Wolf and Coyote Trapping: An Up-to-Date Wolf Hunter's Guide. A. R. Harding
with hunters and trappers who spend much time in the mountains when the snow is on the ground brought little positive information on the destruction of elk or deer by wolves. Mr. George Glover, a forest ranger long familiar with the Wind River Mountains in both winter and summer, said that he had found a large blacktail buck which the wolves had eaten, but he suspected that it had been previously shot by hunters. In many winters of trapping where elk were abundant, Mr. Glover has never found any evidence that elk had been killed by wolves. Coyotes constantly follow the elk herds, especially in spring when the calves are being born, and probably destroy many of the young, but wolves apparently do not share this habit. It seems probably, however, that in summer the young of both elk and deer suffer to some extent while the wolves are among them in the mountains."
In the Northern Peninsula of Michigan, wolves are very plentiful and large numbers of deer are killed during the winter months, the remains being found later by hunters, trappers, and lumbermen. The same conditions exist in Northern Minnesota and Wisconsin, also in parts of Ontario, Canada. In the Rainy River District, wolves have always been abundant and much game has been killed by them. Farther east, they are just making their appearance of late years having followed the deer which are coming into the country from some other section. Farther east, in the eastern portions of New Ontario and in some parts of Quebec wolves are also numerous. One of our friends from Northern Wisconsin writes as follows:
"I have trapped and caught five old female wolves since I came to Iron County, Wisconsin, six years ago. Two of them I got in Michigan, Gogebic County, as I live almost on the line. There are times when you can see six or eight wolf tracks all going down the river or coming up at the same time. You can go again for a week and never see a track. I have followed them for a week, in deep snow on snow shoes, and never left their track, and in one week I set traps at 50 different deer that wolves had killed. I might have gotten a few more wolves but the fox, mink, cats, skunk, owls and "porkys" (porcupines) were bound to butt in. At one set I got a wolf, 3 foxes, 1 skunk, 1 mink and 10 porkys till June.
Two wolves caught a buck that would weigh 150 pounds, within 10 rods of my camp one night. The next morning there was not one pound of meat left on the bones.
I had a tent and one shanty in Gogebic County last winter, and I know the wolves killed 500 deer on the snow. How many fawns and does did they kill in summer time when you cannot see their tracks? The wild cats are not so bad, a fawn, rabbit or partridge makes a meal for them."
In the far north where the barren ground caribou is the principal game animal, and where wolves are plentiful, there can be no doubt that they kill large numbers of those animals. Musk oxen are also killed, and farther south the moose is killed by wolves, but it is our belief that the number is comparatively small. The moose is such a large and powerful animal that even a band of half starved wolves will, as a rule, pass it by, but there can be no doubt of the fact that they do kill them on rare occasions.
The elk is a great enemy of the wolf and it appears that they are seldom molested. Beyond all doubt the deer is the principal prey of the timber wolf.
CHAPTER IV.
BOUNTIES.
For many years the state governments of the wolf infested country have been paying bounties on wolves and coyotes, to encourage the hunting and trapping of these animals. It is doubtful, however, whether the bounties offered are sufficient to encourage any, other than the regular trappers, to hunt wolves, and if they are, it has certainly had no definite results, for the wolves and coyotes, taken over the whole country, are practically as plentiful as ever.
Realizing that the state bounties were not a sufficient inducement to trappers, certain of the counties of those states where wolves are most abundant, offer additional bounty. This has the effect of thinning the wolves out of that county alone, but they immediately become more plentiful in the adjoining portions of the country.
In some of the Western States, the stockmen pay a bounty, in addition to that offered by the state. Some of them even offer special inducements, in addition to the bounties paid on the captured animals, and among them may be mentioned, board and lodging for the trapper, bait for the traps and the use of saddle and pack horses.
Such special offers to trappers have the effect of stimulating the hunting and trapping of noxious animals in that immediate vicinity and the result is, a thinning out of the animals for the time being. Usually the trappers drift into those sections where the animals are most plentiful and the bounty is highest.
One of the Government bulletins has the following to say regarding the bounty question:
"Bounties, even when excessively high, have proved ineffective in keeping down the wolves, and the more intelligent ranchmen are questioning whether the bounty system pays. In the past ten years Wyoming has paid out in State bounties over $65,000 on wolves alone, and $160,156 on wolves, coyotes and mountain lions together, and to this must be added still larger sums in local and county bounties on the same animals."
"In many cases three bounties are paid on each wolf. In the upper Green River Valley the local stockmen's association pays a bounty of $10 on each wolf pup, $20 on each grown dog wolf, and $40 on each bitch with pup. Fremont County adds $3 to each of these, and the State of Wyoming $3 more. Many of the large ranchers pay a private bounty of $10 to $20 in addition to the county and state bounty. Gov. Bryant B. Brooks, of Wyoming, paid six years ago, on his ranch in Natrona County, $10 each on 50 wolves in one year, and considered it a good investment, since it practically cleared his range of wolves for the time. It invariably happens, however, that when cleared out of one section the wolves are left undisturbed to breed in neighboring sections, and the depleted country is soon restocked."
"A floating class of hunters and trappers receive most of the bounty money and drift to the sections where the bounty is highest. If extermination is left to these men, it will be a long process. Even some of the small ranch owners support themselves in part from the wolf harvest, and it is not uncommon to hear men boast that they know the location of dens, but are leaving the young to grow up for higher bounty. The frauds, which have frequently wasted the funds appropriated for the destruction of noxious animals almost vitiate the wolf records of some of the States: If bounties resulted in the extermination of the wolves or in an important reduction in their number, the bounty system should be encouraged, but if it merely begets fraud and yields a perpetual harvest for the support of a floating class of citizens, other means should be adopted."
The failure of bounties to accomplish their proposed object was clearly shown by Dr. T. S. Palmer in 1896. Under the heading, "What have bounties accomplished," he says:
"Advocates of the bounty system seem to think that almost any species can be exterminated in a short time if the premiums are only high enough. Extermination, however, is not a question of months, but of years, and it is a mistake to suppose that it can be accomplished rapidly except under extraordinary circumstances, as in the case of the buffalo and the fur seal. Theoretically, a bounty should be high enough to insure the destruction of at least a majority of the individuals during the first season, but it has already been shown that scarcely a single State has been able to maintain a high rate for more than a few months, and it is evident that the higher the rate, the greater the danger of fraud. Although Virginia has encouraged the killing of wolves almost from the first settlement of the colony, and has sometimes paid as high as $25 apiece for their scalps, wolves were not exterminated until about the middle of this (the past) century, or until the rewards had been in force for more than two hundred years. Nor did they become extinct in England