Experience of James Williams

    There were lots of wolves here in an early day, as well as a few at present. The second year here, we all kept a few sheep and a fat mutton chop was a favorite dish of those big, gray and black villains, called timber wolves, as well as the small coyotes or prairie wolves. Settlers would set big, spring steel traps, with jaws nearly strong enough to hold a bear (it took two men to set them). If one lone man had accidentally gotten caught in one of them, he'd have had to carry it home for relief; he could not have gotten out of its terrible jaws without help.
    The wolves were too cunning to be very often caught in those traps, so we made what we called, wolf pens, which were constructed by splitting little poles about 6 inches in diameter and about 8 feet long, building a pen about 3 feet high and 4 feet wide by 8 feet long, flooring the pen to keep his wolfship from digging under. We'd then take enough of those split poles to cover the pen, taking care not have very big cracks between. The pen being nicely covered, we'd then take a piece of split pole, turning split face down like a batten on an old fashioned door, but about 18 inches longer than the pen was wide. We'd pin that batten with wooden pins (iron bolts and big nails were not to be had then) through each slat of the lid (top of pen), Founding the projecting ends of this rear batten to serve as hinges by inverting a forked, small pole with both ends of fork same length being sharpened and driven firmly in the ground so as to hold the back end of cover from slipping back, or sideways, when front was in like manner battened, and raised high enough for wolf to jump into pen from front. This heavy hinged top was raised and set on big triggers with piece of beef or deer meat, usually the latter, and if Mr. Wolf, big or little, ever got in that pen and aimed to carve that venison, he was a goner.

    We often caught them by running them down with strong horses and hounds, when the snow was very deep and soft. Some of the early pioneers would keep a pack of hounds, and had lots of fun (they said), chasing them. I never was personally along in more than about two of those long chases, and we got the wolf. We also got awfully cold, as well as about as hungry as the wolves we were chasing. When we got home I could not see where the fun came in.
    I remember we got up one morning in winter, and while I was making a fire in the fire place (we had no stoves then and our overshot well was dry and we had to carry water from a little branch west of the house), mother and my little brother had taken wooden pails of that period and started before daylight to the branch for water. They got down west about 100 yards and brother, being ahead, a great big, gray wolf reared up just a few yards ahead of him. Instantly he blazed away at the wolf with his water pail. Mother was just behind and both helloing, scared up another big, black looking animal and both ran off, mother and brother running to the house out of breath. We didn't get breakfast very early that morning. The two big wolves had killed several of our little flock of sheep and were gorged with mutton and blood; they might easily have been run down and killed had we been equipped with dogs and good, fast horses. Such occurrences as this were common in those days. [William James, Seventy-Five Years on the Border (Kansas City, MO: Press of Standard Printing Company, 1912), 140-41].