A PRICE UPON HIS HEAD
Nagler, L. B.
A Price Upon His Head Some Interesting Frauds and Fallacies of Oar System of Giving Bounties for the Scalps of Predacious Wild Animals By L.B. NAGLER MOST STATES have provided by law tor some...
...Generous as a child, so wholly free From all base pride, that fools forgot his crown, He adored Beauty, in pure ecstasy, And waived the mere rewards of his renown...
...This seems to produce the desired effect on the snakes...
...It merely increases the cost of the experiment and stimulates fraud...
...In 1906 the county of Jackson allowed $7,780 for wolf bounty on 389 mature animals...
...It is difficult sometimes to identify the scalps of mature animals, while in the case of young ones, from one day to one month old, not even an expert can always be sure of his decision...
...There is here shown a higher glow of passion than one is accustomed to associate with the work of that graceful poet: Farewell...
...Many of these, of course, were passed as young animals...
...The foxes may, indeed, dine on the farmer's poultry occasionally, but they wage relentless war on rabbits, squirrels, gophers, and mice, as well as on beetles, crickets, and grasshoppers, all of which live oft the farmer without giving him anything in return...
...Greater than England or than Earth discerned, He never paltered with his art for gain...
...Of the remainder, several thousand were imported...
...A consignment of thirteen scalps on which the hunter claimed bounty for three mature wolves and ten pups, amounting to $140, was received by the secretary of state in July, 1911, and identified as one young coyote, two young red foxes, one black squirrel, one fox squirrel, and eight gray squirrels...
...Several counties bordering on the Mississippi pay a bounty on rattlesnakes...
...And so on ad infinitum...
...It cannot be denied that wolves and coyotes—the latter are the more numerous and multiply more rapidly—do much damage to stock and game, but bounties have thus far failed to correct the evil...
...The last named are more baneful and destructive than the carnivora...
...but this man's music lives...
...When many a vaunted crown to dust is turned, This uncrowned king shall take his throne and reign...
...The tragedy of that triumph none can tell, So great, so brief, so quickly snatched from sight...
...in the middle states, on foxes, skunks, and the smaller carnivora...
...Of the 40,000 animals killed it is safe to assert that not less than 15,000 were other than wolves, lynxes, or wild cats...
...Identification in this manner is not at all certain...
...Three counties have taken advantage of a provision in the law to double the bounty and now offer $40 tor the scalps of wolves and coyotes, from whose depredations, it is reported, the flocks and herds have suffered...
...The system was adopted many years ago and doubtless was inspired by dire necessity...
...Touched through his lips the sacramental Cup, And then sank back—benumbed in our bleak air...
...The Secretary of State refused to audit the claim and he advised the county clerk not to pay the bounty...
...In thinly settled states bounties are placed on wolves, panthers, and lynxes...
...In Grant county the skins of gray kittens, with claws partly drawn to make them appear formidable, and the tails folded inwards, like the finger of a glove, to make them short and thick, were presented for young wild cats...
...Prior to 1908 the bounty on a wolf pup was $4...
...In most, western states the bounty on coyotes is from $1 to $3...
...It Is a Wolf" THE READER may be interested in a brief exposition of some of the clever bounty frauds that have come to light It is but fair to state here that not all erroneous payments are fraudulent...
...and most county clerks perform their duty, unpleasant as it frequently is, to the best of their ability...
...The clerk emigrated to Central America and the hunter spent a two years vacation at Waupun...
...Ages unscanned shall hear Ms winds lament, Hear the strange grief that deepened through his own, The vast cry of a buried continent...
...For example, Connecticut pays bounty on foxes, skunks, and wood-chucks...
...It is intimated that rattlesnakes in Grant county, where bounties are unknown, have acquired the peculiar habit of crossing the Wisconsin river for the privilege of dying in Crawford county where their financial rating is fifty cents apiece...
...Wolves" with black-tipped ears are red foxes...
...Wolf bounty is frequently claimed and sometimes collected on the gray fox (Urocyon cinereoargenteus...
...A man in a northern county received a certificate from a town chairman for one wolf and one wild cat...
...It is six days for a carcass and thirty days for a scalp...
...Gray foxes are very common, yet there are thousands of people who have never seen one and who confuse the name with that of the "silver gray" or black fox (Vulpes fulvus argentatus), which produces the most costly fur on the market...
...It is an outrage to require an official to make a critical examination of a six-day-old carcass or a thirty-day-old scalp in midsummer...
...It is reported that in some parts of the Klckapoo valley young rattlesnakes are now born without rattles...
...A number of states commit the folly of paying bounty on predatory mammals and their victims at the same time...
...Many dogs and foxes are killed by hunters who sincerely believe them to be wolves...
...Bernard...
...Bogs or Wolves...
...Farewell...
...It is certain that bounty has been paid on thousands of dogs, foxes, racoons, woodchucks, squirrels, gophers, rabbits and house cats, which were palmed off for wolves or wild cats...
...But another phenomenon has been discovered...
...This is a serious mistake...
...But the limit has not been reached...
...This seeming paradox is explained by the fact, which is well known to all who have investigated the subject, that more sheep and poultry are killed by dogs and house cats than by wolves and wild cats...
...They are wasteful and ineffective...
...The present rate is $20 for a wolf, $8 for a wolf pup, and $6 for each lynx and wild cat...
...As long as Wisconsin offers such a liberal reward it will pay for many coyotes killed in other states...
...Two duplications of this trick have been reported...
...THE Wisconsin law makes no distinction between timber wolves (Canis oceidentalis), and brush wolves or coyotes (Canis latrans...
...The clerk of one of the older counties submitted a scalp to the Secretary of State tor identification...
...The bounty on each is $20...
...Besides, the records in the state department prove that increasing the bounty does not result in the destruction of more wolves...
...California condemns coyotes, lynxes, lions, foxes, gophers, and squirrels, in the same law...
...Foxes should be protected, not exterminated...
...In this case the county clerk was also implicated...
...This is the universal verdict...
...Fading...
...Subsequently the subject was investigated by the county board which adopted a resolution declaring the animal a wolf and instructing the clerk to pay the bounty...
...During the last decade a total of $408,454 was paid in bounties on wolves, lynxes, and wild cats...
...About ten years ago an Indian in Jackson county killed a wolf and manufactured the entire skin into scalps on which he collected the bounty before the fraud was discovered...
...Be that as it may, hunters are now required to exhibit both ends of the reptiles...
...Perhaps not one person in fifty has ever seen a live wolf and not one in a thousand can distinguish the scalp of a wolf from that of a dog or a fox...
...The next year, under the administration of an efficient county clerk, over 300 fraudulent claims were rejected, only 67 were genuine, indicating that about $6,000 was collected on fraudulent claims in one year in Jackson county alone...
...The report, however, has not been verified...
...In some instances the rattles were removed without killing the reptiles, thus insuring future crops of young snakes...
...He changed the figures to read "12 wolves and 10 wild cats" and collected $300 bounty...
...It was the scalp of a dog and no more resembled that of a wolf than a poodle resembles a St...
...Likewise we frequently read about California lions, Mexican lions, mountain lions, cougars, pumas, panthers, and catamounts, but how many know that all these names are used to designate the same animal, Felis concolor...
...Possibly a bounty of not to exceed $12 on timber wolves and $5 on coyotes, with strict rules for definite identification, may be worth the cost but at the present rate it would be cheaper for the state to reimburse farmers for stock destroyed by predatory animals, or to build wolf-proof fences for exposed herds...
...and in the older states, on rabbits, woodchucks, and other rodents...
...The Wisconsin law is faulty in that it requires the county clerk to pass final judgment on bounty claims but does not compel the hunter to exhibit more than the scalp...
...a beautiful and comparatively harmless little animal about twelve inches high...
...A bounty of $6 encourages the raising of gray cats...
...One has but to compare the bounty laws of the sev-eral states to be convinced that the system is wrong...
...legal Inconsistencies IN MANY states, and in some counties in Wisconsin, bounties are paid on foxes...
...Apparently it has not occurred to the makers of these laws that wolves, coyotes, lions, and lynxes, destroy foxes, and that gophers, squirrels, and rabbits are the natural prey of all carnivorous animals...
...It is a natural transition: as the larger canines and felines disappear, the lessor carnivora increase, and when these have been exterminated the country is overrun with rodents...
...A bounty on cats and mice would be equally consistent Fraud Croops In BOUNTIES always lead to fraud...
...The $408,454 indicate that bounty was paid on over 40,000 animals, yet there is no perceptible decrease in the number of these pests and they are still found in nearly every part of the state...
...If the dogs in these counties were muzzled there would be less complaint about wolves...
...As the rube exclaimed at the circus when he beheld the gi-raff, "Hell, there aint no such animal...
...They learned instinctively that rattles are dangerous and painful luxuries and generations of ruthless "detailing" effected the origin of a new species of Crotalus horridus, a rattle-less rattlesnake...
...Scholars compose...
...Some startling and most preposterous frauds have been perpetrated in Wisconsin and the state has been fleeced of a handsome fortune...
...Through him, his race a moment lifted up Forests of hands to Beauty as in prayer...
...NAGLER MOST STATES have provided by law tor some form of bounty or reward for the destruction of predacious wild animals...
...Nay, lifted thro' a heaven of light, His proud sails, brightening thro' that crimson flame, Leaving us lonely on the shores of night, Home to Ponemah take his deathless fame...
...He certified that he had examined and destroyed the 22 scalps...
...Idaho has created a "pest fund" for the extermination of "wolves, coyotes, foxes, cougars, lynxes, crickets, grasshoppers, rodents, and rabbits...
...This is probably the only case on record where a wolf was created by a resolution...
...Wherever there is bounty there is fraud...
...What Beast Is This...
...Through him, through him, a lost world hailed the light...
...The spark that falls from heaven, not oft on earth, To human hearts this vital splendor gives...
...It will be a sorry day for the agricultural interests when the beasts and birds of prey become extinct...
...THE KEEN FRIENDSHIP always felt by Alfred Noyes, the English poet, is reflected in the following poem to the memory of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, the composer, born of a native African father and an English mother, and best known, perhaps, for his musical setting for "Hiawatha...
...that is the bounty was collected in Wisconsin on the scalps of animals that were killed in other states...
...A fox den on the farm is a valuable asset...
...His dark, his desolate forests cry Moved to their vast, their sorrowful depths anew...
...There may have been many others that escaped detection...
...His was the simple, true, immortal birth...
...PROPER identification Is essential to the successful administration of the law but few officials are competent to do this...
...A wild cat, or bay lynx (Lynx ruins), was recently killed on Lake Mendota, a mile from the University, and a year ago a coyote was killed within the limits of the city of Madison...
...An amusing incident, occurred about a year ago...
...The "black-tip wolf" is a nature fake...
...Formerly the hunter was required to produce the rattles as evidence of the creature's demise...
...The state bounty, however, was not paid...
...The soft mists of the sunset-sky Slowly enfold his fading birch-canoe...
...It is still justifiable in some instances but in most states, including Wisconsin, it is unnecessary and should be abolished...
...And yet—O, hail, great comrade, not farewell...
...Nations unborn shall hear his forests moan...
...Vet, surprising as it may be, few wolves are killed in the counties referred to...
...Herein lies another weakness of the Wisconsin law, namely, the time limit in which claims for bounty may be presented...
...Resolved...
...I once presented the scalp of a red fox (Vulpes fulvus) to an experienced woodsman and hunter who pronounced It a "black-tip wolf and he admitted that, as town chairman, he had issued certificates for bounty on many of them...
...The scalps were in an advanced stage of decomposition—a common trick to prevent, or at least discourage, thorough examination...
Vol. 5 • March 1913 • No. 12
