Grey Wolf, the Kind on Which Bounty is Paid.
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 until the beginning of the sixteenth century, although efforts toward their extermination had been begun in the reign of King Edgar (959-975). France, which has maintained bounties on these animals for more than a century, found it necessary to increase the rewards to $30 and $40 in 1882, and in twelve years expended no less than $115,000 for nearly 8,000 wolves."
"The larger animals are gradually becoming rare, particularly in the East, but it can not be said that bounties have brought about the extermination of a single species in any State."
"New Hampshire has been paying for bears about as long as Maine, but in 1894 the State treasurer called attention to the large number reported by four or five of the towns, and added that should the other 231 towns 'be equally successful in breeding wild animals for the State market, in proportion to their tax levy, it would require a State tax levy of nearly $2,000,000 to pay the bounty claims' Even New York withdrew the rewards on bears in 1895, not because they had become unnecessary, but because the number of animals killed increased steadily each year."
"Wolf skins are often ruined by the requirements of bounty laws, especially when the head, feet, or ears are cut off. The importance of preserving the skins in condition to bring the highest market price is as great as that of making it impossible to collect bounties twice. A slit in the skin can be sewed up so that it will never show on the fur side, but can not be concealed on the inside. A single longitudinal or vertical slit, or double or cross slits 4 inches long, in the center where the fur is longest, would serve every purpose of the law without seriously impairing the market value of the skin."
One thing that is detrimental to the success of the bounty system, is the invariable "red tape" connected with such laws. In some states the bounty regulations are so complicated and so exacting, that trappers do not care to follow "wolfing" because of the trouble in securing the bounty money.
It would be impossible, in a work of this kind, to give the bounty laws of the different states, also as they are repealed so frequently, detailed information on that subject would be of little value to the prospective hunter or trapper. We give, however, an outline of the regulations in some of the principal wolf states.
The State of Wyoming pays a bounty of five dollars each on timber wolves and mountain lions, and one dollar and twenty-five cents for each coyote. In addition to this, there are both county and stockmen's bounties in certain parts of the state. Some ranchmen offer as much as forty-five dollars each, for grey wolves caught on their ranches.