506 
According to these leaflets, the total 
annual catch of fur species in Illinois 
varied from 238,311 animals in the 1934- 
35 season to 996,998 in the 1938-39 sea- 
son. As will be seen later, most of the 
figures were extremely conservative be- 
cause up to the season of 1938-39 they 
failed to take into account the great and 
unknown numbers of unlicensed trappers. 
Beginning with the 1938-39 season, fig- 
ures were revised upward because of pre- 
liminary findings of the oral survey, de- 
tailed results of which are summarized in 
the Brown & Yeager report.* 
Serious difficulties lay in the way of at- 
taining fully satisfactory total-kill figures 
from fur-takers’ monthly reports made 
previous to the 1938-39 season. No re- 
liable data on the number of trappers and 
fur-hunters who operated without licenses, 
nor on the size of their catch, were avail- 
able until after adoption of the so-called 
Pittman-Robertson program in Illinois. 
As explained in the Brown & Yeager re- 
port, Louis G. Brown, leader of a Federal 
Aid furbearer survey, interviewed trap- 
pers, fur-hunters and fur-buyers in 10 
counties typical of various regions in Ilh- 
nois (fig. 2 of Brown & Yeager report) 
and obtained figures for an estimate of 
yield in the seasons of 1938-39 and 1939- 
40. Brown also gathered supplementary 
data which permitted re-evaluation of 
yield data derived in the past by the writer 
from fur-takers’ reports made monthly 
during the trapping season, but he could | 
not obtain more than general impressions 
from fur-takers about the trend of fur- 
bearer catch or populations. In general, 
fur-takers believed that most species had 
declined in numbers. 
Neither could Brown find time to dis- 
cover much about the distribution of the 
less valuable fur-producing species nor 
about special concentrations of any of the 
fur-producing species. It goes without 
much discussion that the distribution of 
the different species is far from uniform 
in the sample areas defined and used, each 
species having a distribution pattern dif- 
ferent from that of each of the others. 
The various distribution patterns cut 
across the sample areas in every conceiv- 
*In the present paper, the terms oral survey or Brown’s 
survey are used to designate the furbearer survey made by 
Louis G. Brown, results of which are contained in the 
report often referred to here as the Brown & Yeager report, 
published with this paper as Article 6. 
ILtinois NATURAL History SURVEY BULLETIN 
Vol..22, Arto 
able order, as shown by the oral survey 
and, in greater detail, by data from fur- 
takers’ monthly reports. (Compare fig. 2 
in Brown & Yeager report with the distri- 
bution maps in the following pages. ) 
Distributional information and annual 
catch data derived from fur-takers’ month- 
ly reports are at hand for most of the 
trapping seasons beginning with 1929-30 
and ending with 1939-40 and are here 
recorded, along with records of the num- 
ber of licensed fur-takers and estimates of 
their catch. After being compared with 
findings of the oral survey, raw data de- 
rived from the fur-takers’ monthly re- 
ports were revised in such a way as to 
show better than heretofore how the value 
of the fur catch has stood from year to 
year. Data for the seasons of 1931-32, 
1932-33 and 1933-34 were not available 
to the writer, and these seasons therefore 
could not be considered in this study. 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 
The writer is indebted to the Hon. 
Livingston E, Osborne, present Director 
of the Illinois State Department of Con- 
servation, and to Mr. Thomas J. Lynch 
and the late Mr. C. F. Thompson, former 
directors, for loan of fur-takers’ monthly 
and annual reports, as well as to Mr. 
Lewis E. Martin and Mr. J. V. Maloney, 
formerly of that Department. 
Students working under the Federal 
Emergency Relief Administration and the 
National Youth Administration assembled 
most of the data in these reports. Mr. 
Roy G. Wiesbrock, commerce student at 
the University of Illinois, aided greatly in 
final analysis of these figures in 1942 as 
they were being prepared for publication. 
During previous years, other University 
of Illinois students, Mr. Walter J. Godel- 
ausky and Mr. Howard C. Shepherd, had 
assembled and calculated many of the re- 
turns. 
Many members of the Natural History 
Survey’s Aquatic Biology and Wildlife 
sections furnished aid and advice. Dr. 
David H. Thompson, who directed analy- 
sis of the 1929-30 and 1930-31 data, Dr. 
Lee E. Yeager, Dr. R. E. Yeatter and 
Mr. Louis G. Brown were most closely 
consulted in strictly technical matters re- 
lating to this report. 
The photograph used as a frontispiece 
