REPORT OF BOARD OF FISH AND GAME COMMISSIONERS. 
63 
the year 1909, in a pamphlet on “Introduction of the Hungarian 
Partridge in the United States,” we are indebted for excerpts and 
descriptions. 
THE $20 BOUNTY ON MOUNTAIN LIONS. 
As soon as it was seen that the hunting license law was proving a 
financial success, and realizing that strong demands had been made on 
the legislature for a bounty on these marauders by stock raisers and 
people of the mountains generally who had suffered through their 
depredations, the Board believed that the payment of a bounty on these 
animals Would further popularize the hunting license law by making 
the people of the county beneficiaries under it, and decided that suffi¬ 
cient authorization existed in section 10 of the hunting license law, 
referring to expenditures for game preservation and restoration. This 
opinion was concurred in by the Attorney General, representing the 
State Board of Examiners, and by the State Controller. We, therefore, 
began in November, 1907, to pay a bounty of $20.00 for the scalp or 
pelt of every lion sent to this office. In order to protect the State 
against fraudulent claims an affidavit is required for every scalp from 
each individual presenting a claim, which must show when and where 
the lion had been killed, and requiring in addition a letter giving the 
circumstances of the case. 
Some criticism was made as to the liberality of the bounty, but care¬ 
ful investigation showing that it required trained dogs and sometimes 
days and weeks of time to capture a single lion, the Board felt justified 
in making a generous allowance, believing that the greater the incentive, 
the quicker would be accomplished the desired result—the decimation, if 
not extermination, of the mountain lion, which is the natural enemy of 
the deer—besides which he destroys much of the farmer’s live stock. 
He seems to have a fondness, for colts, but does not spare calves, pigs, 
sheep, or goats. This is confirmed by letters that have been received in 
this office from the applicants for the bounty, yet fully 90 per cent of 
them indicate that the stomach contents are deer meat. It is also shown 
that a lion seldom devours the entire carcass, except driven to it by 
hunger; that he appears to prefer the fresh blood of an animal, after 
which the carcass is covered with leaves and brush and only eaten as a 
last resort. 
The experienced mountaineers claim that the lion kills from one to 
three deer a week each. To substantiate this claim we append hereto 
several letters, representing hundreds of others, all bearing testimony 
to the damage the lion will do to live stock as well as to deer: 
MENDOCINO COUNTY. 
Covelo, Califoknia, February 20, 1908. 
Board of Fish Commissioners, San Francisco, Cal. 
Dear Sirs : I write to you on a subject that I came near writing to you about last 
spring, but as you have done what I should have urged, that is, put a bounty on 
