390 FOllTY-FOUR YEARS OP 



wolves again return, the little ones run immediately to the 

 crossing-place to seek food, and putting their feet in the 

 very place they should, the trap takes such a fair hold of 

 one foot that they cannot escape. 



The old ones being at the meat when a young one is 

 taken in the trap, they are not afraid to return to the 

 meat again, as there was nothing there to scare them. 



After all become afraid of the crossing-places, I take 

 my trap, and set it in the mud where they stand to eat the 

 meat, and catch one there, after which they will come no 

 more to that place. 



After trapping them that way for several years, they 

 became so cunning that they would not touch any bait I 

 offered them. Then I adopted another plan, which is as 

 follows : 



I found that they would pick up any fragments of old 

 bones that lay on the land ; but if they lay in water, or 

 close to it, they would not touch them. So I saved all 

 the large bones from the table, particularly the joint-ends 

 of the beef bones, beat them to pieces, put them in a bas- 

 ket, mounted a horse, so that my tracks could not be 

 scented, and scattered the bones over a piece of ground as 

 large as a small garden, and around that place stuck some 

 bushes, through which they would have to pass. 



When they had eaten all the little bones, I gave tlieni a 

 second mess, and placed my trap between the bushes, cut- 

 ting the ground precisely the size of the trap, but carefully 

 carrying away every particle of the dirt taken out. Sink- 

 ing the trap about one inch below the surface, I then laid 

 old leaves over it, and covered these about one inch deep 

 with buckwheat-bran, which keeps the wolf from smelling 

 the trap. Then I took some of the grass which grew 

 about the spot, and laid it so carefully over the trap that 

 no eye could discern the difference between that place and 

 the sufroandiug ground. This done, early in the more- 



