A unit of Lasting Forests
Sustained forests; sustained profits
evolving since March 30, 1999

of an Alternative Wildlife Resource Management

Bounties

Bounties have been used for many years. For example, one was issued for wolves in 1657 in New Hampshire. They have been shown to be useless, rarely sustained, harmful to non-bountied animals, and typically subject to widespread fraud.

Bounties have been issued on foxes, hawks, bobcats, porcupines, wolves, and many other mammals and birds.

A bounty is an amount of money paid after evidence is presented that an undesired animal has been killed or removed from an area. Bounties are paid as an incentive for killing species believed to be harmful to livestock, crops, or potentially to people. The old reasons for granting bounties have disappeared or changed. Effective population controls, including hunting, have replaced the very old practice and in some cases protection of species has been required. Bob cat bounties, for example, have been replaced for in some areas the animals are protected, in other areas, hunting is encouraged as the only way need for "control."

Bounties are rarely needed. Effective management of crops, gardens, and livestock is the key. Fencing is costly and often people will request public funds (the bounties) rather than invest private funds in their self-interest.

Although large predators are known to take animals (e.g., a rabbit) there is no evidence that rabbit populations are severely reduced by predation. The general principle is that pred determine the number of predators, not the reverse. The prey are believed to be a function of food and desireable faunal space. Nature never lete predators increase a certain limit. There is a capacity for predators as well as prey and livewstock.

Bounties do not keep populations under control. In New Hampshire for example, the bobcats bountied increased from 100 to over 300 per year from 1936 to 1960. If the bounty system had been effective (its intended purpose being to reduce bobcats) then the kill would have been decreased.

Fraud is rampant. Many local bounty payment clerks cannot recognize the predators for which bounties are claimed. Trappers turn in highly-odiferous specimens that are usually poorly checked. Toe-pads with two pierced holes have been turned in as "fox noses." Chicken heads have been turned in to clerks as hawk heads. The "fox trapper syndrome" is widely known. It is simply the awareness that the successful trapper can sustain income from bounties by never killing a female fox (or other bountied animal) that is trapped.

The use of bounties has been widely outlawed or abandoned. It keeps cropping up. It needs to be discouraged as a waste of public funds and a digression for active practice of modern faunal system management.

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This Web site is maintained by R. H. Giles, Jr.
Last revision June 20, 2000.