, any
farmer can easily win enough bounties to more than pay the cost of his
annual hunting license (one dollar), and the farmers' boys will find a
new interest in life.

In some portions of the Rocky Mountain region, the assaults of the large
predatory mammals and birds on the young of the big-game species
occasionally demand special treatment. In the Yellowstone Park the pumas
multiplied to such an extent and killed so many young elk that their
number had to be systematically reduced. To that end "Buffalo" Jones was
sent out by the Government to find and destroy the intolerable surplus
of pumas. In the course of his campaign he killed about forty, much to
the benefit of the elk herds. Around the entrance to the den of a big
old male puma, Mr. Jones found the skulls and other remains of nine elk
calves that "the old Tom" had killed and carried there.

Pumas and lynxes attack and kill mountain sheep; and the golden eagle is
very partial to mountain sheep lambs and mountain goat kids. It will not
answer to permit birds of that bold and predatory species to become too
numerous in mountains inhabited by goats and sheep; and the fewer the
mountain lions the better, for they, like the lynx and eagle, have
nothing to live upon save the game.

The wolves and coyotes have learned to seek the ranges of cattle,
horses and sheep, where they still do immense damage, chiefly in
killing young stock. In spite of the great sums that have been paid out
by western states in bounties for the destruction of wolves, in many,
many places the gray wolf still persists, and can not be exterminated.
To the stockmen of the west the wolf question is a serious matter. The
stockmen of Montana say that a government expert once told them how to
get rid of the gray wolves. His instructions were: "Locate the dens, and
kill the young in the dens, soon after they are born!" "All very easy to
_say_, but a trifle difficult to _do_!" said my informant; and the
ranchman seem to think they are yet a long way from a solution of the
wolf question.

During the past year the destruction of noxious predatory animals in the
national forest reserves has seriously occupied the attention of the
United States Bureau of Forestry. By the foresters of that bureau the
following animals were destroyed in fifteen western states:

6,487 Coyotes
870 Wild-Cats
72 Lynxes
213 Bears
88 Mountain Lions
172 Gray Wolves
69 Wolf Pups
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7,971

In 1910 the