But not so the wolf. He began to use his wits against man and his gun. He soon realized that man was his enemy and also that man could kill him from a considerable distance. A wolf saw a man at a distance; then the wolf heard a bang, and immediately felt a sharp pain in his body. That wolf fell and died. But another wolf saw his brother die like that. He set his wits to work. He concluded that the man had caused the bang which made his brother fall and die. Hence the wolf realized that man was dangerous to him, even at a distance. So after that the wolf resolved to run away from man. And other wolves learned to do the same. Of course, the whole race of wolves did not learn this lesson so quickly. Many hundreds of wolves meanwhile fell victims to man's gun; but a few wolves escaped. These few wolves also saw repeatedly that if any of their brothers allowed a man to approach anywhere near him, he was killed. So after seeing that happen many times, the surviving wolves learned that they must always run away from the presence of man. These few surviving wolves taught their children to do the same. Some of these wolf children did not heed that lesson when they grew up; so they too were killed. But a few of the wolf children remembered the lesson when they grew up; so they escaped getting killed. In turn these wolves also taught _their_ children to run away from the presence of man. So in a few generations a race of wolves grew up in the West that the hunter _did not even get the chance to shoot_. That in itself was a great achievement for the wolf. Why? Because some species of animals as a race do not learn so quickly to run away from the mere presence of man; one or two animals personally may learn quickly to do that, but not all the animals of a species. That is why the buffaloes and some of the antelopes and deer in the West were wiped out; they did not learn in those same few years to run away from the presence of man. The wolves alone learned this, and they have survived as a race. _The American Wolf Learns to Evade the Trap_ But the battle was not yet over. Seeing that his gun had now failed, man used his wits to kill the wolf in another way. He set _traps_ for the wolf; and he cunningly baited the traps with tempting food. Then the man went away from the traps. He thought that because he was not himself anywhere near the traps, the wolf would not be afraid to approach them. Well, at first some wolves did go up to the traps, and were caught by them. But a few other wolves saw that fate of their unwary brothers. So those surviving wolves again set their wits to work to discover the cause of this new danger. And after a time they saw the steel traps. "So, _this_ is our new enemy!" they said. After that they avoided the traps, even if the traps were baited with the most tempting food. And they taught their children to do the same. So again man was beaten in this battle of wits. He found that the trap could catch the wolf no more.