17 • 
WOODCHUCKS IN NEW HAMPSHIRE. 
Woodchuck statistics, computed a few years ago by a New 
Hampshire student of economics, laid bare the fact that one 
healthy woodchuck— and there are no unhealthy woodchucks — 
would eat, and did eat, between the first of May and the first 
of September of any year, 500 pounds of red clover, first and 
second crops. An inside estimate placed the number of wood- 
chucks then in New Hampshire at 482,960. No one made a 
business of hunting them, and if 10,000 were casually killed or 
trapped in a year that was a large number. The statistician, 
to be as easy as he could on the farmer, figured on the basis 
of 470,000 woodchucks in the State, all busy, during the four 
months mentioned, cutting and mowing away clover throughout 
New Hampshire — to say nothing of the other farm products they 
saved the farmer the trouble of gathering himself. If one 
woodchuck harvested 500 pounds of clover, of course there was 
no getting around the fact that, at the same rate, the 470,000 
woodchucks gathered a crop of 235,000,000 pounds, the equivalent 
of 117,500 tons every year. Placing hay at even the ridiculous 
price of $G a ton. here was the astounding exhibit, as plain 
as the simple rules of multiplication and division could make it, 
that the annual tribute woodchucks were levying on the hay 
fields of the patient New Hampshire farmer amounted to the 
sum of $705,000. 
Petty larceny thief! That was the kind of petty larceny 
thief statistics proved the woodchuck to be in New Hampshire! 
And the one absorbing question in the state became, “How shall 
we suppress the woodchuck?” It had a leading place in politics 
that year, and when the legislature met, statesmanship took 
hold of it at once. A price was put on the head of this whole- 
sale robber. Some eager legislators were in favor of offering 
25 cents a head for woodchucks, but it was finally decided that 
the farmers would be satisfied to receive a bounty of 10 cents 
a woodchuck for running down these pests oh their own farms, 
and 10 cents it was. From that moment the woodchuck became 
an outlaw in New' Hampshire, and is so yet. The price put on 
his head wasn’t a large one. but is such an inducement to 
hunt and trap the woodchuck that bounties on an average 
annual kill of 100.000 of the animals have been collected in this 
state ever since. The local statistician referred to calculates 
that this big removal of four-footed robbers has saved to the 
farmers not less than $125,000 annually on hay alone since the 
raids began. 
But the actual number of woodchucks in New Hampshire 
seems to be as great as ever. This state is their paradise. How 
difficult it is to exterminate or to even keep within bounds 
the woodchuck when it has once colonized, may be imagined 
when, besides the protection the wily and cautious nature of 
this animal assures to it, the fact is known that the female 
brings forth two families a year, with from six to eight in each 
family. The young mature quickly and have families of their 
own before they are a year old.— New York Sun. 
