LEGISLATION CONCERNING MAMMALS 



pulous individuals raise them for the bounty market, coyote-raising, 

 according to Palmer, having at times been more profitable in some 

 states than sheep-raising. Others take the scalps, skins and other parts 

 required to support claims for bounties, from a county or state where 

 the bounty is low to one where it is higher, and obtain the higher 

 bounty by misrepresenting the locality in which the animals were ob- 

 tained. Bailey says that sometimes trappers have taken parent coyotes 

 from the den, leaving the pups to grow up, in order to obtain the higher 

 bounty paid for adults than for pups. 11 Lantz says that bounties on 

 coyotes and wolves have been tried for many years and on the whole 

 have .not materially reduced the numbers of these animals. 12 



Dixon condemns the bounty on coyotes as very expensive, productive 

 of endless fraud and failing to give general or permanent relief, but ap- 

 proves coyote-proof fences under favorable circumstances, and con- 

 siders the most effective methods to be trapping, poisoning with strych- 

 nine, digging out dens of the young, and shooting in cooperative cam- 

 paigns between state and federal authorities. 13 In Minnesota bounties 

 have been paid on wolves for half a century, to a total of over 

 $1,000,000, and since 1903 the annual expenditure has slowly in- 

 creased. 14 One may well wonder whether there may not be a more effec- 

 tive and less costly method. In 1916 bounties were paid in British 

 Columbia on 210 wolves, 221 mountain lions and 17,352 coyotes, and 

 in Saskatchewan, from 1907 to 1917, bounties were paid on 204,421 

 coyotes and 1200 gray wolves, to the amount of $310,000, but it is 

 admitted that the effort to control these animals by means of bounties 

 is not a success there. 15 Lucas says that in Kansas a $2.00 bounty on 

 coyotes and five cent bounty on rabbits caused the destruction of 

 coyotes, natural enemies of rabbits, and consequently an increase in the 

 number of rabbits, instead of reducing the rabbits. 16 California for 

 years tried the bounty system on mountain lions, the bounty in 1917 

 being from $20 to $30 and in thirteen years paid bounty on 3627 lions, 



11 Bailey, Wolves in relation to stock, game and forest reserves, U. S. Forest 

 Service Bull. No. 72, 1907. 



12 Lantz, The relation of coyotes to stock raising in the west, U. S. Dept. Agric., 

 Farmers' Bull., No. 226, 1906. 



13 Dixon, Control of the coyote in California, California College of Agric. Bull. 

 No. 20, pp. 379-397, 1920; Journ. Mammalogy, n, 176, 1921. As to fraud, see Bird 

 Lore, xxxn, 247-248, 1930; citing Official Record, U. S. Dept. Agric., March 27, 

 1930. 



14 Journ. Mammalogy, ix, 89, 1928. 



16 Hewitt, The conservation of the wild life of Canada, pp. 198-204, 1921. 

 18 Lucas, Ann. Kept., U. S. Nat. Museum for 1889, p. 612. 



