1 66 Cameron, Nesting of the Golden Eagle. \jvx 



work effectually, the wolfers started trapping, and great numbers 

 of Golden Eagles, as also Magpies, fell victims to the process 

 which by their flapping prevented the suspicious wolves from 

 approaching the bait. I was constantly with trappers and know 

 that their average catch was from three to six eagles apiece every 

 winter. Sometimes an eagle wpuld leave a toe in the trap, but 

 more often they were caught by both legs — springing a second 

 trap in the struggle to free the imprisoned leg from the first. 

 Carcasses of range cattle, which succumbed in hundreds to bliz- 

 zards and starvation, provided the eagles with an ample supply of 

 beef, but their preference for the venison with which the traps 

 were baited proved their destruction — the violent struggles of 

 the trapped victim making even a quick release futile. Magpies 

 were entirely exterminated on the south side of the Yellowstone, 

 and, although eagles just survived, fifty or sixty must have 

 perished annually in my locality alone from poison and traps 

 combined. Had not, indeed, the appropriation for bounties 

 become exhausted the last named birds could hardly have 

 escaped total extinction ; but as the wolfers were latterly paid in 

 scrip, which they cashed at a loss, they became disheartened, and 

 the eagles were respited. It may be mentioned that during 1897, 

 22,082 coyotes and 6,112 wolves were killed in the State, and in 

 November, 189S, bounty claims amounting to $70,000 were not 

 only still unpaid, but were continually increasing. A fresh 

 impetus was given to wolfers in 1901 and 1902, by the uniform 

 bounty of five dollars each fixed on wolves and coyotes, and I 

 doubt if there are now half-a-dozen pairs of eagles within a 50 

 mile radius of Terry, where once they were common. There is 

 no creature more easy to trap than an eagle, which feeds on 

 carrion as readily as a vulture. In the winter of 1893 when I 

 was setting traps around a dead deer which had been visited the 

 previous evening by numerous suspicious wolves, an eagle was 

 observed to watch the proceedings from a pine close by, and the 

 same bird alighted subsequently to its doom. In the Highlands 

 of Scotland a' common and favorite bait with the preserver of 

 game was a dead cat, the success of which may possibly be due 

 to the fact that it resembles a mountain hare, the principal food 

 of the mountain-dwelling eagle. When staying with my brother 



