First thing is positioning yourself properly around the unclimbable terrain, that's absolutely essential for controlling these encounters. Any decent-sized rock formations or fallen trees work perfectly, and wolves literally can't path around them when used right. The timing here matters - you want to start crouching before you even see them since their detection range is surprisingly large. Now here's where it gets interesting: carrying a lit torch gives you solid protection during daylight hours but the effectiveness drops hard during aurora events or night, so plan accordingly.

Watch their movement patterns closely, they'll circle predictably until they catch a scent. Speaking of scents, keeping cooked meat instead of raw makes a massive difference in your detection radius. The real game-changer though is using the radial menu to drop precisely 0.25kg of bait - they'll lock onto it immediately giving you a clean 6-second window to reposition. If you're wearing wolf or bear clothing there's actually a percentage chance they'll break off entirely: 20% for regular wolves, dropping to 10% during aurora events.

For emergency situations, fishing huts are your best friend since loading zones break pursuit patterns completely. Marine flares work great too but save them for when you absolutely need them since they're basically gold in terms of rarity. Maybe interesting: if you're in the zone of contamination you can actually bait wolves into gas pockets, but the timing needs to be perfect or you'll catch the damage yourself.