Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 20, Number 104, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 September 1899 — No Bounty on Wolf Scalps. [ARTICLE]

No Bounty on Wolf Scalps.

Unless ' the county council should be called together in special session, for some cause not now apparent these will be no bounties paid for killing wolves and foxes in thiscounty next years Owing entirely to an oversight there was no appropriation made for paying these bounties, by the council and without a special appropriation the bounties can not be paid. We can not look upon this failure to provide for these bounties as anything else than a misfortune. Under the large bounties thathave been paid duirng the last few years, especially since the bounty on old wolves was raised to ten dollars, these destructive pets have rapidly diminished in numbers and had the bounty been mantained they would soon have been practically extinct. The idea that people will kill wolves just the same whether there is a bounty or not is entirely an error, and any hunter will tell you so. Ot course if a wolf crosses a man’s path, and he has a gun, he will shoot at it but unless there is a reward behind it no one will follow them all day nor search for and dig outthe young ones. We prophesy a big increase in the wolf crop in this county next year, and the bounty will uhtimately have to be restored, and the wolves will have grown so numerous by the time it is restored that it will be a money losing mistake to the for having omitted it this year, not to speak of the loss to the people through sheep, pigs, and poultry killed by the wolves.