Nice ! Thanks for taking us along. Always like seeing the big canids
get tangled up!

Is that black caught at a beaver house? Now I know why there are no wolves where I am, they are all in your playground!

I have looked at all your pictures. Man you are living the dream. Congratulations!!

Great photos JR! Looks like the critters have ben on the move on your line Glad your having fun!

Very cool trip!! Nice big black and wolverine! Congratulations! Keep it coming!

Looks like you have the ski skins on your rig? You might want try the summit ski's. They are a little bit wider than the stock and the keel is deeper than regular ski's. With the deeper keel your not stuck in someone else's ski track making a straight path when riding. I found them easier to use around here anyway.

JR, the grey wolf picture needs to be framed, thanks again for allowing us to ride along with you on your line. Stay Safe out there.
Allan

Very cool! Thank you for sharing your travels and trapping adventures.

Safe trip home off the trapline with no fur for the stretchers. My chainsaw gas tipped over in my sled and leaked. My Pelican trunk with all my wolf gear has a hole in the bottom of it. These two little tidbits of information together equal no wolves in wolf gear.
I had 5 pee posts dug up. Warm and good traveling but the overflow was ridiculous. The studs on the Tundra are awesome but I can see some little mods to her in the near future.


Spent a day up looking for antlers and only found one but found a few moose.


Broke out SMG with lots of overflow and the log jams were crazy. Finally gave up and went through the trees.

Bought some new cabin protection and entertainment. This little thing is pretty fun for shooting flies off the ceiling. Shot 4 in one night, not sure what the limit is on them.
Set some more clean wolf gear hoping the warm weather doesn't expose them. Woke up yesterday morn at 5 am to 42 degrees ABOVEzero. I set 5 9's with grapples hooked to them. Dang that was hard for me to walk away from. 1st time using them and it was extra brushy around the sets.

The wolves have been peeing on that 55gal drum everytime the walked by it so I planted a 9 beside it.

Man that would bite about the gas! Glad to hear you had a safe trip!

Oh the humanity! What a gut wrench about the contaminated traps.

JR... bummer on the sets!
Curious on what your wolf grapples look like.
Good luck with that, don't think I could do it!

Man they are some awesome pics. You are in a beautiful area. Unreal to live there to enjoy that. You can have some of our snow. I live in Central New York. Country. We had close to 3' of snow in the last 2 and a half weeks. That is close to our total for a winter. We only had 14" of snow that had stayed all of January. Unusual though. When I think of Alaska, I think of snow in Feet, not what I see on your line. Look forward to your pics and stories. Thanks for sharing. The Yotes are strange in my area this year. Not seeing them come through much at all. Only killed two all winter so far. Had 6-8 by this time last year. I have had a couple #3's at a pee post for a month. Visited it once. Okay, good luck next time out.

Great pics! I know the feeling on those grapples...especially after a good snow & blow. Better luck this time!

Too bad about the tainted gear, looks like you would have had one or two.

I got something in a wolf trap with a grapple on it in mid November that disappeared. Because of the circumstances couldn't tell if it was a wolf or coyote. The place was fairly torn up, but trap and drag missing. It is along a road, could have been theft. Spent a long time looking over several days, no luck. I still use some grapples, but try to limit to good entanglement areas. Got one in a grapple a couple years ago, only made it about 20 feet to the first spruce tree and was there waiting.

JR, what made you decide to use grapples? It seems like the system you have staking or solid anchoring was working well. How much chain and cable between the trap and grapple?
Good luck.

Thanks fellas, the grapples are just a quick way of setting wolf gear when there is no trees around to tie off and I'm not on ice. I just used them in places where I don't plan on re-setting in the future like odd pee posts along the trail or odd blind trail sets. They are from Alaska Range Trapping Supply out of Eagle River. These are made by a local blacksmith down there and are the best grapple I've ever seen. I have 6 and was pretty impressed when they hooked up just pulling them across my sno go trail and it about pulled me off my feet. I still only set them where there was extreme narrow trail with lots of brush. Most of them I threw the grapple into the brush to start. I kind of got tired of making and driving stakes all over. Lots of guys use them with great results. They will not be my main anchor by any means but will certainly be a nice addition to the gear box. Hope to post some pics next week showing how they work or don't work. Meanwhile, here's a few more pics from last week.





I bought a 12 volt jump kit and tried it on my Polaris 4-wheeler. Battery totally dead, 15 below and hasn't been started for over a year. This thing cranked it over better than the new battery did. This is another great addition to the pack on the trapline, boat, hunting camp or even the truck. Can charge cameras, phones and about anything you can think of. If you run a 4-stroke sled, I'd say they are a must.

Awesome!

I am running the normal 10' of chain off the trap and 2' on each grapple with a quick link to connect them.