Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 188, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 August 1913 — COYOTES ARE NEARLY EXTINCT [ARTICLE]

COYOTES ARE NEARLY EXTINCT

Closed Ranges and Bounties on Scalps Causing Extermination of Animal. Cottonwood Falls, Kan. —According to stock raisers and farmers of this county the coyote seems to be fast becoming extinct. The fencing up of the big pasture districts in this and neighboring counties, where practically every acre is now stocked with cattle, has robbed the coyote of his once free and open range. Because of his depredations on young and helpless domestic stock a bounty has been set on his head and he has long been a fugitive, hunted and killed by every farmer. The bounty of a dollar which is paid by the county for every coyote scalp turned in probably more than any other cause is responsible for the decreasing wolf population. In order to get the reward many farmers, and especially the farmer boys, not only trap and kill coyotes whenever the opportunity comes, but have made a practice of hunting the coyotes’ dens and robbing them of their young. For the scalp of a baby wolf, though only a few weeks old and innocent of any wrongdoing, is the same in the eyes of the law as would be that of a veteran chicken killer. Only a few years ago the county money paid out In this county alone for coyotes ran as high as S3OO or S4OO annually- Now, It is said, the number will hardly reach 100 a year. The bringing in of a dozen or more scalps by one farmer, which was once so common, no longer occurs. The greater part of these bounties are collected in the spring months before the mother( wolf has left her den with her family, fio persistently have the farmers carried on the war fare of extermination that the coyotes which rear their families in safety must be cunalng indeed. Though this may seem cruel, yet from long experience the farmers have found that •in a stock-raising country the coyote has no place. Were they left to multiply even for a few* years so great

would their numbers become as to be a scourge to the country.