This image comes from Foreign Field Sports (1819) by Matthew Dubourg, Edward Orne, John Heaviside Clark, and Samuel Howitt.
I wish a better description had been provided for how it worked, but it appears to have worked like a baited Conibear trap:
This method of destroying the voracious Wolves of Germany is so simple, and so clearly illustrated by the Plate, that any description is superfluous. The same kind of instrument is baited for other wild animals, and their sagacity cannot avoid the destruction thus prepared for them (pg. 23).
My guess is that you wouldn’t want dogs running where these traps were set, just as it is not a good idea to let dogs run where large Conibears are set for bobcats and lynx.
