ranchers. And I'd also like to say that I really respect ranchers. Some 

 of my best friends are ranchers and as a segment of Americans, they 

 are the hardest working, finest people you would ever want to meet. 

 So^That's where I'm at. 



Okay, now, being a magazine editor, our lead sentence is always 

 supposed to capture the readers attention so you read this story so I'm 

 going to try to capture your attention with this lead. And there's kind 

 of an amusing thing with writers. It's kind of a joke to say that you 

 start out a story "It was a dark and stormy night," so I'm going to 

 start this story out, "It was a dark and stormy afternoon." Here's the 

 scenario: September, 1972 on the Bridger National Forest in Wyoming. 

 Four government hunters drive up in pickup trucks to Poker Hollow. 

 One of the trucks has 20 live sheep in it. The men get all set and 

 they kick the sheep out of the truck and shoot them in the head as 

 they hit the ground. At that point they then take large plungers and 

 mix some 1080 up and inject the sheep with every push of the plunger 

 putting about four ounces of 1080 in them. The next day they load 

 these sheep on their horses and pack them into the Bridger National 

 Forest and those sheep stay here all winter long. Lethal sheep meat. 

 What did it prove? Why were they up there? They were up there to 

 kill coyotes. Did they kill the problem coyotes? Did they ever kill a 

 coyote with those sheep that might have killed other sheep that 

 previous summer? Who knows. Their job was to flat kill coyotes and 

 they killed some sheep while doing it. 



Okay, my point is, that is a very nonselective technique in coyote 

 control. And Marv talked about some secondary effects of 1080 and I'll 

 get into that a little bit later but what I'm trying to say is those sheep 

 were placed there by the United States government and I, frankly, 

 don't see a hell of a lot of purpose behind that maneuver because I do 

 not believe that 1080 is a selective poison and I'll tell you why later. 

 It's common philosophy among some government trappers and some 

 livestock people that the only good coyote is a dead coyote. I've heard 

 it many times. How many poker halls are across the country? How 

 many thousands and thousands of sheep have been baited and planted 

 across the country? I don't know. 



Okay. That was in September of '72. Now let's go to February, 

 1972. Former President Nixon layed the bombshell. He banned toxons 

 on federal land. Sheep men went to Washington with dead lambs 

 protesting Nixon's move. Okay. Now we'll move on to the summer of 

 1972, after Nixon's ban. Those four government hunters went back to 

 the Poker Draw but this time they were in B2 helicopters. Their 

 mission was to kill every coyote they could from helicopters to prove 

 that aerial hunting could be used economically and effectively to kill 

 sheep. President Nixon's ban started a stepped-up progam of aerial 

 hunting. It had been done before but now that there was no more 1080 

 or no more getters or whatever, they needed to find another way to 

 control coyotes. 



