Trapline in the Wrangells

By Keith & Laurie Rowland

I live in the Wrangell Mountains with my wife, Laurie, and five trappin’ pardners, ages 5 - 12. As part of our home schooling efforts this year, I took Kaleb (12) and David (11) to the Alaska Trappers Association (ATA) Trapping School in Fairbanks. The ATA generously allowed the three of us to attend for the price of one. So, in a way, I suppose this story is my way of returning thanks.

What with our mild winter this year, it was mid-December before the rivers froze up enough for travel. The boys and I had spent our fall and early winter months hunting caribou and deer and trapping beaver, and had accumulated a bait stash of gargantuan proportions. So, as soon as the weather began cooperating, we made a couple bait sets for coyote below our cabin on the Nizina River by burying a caribou head and placing a trap over it. For a long time, nothing happened.

One day, a couple weeks before Christmas, we were surprised to discover the tracks of about four wolves on the river bottom. We cautiously approached one of our coyote sets. Our eagerness mounted as we saw that the area around our trap was covered with tracks. Then we saw it—tell-tale drag marks leading away from the set site. “Yippee!” the boys hooted with glee. “We got one!” I crowed.

Like bloodhounds on a scent trail, we followed those drag marks, but our excitement soon turned to bitter disappointment. Fifty feet from the set, we found our 4 inch by 12 ft drift log drag. Warned by their keen sense of smell and sharp eyes, those wily wolves had used their sharp teeth and powerful jaws to drag the heavy log away from the bait. With such skill and exquisite finesse did they maneuver the cumbersome drag that the #3 coil spring which we had attached to it had remained unsprung, and the thin layer of waxed paper still covering the trap's jaws looked as though it hadn't even been disturbed. With the trap safely out of harm's way, the wolves had returned to the set and enjoyed a gratifying feast of caribou.

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