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 total was 9,103.

[Illustration:  THE EASTERN RED SQUIRREL A Great Destroyer of Birds]

THE RED SQUIRREL.—­Once in a great while, conditions change in subtle ways, wild creatures unexpectedly increase in number, and a community awakens to the fact that some wild species has become a public nuisance.  In a small city park, even gray squirrels may breed and become so fearfully numerous that, in their restless quest for food, they may ravage the nests of the wild birds, kill and devour the young, and become a pest.  In the Zoological Park, in 1903, we found that the red squirrels had increased to such a horde that they were driving out all our nesting wild birds, driving out the gray squirrels, and making themselves intolerably obnoxious.  We shot sixty of them, and brought the total down to a reasonable number.  Wherever he is or whatever his numerical strength, the red squirrel is a bad citizen, and, while we do not by any means favor his extermination, he should resolutely be kept within bounds by the rifle.

When a crow nested in our woods, near the Beaver Pond, we were greatly pleased; but with the feeding of the first brood, the crows began to carry off ducklings from the wild-fowl pond.  After one crow had been seen to seize and carry away five young ducks in one forenoon, we decided that the constitutional limit had been reached, for we did not propose that all our young mallards should be swept into the awful vortex of that crow nest.  We took those young crows and reared them by hand; but the old one had acquired a bad habit, and she persisted in carrying off young ducks until we had to end her existence with a gun.  It was a painful operation, but there was no other way.