Trapline in the Wrangells

Well, I can tell you I wasn't prepared to find wolves in the area, so I threw a beaver carcass in the pit they had dug, figuring to return in a day or two with bigger traps to make a wolf set. I had always wanted to trap wolves—but I had hoped for some dumb ones. So far it wasn't looking too good.

Two days later, we were ready for them. We had some freshly-boiled #4½ Newhouse traps in my sled preset and ready to put out for the wolves. (Uh, by the way, don't mention anything to my wife about her best stock pot we used for boiling the traps. It was the only thing I could find, and she wasn't looking, so I thought I might just… aw, hang it all, just don't say anything about it, all right?) When we got to the place, about a mile from our cabin, we were surprised to find the beaver carcass missing and more wolf tracks. “The wolves are surely gone now,” I reckoned. “I hope they come back in a few weeks…”

I remade the set with another caribou head, then the traps, then snow cover, and finally a caribou hide covering the whole thing. I left the big drag with the unsprung trap right where it was, hoping I might fool them. They would see that the original trap and drag were where they had left them, I reasoned. Feeling reassured, they would then carefully remove the caribou hide, dive in for another excellent caribou dinner, courtesy of the dumb trapper up on the hill, and ker-snap! Heh, heh, heh… Just for extra good measure, I pulled back about 100 yards, made a pee post set, and put some snares in the willow bushes nearby. All this was done with utmost care and precautions not to leave any of our own smelly signatures in the area—we never stepped off our sled, or handled the traps with bare hands, or touched the ground, or even blew the snot out of our nose! We rigged our other coyote set the same way, just in case the wolves might take a notion to visit there. Then we went home.

A couple days later, the boys and I were out setting more traps in well-below-zero weather. We weren't intending to check the wolf set and didn't have a gun with us, since we didn't expect the wolves to still be in the area. But, as we neared the pee post, our mouths suddenly dropped open in surprised astonishment, for there in the snow were fresh wolf tracks!

The tracks told all. First, they headed for the free dinner, but, true to form, those cagey wolves figured out our sly deception. With meticulous care, they had removed the caribou hide and drug it about fifty feet away. In the process, they somehow snapped one of the #4½ Newhouse traps underneath. Now, as the pack was milling around wondering what to do and arguing about how to get at that tempting caribou head under those traps, one of the fellas decided to leave the decision-making to better minds and go find a good place to relieve himself. He wandered down the trail about 100 yards, sniffed around, and caught the scent of something interesting. He looked furtively around, stiff-legged it up to that enticing smell, hiked up his back leg, and… SNAP! My pardners and I had our first wolf.

Well, not quite. In our attempt to leave no scent, we had not attached the trap to anything, hoping the factory-supplied drag would be sufficient. It wasn't.

Swift as hares before lynx, the boys high-tailed it back to the house for their rifle, returning in record time, all breathless with excitement. Then, the tracking game began. It soon became obvious that this was no dumb wolf. Instead of trying to crawl back in the brush to hide, or wasting effort trying to gnaw the trap off his paw, the bold fellow had headed straight out to the middle of the river bed, which was a three-quarter-mile-wide swath of glacial gravel bars utterly devoid of vegetation. What little snow had fallen throughout the winter had been hardened and drifted by recent winds, and, even with the jagged metal drag trailing behind him, the wolf left almost no marks for us to follow. Unerring, he made his way to where the river had frozen into a highway of bare ice. Now he could travel without hanging up on the pesky drag, and with the added benefit of leaving no sign at all for that cursed trapper up on the hill and his equally cursed offspring to follow.

He just might have gotten away with it, too, if only it hadn't been for that place more than a mile downstream where the river turned hard against a sheer bluff, and open water forced him back onto the bank. It was at this juncture that the trap’s drag wedged tightly between the jumbled slabs of river ice.

When we found him there later, a healthy 93-pound black male, he was ominously near the edge of the icy, dark bluish water. The -25° conditions were causing overflow to slowly creep around him. I dispatched him with the boys’ .22 and breathed a prayer of thankfulness and relief. There were so many what-ifs which would have lost the wolf to us forever—what if the drag hadn’t gotten snagged when it did and he had taken that one last lunge into the swiftly turbulent river? What if we had waited until the next day to check the set? What if it had snowed over what little trail he had left? Even a bare skiff of snow would have completely eradicated any trace of his passing. Truly our efforts were blessed that day!

If time permitted, I’d tell you tales about the other critters we brought home this year. There was a second wolf, who was beautiful but dumb. There were coyotes, wolverines, martens, several beavers and muskrats, and one mink.

But story time will have to wait while the trapline is still calling. And so, the boys and I are off to the river to see what trapping adventures await us there.