I'm in Alberta and there's no shortage of wolves here or land to hunt them on.
Calling wolves takes skill and luck. If you are calling/hunting something else and call in a wolf, that's luck. If you set up and call target wolves and are successful enough to call them in repeatedly, that's skill.
There are some similarities between calling wolves and calling coyotes and at least as many differences.
In both cases the target must be in the area or you are wasting your time. In my area. most of the country I hunt is wide open. a coyote can hear me howl anywhere in a circle with a 2 mile radius. That is a lot of ground. I can do this anywhere close to home here. Not much pressure target rich environment and easy access.
With wolves I seldom cold call and this where it gets to be tough sledding for some hunters. The action can be slow until it's not, then it's real and it's western and it's real western. We cold call coyotes but we hunt for wolf sign before we try to call them.
When we call coyotes, it is not unusual to call 20 a day, so when we go for wolves and we look for sign all day , it's easy to think we should just set up and call. The problem lies with the way these animals differ. Wolves hunt in packs usually and travel from one kill to the next. They seldom wear watches or carry calendars and as result their 'circuit" is seldom one week long, in spite of what "
"experts" tell you. Why would a pack leave a kill site and continue on a 'circuit' It's not like they have anyplace else to be.
I look for sign, scat, tracks, etc. If it's fresh I'll set up and call. I do believe if they can hear me, they will come. They can hear me for miles, but they may also travel 10 or 15 miles in a night.Which means that even with fresh sign calling them and having them hear you is a challenge. This is when a guy could use a little of that luck I spoke of earlier.
I set up like I do for coyotes with attention to all the little details I can think of. Sun. wind direction, elevation., line of sight, shooting lanes etc. Be quiet of course and do not walk out where you plan to set up and then stand there pointing here and there discussing strategy. Get your strategy figured out and then get in and get sat down back to back.
I usually start with some coyote vocals. loud. loud loud. Wait a few minutes go to deer distress again loud as I can. Then a coyote pup distress while my partner is doing a Kiyi. We make noise. then we wait and glass. I use binos even in the cover.
When the wolf shows you will get on chance to seal the deal. Which means your gear better be tuned and you better be tuned as well. The first shot should be standing broadside. after that the luck needs to kick in cause everything else is that "western" I spoke of earlier.
I have had a pack of coyotes come in and kill one or two. and the rest run off. On many occasions I've called them back and killed a few more.
I've never been able to do that with wolves. Once they are gone, they are gone. I've had them howl for hours while we were skinning one of the pack but never been able to call them back in.
I use a wolf howler as well sometimes.I haven't found many good wolf howlers but Bearmanric of RR calls makes a very good horn wolf howler. He also has some awesome coyote horn howlers.
I've also been busted and never saw them at all, but they sure were vocal and would not come in.
Calling wolves means putting in lots of time scouting and lots of range time. You won't get a lot of chances to miss 
Oh yeah when I said they would be standing broadside. mostly they are and I've seen plenty of missed shots from 80 yards out to 400yds from a rest with time to set up. So go to the range. put the time in.
