MAN FINDS AN ENORMOUS WOLF CAUGHT IN A TRAP. WATCH HIM SET THE BIG BEAUTIFUL ANIMAL FREE!!

In 2015, a Wisconsin trapper named John Oens found himself face to face with a fully grown timber wolf, one leg caught in a trap. Instead of a catch pole, he used a scrap of plywood with a hole cut through it, and the wolf barely fought back. Watch how he pulled off a release so clean it is still racking up views nearly a decade later.

A grown timber wolf, one leg pinned in a trap, does not usually stay calm when a stranger walks toward it. Every instinct in an animal that size says fight, thrash, snap at whatever gets close enough. So when the man kneeling beside this wolf in central Wisconsin reaches for nothing more than a scrap of plywood with a hole cut in it, the moment could go a dozen different ways, and more than one commenter watching the footage assumed it was about to go badly. What happens next is the reason a decade-old trapping video is still circulating.

The Tool Nobody Expected to Work

The trapper, identified in the video credits as John Oens, uses a simple sheet of plywood with a single hole cut through the center — low-tech compared to the catch poles typically used to safely handle snared predators. At the 1:11 mark, even a viewer watching the footage can be heard doubting the plan, commenting afterward that it wasn’t going to work. It does. Oens slides the board down over the wolf’s head and shoulders, pins it gently against the ground, and reaches for the trap’s release without a single lunge from the animal. The wolf, according to comments on the upload, chipped visible tooth marks into the plywood during the brief struggle — proof it had the strength to do real damage, and proof the barrier held anyway.

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A Predator That Seemed to Understand the Help

What struck viewers most wasn’t the technique — it was the wolf’s behavior once it was pinned. Several commenters on the original upload noted how still the animal went, almost as if it registered that the person crouched over it wasn’t a threat. One viewer directly compared it to footage of a mountain lion being released under similar circumstances, describing that release as chaotic by comparison, all thrashing and snarling from start to finish. The wolf in this video does none of that. It watches the trap, watches the hands working at its leg, and when the pressure finally releases, it takes off across the snow in a full sprint rather than turning to challenge the person who had just been kneeling on top of it.

Why Ethical Release Techniques Matter to Trappers

The video landed in the middle of an ongoing argument that plays out under nearly every wolf-trapping clip posted online. Central Wisconsin sits within an active wolf management zone, where regulated trapping is legal and used partly as a population-control tool. One commenter pushed back hard against critics in the replies, calling the footage a well-done tutorial for ethical trappers and arguing that the more people see release techniques like this one, the more comfortable the broader public becomes with the practice. Another framed it in blunter terms, thanking Oens for keeping the wolf pack, and by extension the deer population hunters rely on, in balance. Whether or not a viewer agrees with trapping as a practice, the footage itself makes a specific case: catching and releasing a wolf without harming it is possible, and this is what it looks like done carefully.

The Channel Behind the Footage

The video was uploaded under the channel name petenrock, with the description crediting John Oens as the trapper and dating the footage to a 2015 HD shoot. Nearly a decade later, it has pulled in more than 9.7 million views, a number that dwarfs almost everything else on a small, single-topic channel built around trapping and outdoor footage. That kind of longevity is unusual for wildlife content, which tends to spike hard on upload and fade within weeks. This clip has instead kept finding new audiences year after year, largely through shares on Snapchat, Reddit, and other platforms where a single dramatic clip travels far past its original upload.

How This Compares to Other Predator Releases Online

Predator-release footage is its own small genre online, and most of it follows a predictable script: a catch pole, a struggling animal, a tense few seconds before the trap comes free. What sets this video apart is the improvisation. A catch pole requires specialized equipment; a piece of plywood with a hole cut in it requires almost nothing, which is likely why the clip resonates with viewers who trap or handle wildlife themselves. It reads less like a rehearsed procedure and more like someone solving a real problem with whatever was on hand, and having it work better than the standard tool would have.

The Reaction That Keeps the Video Alive

One comment on the upload sums up how the video keeps finding new viewers nearly a decade later: someone wrote that they had first heard about the footage secondhand through a Snapchat story, got frustrated by the retelling, and went looking for the original clip themselves. That pattern, where the description spreads faster than the source, has kept the video circulating well past its original release, pulling in fresh waves of comments each time a platform’s algorithm rediscovers it. The reactions have stayed remarkably consistent across nearly ten years: relief that the wolf wasn’t hurt, surprise at how calm it stayed, and repeated requests that Oens patent the plywood-board technique.

A Small Clip With an Outsized Legacy

There’s no muscle car in this one, no V8 rumble under the hood, just a man, a piece of plywood, and a wild animal that had every reason to fight back and chose not to. It’s the kind of video that earns its views the old-fashioned way, through people forwarding it to friends because it’s genuinely satisfying to watch a tense situation resolve cleanly. Nearly ten years and 9.7 million views later, it’s still doing exactly that.

What Wildlife Officials Say About Homemade Release Tools

Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources does not officially endorse specific release techniques for trapped predators, leaving methods like the plywood board largely as trapper-to-trapper knowledge passed down rather than formal training. That informal transmission is part of why videos like this one carry real weight within the trapping community: absent an official manual, footage of a technique working under real conditions becomes the closest thing to a verified method available. Regulated trapping seasons for wolves have opened and closed repeatedly in Wisconsin over the past decade as the species has moved on and off federal endangered species protections, adding another layer of uncertainty that makes documented, low-risk handling techniques like this one more valuable to trappers trying to stay both safe and compliant.

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