In the cattle country you will find the wolfer--a picturesque character engaged in the peculiar occupation of trying to exterminate wolves. His equipment consists of a rifle, traps, and poison. A few wolfers follow their occupation the year round. Many of them are free trappers--some of them old-timers who have seen better trapping days.
When a wolfer meets another wolfer, or when he is discussing business with stockmen and others who are interested, his talk is likely to run to “Three Toes,” a wolf that killed so many cattle on the S.S. Bar Ranch; or to “Old Two Toes,” which John Jones succeeded in trapping. He is eager to hear how Smith trapped the last wolf. Just as the prospector has faith that he will find the mythical lost mine, many wolfers firmly believe that they will yet compound a scent which will please the nostrils of the most wary wolf and lure him to his doom.
The hunter and the trapper keep bringing forward new and skillful ways of poisoning and trapping wolves. But getting a wolf becomes increasingly difficult. The majority of wolves now trapped are the young or the stupid ones. Many trappers use traps by the gross. These are set in clusters in selected places--in narrow trails, round carcasses, and in the approaches to stream crossings. The traps are concealed; placed in water; they are deodorized, hidden, and false-scented with offal. Whole batteries are placed before or round a stake the top of which is highly scented with something alluring to wolf nostrils.
One day I watched a trapper spend several hours in placing more than a hundred traps round the carcass of a cow. He avoided touching the carcass. This concealed trap arrangement was as complicated as a barbed-wire entanglement. At one place he set the traps three abreast and five deep. On another probable line of approach he set ten traps, singly, but on a zigzag line. Two fallen logs made a V-shaped chute, which ended close to the carcass. In the narrow end of this chute another cluster of traps was set. Thus the carcass was completely surrounded by numerous concealed traps. It seemed impossible for any animal to walk to the carcass without thrusting a foot into one of the steel jaws of this network of concealed traps. Yet a wolf got through that night and feasted on the carcass!