These nice spring days in the Kansas Flint Hills bring back fond childhood memories — about coyotes. Yep, coyotes. Why? Because coyotes were the apex predator to a kid growing up in southeast Kansas around 1950. And, April wuz the month when coyotes had their annual litter of pups. One of my favorite spring rituals wuz riding horses with my buddy, ol’ K. D. Budd, looking for litters of coyote pups.
But, why the hunt? Those were the times when cottontail rabbits — the coyote’s main meal — were so plentiful that hunting clubs from Pennsylvania made it profitable for kids to box-trap rabbits and export them to the Keystone State. I forget the exact price kids could make trapping rabbits, but I think it was 25-cents each. At any rate, it wuz enuf easy windfall money that we kids saw the coyote as a low-life competitor for the bonanza that had fallen into our laps.
A word of warning, if you’re squeamish at all about killing wildlife stories, I’d quit reading now because collecting bounties on dead coyotes was socially acceptable when I wuz growing up –well before the advent of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).
And, back in those days, coyotes were the main killers of farmstead domestic chickens, too. So, our parents had no love loss for Mr. Wily Coyote either. Truth of the matter wuz that the Yield family back in those days ate a lot of wild rabbit meat, too, during the winters.
In fact, coyotes were so abundant, and considered an expendable nuisance by everyone, that the county treasurer would pay a bounty of $2 for every set of coyote ears brought to the treasure’s office in the county seat.
All of the above information is to explain why I’m recollecting coyote memories from my childhood for this column.
As best that I recall, K.D. and I “cashed in” on four litters of coyotes. To find them, every Saturday and Sunday in April and early May we rode our horses — mine wuz Mousey and his wuz Starlight — through limestone pastures looking for coyotes. The dens were found mostly dug under flat limestone formations or back in the cracks in limestone ledges.
Our biggest “find” was a double. We found two litters of coyote pups under the same big flat limestone rock. The litters were of different ages. The oldest had six pups that had their eyes open. The youngest had eight pups and were only a few days old.
K.D. and I had no trouble extracting the pups from their respective dens. And, we had no compunction at all about dispatching all the pups and cutting off their “bounty ears” with our pocketknives. In fact, we celebrated when we realized the huge pile of penny candy that our $28 of bounty money would buy. It would be like at least $280 in money today. We’d hit the jackpot.
Another litter we found wuz in the bluffs above Marmaton River. Collecting that bounty money wuz way more exciting. K.D. found the den, but when he shined a flashlight in it, what he mostly saw wuz teeth — snarling teeth — that belonged to Mama Coyote, who was in the den, too. The snarling made the hair rise on the back of our necks.The adult coyote stayed in the den while K.D. fetched his 22-rifle from his saddle scabbard. With the rifle, we added a set of adult coyote “bounty ears” to our payout. I forget how many pups were in that den, but I sure remember Mama Coyote.
K.D. and I found the fourth litter of coyote pups a few miles south of Bronson, Kan., not far from where old Hwy 54 turns east toward Uniontown. Getting those pups from the den proved a bit unnerving, too. The pups were plenty active, toothy, and big enuf to strenuously object to removal from the den.
To extract them from the den K.D. got creative. K.D. wuz four years older than me so he did the extraction. He put on a thick pair of leather gloves. When he stuck his arm back in the den, the aggressive coyote pups would bite his gloved hand and K.D. would clamp down and pull them out one by one. I think there were six pups in that litter.
Before I quit this coyote bounty story I’ve got to tell about collecting the bounty from the county treasure’s office. The secretaries in the office never liked to see us “bounty collectors” coming. They’d wrinkle-up their noses and go “Ugh! How many you got?” Never once did they count and confirm how many coyote ears we were collecting on. Looking back, I think we could have lied about the number and got paid for phantom coyote ears.
I know the above stories sound crass and cruel. And, they would be considered so these days. But, back around 1950 it was expected, acceptable, and no one got bent out of shape.
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This next memory about “coyote drives” clinches the low regard people in general had about coyotes 70-80 years ago in the Post WWII era. For me as a kid, participating in an organized coyote drive was nirvana. Excitement just didn’t get any better.
Here’s how it worked. In the spring, coyote drives were advertised and held each weekend in different communities. Several hundred hunters, each armed with only a shotgun, would disperse around the perimeter of four square miles and walk toward an open field or meadow in the center. A small airplane flying overhead would waggle its wings to keep the lines advancing equally.
As a kid, I couldn’t carry a shotgun, but I walked along with Dad or a neighbor. As the coyotes were pushed towards the center of the drive, they would make a mad dash to escape the trap. Some escaped. Most didn’t. A few folks usually got peppered with shotgun pellets, but I don’t recall anything serious.
After a morning and and afternoon drive, all the dead coyotes would be laid out on a hay rack and counted. Farmers and stockmen were happy the predators were gone. I have no idea who collected the bounty, but I imagine it wuz the drive organizers who had spent money to pull the drive off. At any rate, it wuz exciting to a little farm kid and the memories are still vivid today.
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Words of wisdom for the week: “If you want to kill time, why not try working it to death?” Have a good ‘un.
