is the set I use: Find where the wolves have killed something or an old carcass, or find a trail that they are in the habit of using, for it is the habit of wolves to smell around anything they may find dead, and scratch around the same. Dig holes to fit the jaws and springs of your traps, put a wad of paper or wool under the pan of trap, and cover the entire jaws of traps with a piece of paper; then cover over the trap and chain with fine dry horse or cow manure, so that the covering will be level with the top of the ground, and make everything look as natural as possible."
A Trapped Wolf.
"The accompanying photograph shows a wolf that I caught a few years ago and this is the way I caught it," writes one of the Wisconsin trappers. "First, I took the insides and stuff from a hog and placed it in a clover field and set three No. 4 Hawley & Norton traps around it, covering nicely with clover leaves, chaff, etc., but I guess I must have been a little careless, as a hungry wolf came along, ate what he wanted and scattered the rest of it around without springing the traps; so I thought I would teach him how to do that trick over again, and I took 4 more traps, making 7 in all, fastened one trap chain to the next trap, and in this way strung them out around the bait, fastening the whole to a logging chain that I had concealed under some clover seed hay.
"Then I covered everything very carefully with clover leaves, chaff, etc., and also some of the food out of the hog's stomach, as this food was smelling very sour by this time. I will also add that some of these traps were brand new, while some of them were very rusty, so I took first a new trap and then a rusty one, and set them alternately around the bait, thinking that this arrangement, together with the sour smell of the food, would confuse his nose a little, and I think it did, at any rate, in about a week he came back and got tangled up. He was caught only in one trap as his first jump would, of course, pull all the other traps out of position.
"He was a sorry looking specimen of a wolf, mixed up in all this hardware (seven big No. 4 Hawley & Norton traps and one logging chain), but we will have to excuse him as he "didn't know it was loaded." The best way is to fasten every trap separately, as in this way he may get caught in several traps, or more than one might happen to get caught at the same time, while if they hang together, he will not be likely to get caught in more than one trap, as in his first desperate struggle to escape he will pull the others out of position.