*Editor’s Note*In doing research, I came across this article that appeared in “The American Review of Reviews”, Volume 66 by Albert Shaw, page 550-551, dated 1922.
I found it interesting for a few reasons and thought it would be worth sharing. One reason is that it reveals written history of man’s encounter and struggle with predators as he tried to “tame” the West. Second, it reveals things that people even today deny as common habits for wolves and coyotes in particular – surplus kills by both wolves and coyotes. To be forthcoming, it should be pointed out that often in historic writings of wolves and coyotes in the United States, particularly the plains area, the two names were sometimes used interchangeably. Without knowing exactly the species of canine we are talking about, prairie wolves were often called coyotes.
A third interesting feature written about in the article was a repeated comparison of what these predators were costing citizens, ranchers and the United States Government.
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It may be a bit difficult for the average citizen—especially if he happens to live east of the Mississippi—to realize that one of Uncle Sam’s important and difficult jobs recently, has been the hunting down and exterminating of wild animals—wolves, coyotes (prairie wolves), bobcats (bay linx) mountain lions (puma), bears, and like predatory beasts. Yet so much so has this been the case that the subject has been considered in the serious and scientific “Year Book” of the Department of Agriculture, and the article (by W. R. Bell, assistant biologist of the Biological Survey) recently has been republished by the Survey in a special pamphlet. The title of the article is “Hunting Down Stock Killers,” which sounds like the name of a motion picture film, but the process, as conducted, is far more serious business.
On the first page of the pamphlet is shown the reproduction of a photograph of a big touring car, loaded with dead wolves, while a hunter stands alongside holding up a dead wolf, by a hind leg. It doesn’t look much like a picture of a “joy-ride”; and Mr. Bell remarks:
In man’s introduced herds of cattle, sheep, goats, colts and other domestic stock, the original rangers of the country found a ready supply to be preyed upon day after day and night after night. What more natural than for the hungry wolf to draw upon the ever-replenished reservoir discovered in the stock corral or the open range? The nature of the business upon which the predatory kind were engaged was no secret, of course, and gun, trap, and poison were resorted to by the early ranchers, each man for himself, with now and then a community hunt as the needs were more pressing. Learning that they had to contend with protectors of their new-found food supply, the prowlers became more and more wary in approach and kill, until what originated in a mere matter of satisfying a craving for food, has developed into a war to the death.
Uncle Sam, tired of the drain on his resources of $20,000,000 to $30,000,000 every year through the slaughter of domestic stock by predatory animals, now keeps constantly in the field a force of hunters who are instructed to wipe out these nonproducers. In their place, and safe from their depredations, it is the aim to populate the range country with flocks and herds, and in this way to lower the cost of production of live-stock and of meat that goes on the family table.
In some persons the picture of that motor car, full of dead wolves, and the picture elsewhere of the heaps of pelts of dead predatory animals, will arouse a twinge of pity and something very like indignation, that these creatures should be slain because they had eaten when they were hungry; and they will wonder what good Saint Francis of Assisi would have had to say about it. Another point of view, that of Mr. Bell, and his kind, he expresses as follows:
The average destruction of these animals is estimated to be for each wolf and mountain lion about $1000 worth of live stock annually; each coyote and bobcat $50 worth; and each stock-killing bear $500 worth. Statistics may leave the stockman unmoved and uninterested, but a vivid, lasting impression is made when he finds one of his valuable steers pulled down by a wolf, one of his colts struck down by a mountain lion, the scattered carcasses of several of his sheep killed by coyotes for a sheer lust of killing, or a valuable cow maimed or with skull crushed by a blow from the powerful paw of a grizzly.
If, indeed, the world is to be turned over to the human species, and a certain number of them choose to occupy our Western plains and mountains as herdsmen, like those of the pastoral age, it is small wonder that Uncle Sam should come to their rescue, provided there is no other side of the story of their present struggle against the predatory animals, whose natural home has been invaded. Says Mr. Bell:
The following typical cases are illustrative of the destructiveness of the predatory animals, and of the importance of operations for their control: In Colorado a single wolf took toll of nearly $3000 worth of cattle in one year. In Texas two wolves killed seventy-two sheep, valued at $9 each, during a period of two weeks. One wolf in New Mexico killed twenty-five head of cattle in two months; while another was reported by stockmen in the same State to have killed 150 cattle, valued at not less than $5000, during six months preceding his capture by a Survey hunter. In Wyoming two male wolves were killed, which during one month had destroyed 150 sheep and seven colts; another pair were reported to have killed about $4000 worth of stock during the year preceding their capture; while another, captured in June, had killed thirty head of cattle during the preceding spring. The county agricultural agent at Coalville, Utah, reported that wolves had taken 20 per cent, of the year’s calf crop in that section. A wolf taken in New Mexico was known to have killed during the preceding five months twenty yearling steers, nine calves, one cow, fifteen sheep, and a valuable sheep dog. In two weeks at Ozona, Tex., two wolves killed seventy-six sheep.
In Oregon four coyotes in two nights killed fifteen pure-bred rams, valued at $20 each. One flock in Morgan County, Utah, was attacked by three coyotes and $500 worth of sheep were killed in an hour. Near Antonito, Colo., sixty-seven ewes, valued at about $1,000, became separated from the rest of the herd; all were found killed by coyotes.
After a personal investigation in 1917, the president of the State Agricultural College of New Mexico reported that 34,350 cattle, 165,000 sheep and 850 horses are killed annually by predatory animals in that State, these losses amounting to $2,715,250. This involves the loss of 16,000,000 pounds of meat, and about 1,320,000 pounds of wool.
