160 KANSAS HISTORY

Coyotes, Politics, andEcology, 1877–1970

Against Kansas’s Top Dog

AGAINST KANSAS’S TOP DOG 161

I n 1967, as college campuses across the nation erupted in sometimes violentdebate over the conduct of the war in Vietnam, the Kansas governor’s of-fice became the focal point of a bureaucratic struggle in a different kind ofwar that was being waged—a war against the most troublesome predator

in the state, the coyote. The essential question to be settled was simple. Would theState of Kansas maintain authority over coyote control or would livestock inter-ests succeed in bringing in the federal Predator and Rodent Control Division(PARC) of the Department of Interior to control the wily beasts? On September22, 1966, Kansas governor William H. Avery signed an agreement with the Bu-reau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife that allowed federal predator control per-sonnel to conduct operations in Kansas. The wrath and suspicions of Kansasstock raisers fell squarely on the coyote, and it was the coyote population that thefederal hunters from PARC targeted. By 1967 Avery’s agreement set off a sur-prisingly fierce debate in Kansas over which level of government should overseepredator control in the state and about the very need for predator control.1

An examination of this 1967 conflict provides an opportunity and a frame-work to consider the history of coyote control in Kansas as well as the attitudesof Kansans who supported attempts to destroy coyote populations. Out of theparticular historical and ecological conditions in Kansas came a particular formof coyote control by 1949 that later would be hailed by environmental groups asan ecologically responsible alternative to widespread poisoning programs foundin other parts of the American West. It was this Kansas “trapper” system thatAvery’s 1966 agreement with PARC threatened to undermine. Further, this studywill trace the growth of a coalition of different groups that gradually came to seecoyotes as increasingly valuable either as an important piece of the ecologicalpuzzle that is Kansas or as an object of sport hunting. This coalition shaped theoutcome of the 1967 debate over coyote control. This survey of changing attitudesin Kansas toward predators such as the coyote also serves to illustrate how Kan-sans viewed and valued the plains landscape in which they lived.

Jay Antle received his master’s degree from Arizona State University and is a Ph.D. candidate at the University ofKansas, where he currently is an assistant instructor in history. He has published several articles about ecology and envi-ronmental history.

The author acknowledges Donald Worster, Mark Frederick, and Don Wolf for their comments, whichhelped improve this article.

1. A summary of the Avery agreement is found in “Kansas May Trade State Predator Plan for FederalKillers,” Kansas City Star, April 2, 1967.

by Jay Antle

Avery chose politics over hispersonal ambivalence about fed-eral hunters disrupting Kansasecology. In a 1965 letter to a sup-porter of PARC intervention, hewrote that the issue of coyotecontrol did “raise the questionof the advisability of reducing ordisturbing a balance that has be-come pretty well establishedamong our wildlife creatures.”Avery’s motives aside, his sign-

ing the agreement, when it became public knowledgein 1967, set off a wave of public debate over the issueof coyote control in Kansas.3

Robert Docking’s victory over Avery in the gu-bernatorial election of 1966 threw the future of thePARC agreement into doubt. The Kansas City Starpublished an article in April 1967 urging Docking tobreak the agreement made by his predecessor. Thisarticle, entitled “Kansas May Trade State PredatorPlan for Federal Killers,” openly attacked the planand the federal hunters who would track downKansas coyotes. The Star called PARC “a Franken-stein army of Federal exterminators” that would “ex-terminate, as much as possible, the coyote from theKansas prairie.” This critical article revealed theAvery agreement for the first time to most Kansansand led to a flood of letters to Governor Docking.4

One issue addressed in this correspondence thatproved critical to the debate was the very need forpredator control. Were coyotes a significant threat to

The 1966 agreement between Avery and PARChad developed in part from expediency. GovernorRobert Docking’s papers suggest that Avery’s signingof the 1966 agreement had as much to do with poli-tics as with coyote predation. Avery, a Republican,was in a close race for reelection with Democraticcandidate Docking, himself a member of the KansasLivestock Association. Avery, seeking to solidify thesupport of the livestock industry, likely signed theagreement with his reelection in mind. Kansas stockraisers, as they had for more than a century, called forharsher predator control methods, and undoubtedlymany were pleased with the prospect of federalhunters roaming the prairies supplementing the stateextension service and its coyote control efforts. Infact, Avery had met with officials of the Kansas Live-stock Association in 1965, and they had provided himwith a list of legal steps to follow to enter into anagreement with PARC.2

162 KANSAS HISTORY

2. For the accusation of politics, see Harold Knock to Robert Docking,February 14, 1967, Predator Control file, box 141, Docking Papers, KansasCollection, University of Kansas Libraries, Lawrence, hereafter referred toas Docking Papers. For the Kansas Livestock Association meeting, see A.G.Pickett to William Avery, August 12, 1965, Forestry, Fish and Game Com-mission file, Correspondence, William Avery Administration, Records ofthe Governor’s Office, Library and Archives Division, Kansas State His-torical Society, hereafter referred to as Governor’s Records (Avery).

3. William Avery to E.W. Eustace, October 14, 1965, Governor’sRecords (Avery).

4. “Kansas May Trade State Predator Plan for Federal Killers.” The“flood of letters” are in Docking Papers.

Evidence suggests that the coyote becamea scapegoat for many struggling Kansassheepmen and were held responsible forpreventing the expansion of the sheep in-dustry in Kansas.

AGAINST KANSAS’S TOP DOG 163

5. Doug Wildin to William Avery, August 24, 1966, Governor’sRecords (Avery).

6. Frederick H. Wagner, Coyotes and Sheep: Some Thoughts on Ecology,Economics and Ethics (Logan: Utah State University Faculty Association,1972), 4; For a detailed discussion of this attitude, see Thomas Dunlap,Saving America’s Wildlife (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,1988), particularly chapter four.

7. For wolf eradication in Kansas, see R.C. Johnston, “The Need ofBetter Protection From Wolves,” in Kansas State Board of Agriculture,Seventeenth Biennial Report, 1909–1910 (Topeka: Kansas Department ofAgriculture, 1911), 168; Leo Brown, “Mammal Extinction in Kansas: TheGray Wolf,” Aerend: A Kansas Quarterly 4 (Spring 1933): 118. The wolf huntis detailed in “Bypaths of Kansas History,” Kansas Historical Quarterly 8(February 1938): 98–99. The bounty is discussed in Eugene D. Fleharty,Wild Animals and Settlers on the Great Plains (Norman: University of Okla-homa Press, 1995), 195.

Early Kansas settlers first turned their atten-tions to the gray wolf that roamed the prairieand watched the incoming wagons with cu-

riosity. When Union Pacific men and hordes of sporthunters decimated the bison herds of the CentralPlains, ranchers quickly filled this herbivore’s nichewith domestic animals such as cattle and sheep aswell as animals more vulnerable to predation such asturkeys and chickens. The hunger of wolves and coy-otes did not diminish with changes in the dominantherbivore species on the Kansas plains, and not sur-prisingly some wild canids turned to domesticatedlivestock for food. As a result, early farmers andstockmen who had no more use for wolves thanfarmers had for ravenous grasshoppers called fortheir destruction. What followed was an all-out war,on the gray wolf in particular. In 1864 the Kansas leg-islature empowered individual counties to offerbounties for the ears or the scalps of wolves. Thesebounties encouraged Kansans to poison buffalo meatwith strychnine and leave it for hungry wolves. Pro-fessional “wolfers” would poison large numbers ofcarcasses and periodically return to gather the deadpredators. One such expedition using this techniquegathered 340 wolf pelts. Although the last knownwolf taken in Kansas fell in the 1890s, widespreadpoisoning efforts had decimated the wolf populationby the 1870s, leaving the coyote as the most impor-tant predator in the state.7

With the extinction of the wolf, the smaller coyotewas next to feel the ire of Kansans seeking to consol-idate their conquest of the plains landscape. Wolvesand coyotes in Kansas were linked both semanticallyand ecologically. For many years coyotes were called“wolves” or “prairie wolves,” thus the historical rec-ord is littered with references to wolves long aftertrue wolves were extinct in the state. In terms of eco-

the livestock industry? Was the coyote threat of a suf-ficient magnitude to justify importing federal huntersto protect Kansas livestock interests? Not surprising-ly, many Kansas stock raisers, particularly sheepowners, answered in the affirmative. One rancher,after complaining that Kansas state control programswere unable to keep ravenous coyotes in check, ar-gued that a “surplus of coyotes also takes its toll onuseful game birds and animals.” For Kansas stockraisers in 1967, coyotes clearly did not fit the catego-ry of a useful animal.5

Labeling coyotes as unworthy “varmints” washardly a condition peculiar either to the 1960s orKansas. From the beginnings of white settlement inNorth America, predators such as wolves, bears,mountain lions, and coyotes were seen as enemies ofagriculture and progress as they consumed animalsconsidered valuable such as livestock and gamebirds. Frederick Wagner, a wildlife expert active inthe study of predator control in the 1970s, describedthis attitude in his Coyotes and Sheep:

In most value systems, the production of food andincome is ranked above the esthetic and recre-ational. And the same singleness of purpose whichhas plowed under major parts of continents hasnot questioned the extreme reduction, if not elimi-nation, of predatory animals.

American attitudes toward predators are easy to un-derstand. Predators stood in the way of the domesti-cation of the North American landscape. If thewilderness was to turn a profit and progress to sweepwestward, so the argument went, natural obstaclessuch as wolves, bobcats, and coyotes, much like Indi-ans, had to give way before the American people.Kansas, like the rest of the West, had to be “won”from predators to make it safe for livestock and prof-itable for farmers and ranchers.6

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8. Brown, “Mammal Extinction in Kansas,” 1; H.T. Gier, Coyotes inKansas, Kansas State College Agricultural Experiment Station Bulletin 393(Manhattan: Kansas State College of Agriculture and Applied Science,August 1957), 3.

9. Jas. O’Neill to Alfred Gray, December 22, 1873, in “Sheep Hus-bandry,” in Kansas State Board of Agriculture, Annual Report, 1873 (Tope-ka: State Printing Works, 1874), 140; David Lantz, The Relation of Coyotesto Stock Raising in the West, USDA Farmers’ Bulletin 226 (Washington,D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1905), 15.

10. James W. Steele, “Coyotes,” Kansas Magazine 2 (October 1872):369; Horace Greeley, “The Plains, As I Crossed Them Ten Years Ago,”Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 38 (1869): 789–95, reprinted in Fleharty,Wild Animals and Settlers on the Great Plains, 20.

11. “Kansas Coyote Being Hunted Relentlessly,” Topeka Daily Capital,January 3, 1932; “Coyotes—the ‘Hitlers’ and ‘Tojos’ of Woodson CountyFarmers,” Buffalo Enterprise, October 5, 1944.

12. For a discussion of these assumptions, see Wagner, Coyotes andSheep, 17.

logical relationships, coyotes benefited from the ex-termination of the wolf, which eliminated a key com-petitor for carrion, small mammals, and livestock. Itis likely that wolves acted as a restraint on coyotepopulations by reducing the levels of available food.Further, the coyotes’ smaller size, hunting habits(alone as opposed to in packs), and impressive abili-ty to adapt to new conditions would make coyotecontrol efforts much more difficult than those againstthe wolf. As folklorist J. Frank Dobie said about thecoyote, “no other wild animal of historic times hasshown itself so adaptable to change.”8

Control efforts against coyotes naturally flowedfrom the fact that coyotes at times attack domesticlivestock. In the Kansas State Board of Agriculture’sAnnual Report for 1873, one rancher wrote that wolves(likely coyotes) had killed nearly seventy sheep on hisranch in four years. In 1905 David Lantz, a Kansasstock raiser who had joined the Federal Division ofthe Biological Survey (a predecessor agency of PARC),wrote that coyotes, along with “worthless” domesticdogs, were the “chief discouragement” to sheepranching.9

Anticoyote attitudes grew to the level of characterassassination. In 1872 Kansas Magazine concludedthat the coyote “is universally conceded to be asneak, a thief, and an arrant coward . . . in whosewhole history there is not one redeeming fact.” Noless a luminary than Horace Greeley lumped scornon the Kansas coyote in 1869:

The paltry cuyota [sic], to which the name prairie-wolf has universally been given, since it has in itsnature nothing of the wolf but its ravenous ap-petite, and would hardly be a match for a stout foxor racoon [sic], lingers near you, safe in its ownworthlessness and your contempt.

Wolves, while hated, occasionally received respectfrom their hunters. Kansans bestowed no such honoron the lowly coyote. The cautious hunting practicesof the animal, especially its tendency to scavengealone, inspired this rhetoric.10

Discouraging words about the coyote contin-ued to be heard after the turn of the century.In 1932 the Topeka Daily Capital wrote,

“though related to the dog and the wolf, the coyotebears about the same relation to the genuine wolf thatthe buzzard does to the eagle, or the chicken thief tothe modern bank cashier.” Having compared the coy-ote with various depression-era lowlifes, the articlequestioned the courage of the species: “He is yellowin color and characteristics.” In 1944 the wife of onerancher called coyotes “the Hitlers and Tojos” of hercounty and claimed that coyotes had devastated herturkey and chicken flocks.11

These negative stereotypes of the coyote are pred-icated upon the assumption that a causal connectionexisted between coyote population levels and coyotepredation on domestic livestock. This connection isan important one to explore since attempts to controlor even eradicate the coyote in Kansas are inspired bythe belief that coyotes significantly threaten domesticlivestock. Accordingly, if one reduced coyote num-bers, livestock losses happily would be reduced.12

What, then, has been the historic impact of coyotepredation on domestic livestock in Kansas?

Any effort to assess the accuracy of this assump-tion in Kansas is necessarily difficult due to a lack ofdata. However, by combining what data do existalong with current understandings of coyote behav-ior and livestock management techniques, it appearsthat the intensity of anticoyote attitudes in Kansaswas unwarranted and the link between coyote popu-lations and livestock losses exaggerated.

Data from the Kansas StateBoard of Agriculture support thisconclusion. From 1894 to 1922 theboard tabulated reports of sheeplost to predation by coyotes andwild dogs (Table 1). The data sug-gest that at no point during the pe-riod surveyed did sheep lossesfrom coyotes exceed 0.84 percentof the sheep population of Kansasand usually ran about 0.5 percent.Admittedly, the data have someholes: farmers and ranchers couldhave underreported coyote preda-tion to the board. Also, if evidenceof predation is a carcass, it is diffi-cult to differentiate betweenwounds from predation or scav-enging after death from othercauses. Nevertheless, when joinedwith other evidence, these datasuggest the malevolent reputationof the coyote is exaggerated.13

When compared with the restof the American West, coyote pre-dation rates in Kansas are ex-tremely small. One of the more re-liable studies of the IntermountainWest suggests that 3 to 10 percentof the sheep population was takenannually in the early 1970s. Thisdisparity in coyote predation be-tween Kansas and the Intermoun-tain West is due to different man-agement techniques. In Kansas,with a lack of federal, open-rangeland, sheep remained under theclose watch of their owners. In western states such asUtah or Montana, sheep ranged more widely on pub-lic land and thus were more vulnerable to predation.14

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Biological studies conducted at Kansas State Uni-versity in the 1950s shed further light on the econom-ic impact of coyote predation on Kansas livestockowners. Biologist H.T. Gier examined the contents ofa number of coyote stomachs to determine the com-13. To determine how significant coyote losses were in terms of the

entire sheep population, Kansas Board of Agriculture estimates for thetotal number of sheep in Kansas were matched with the appropriate year-ly coyote predation figure.

14. Wagner, Coyotes and Sheep, 30, 35; testimony of F. Robert Hender-son, September 18, 1973, “Predator Control,” Hearings Before the Commit-

tee on Agriculture, U.S. House of Representatives (Washington, D.C.: Gov-ernment Printing Office, 1974), 50.

TABLE 1COYOTE AND DOG PREDATION ON KANSAS SHEEP, 1894–1922

Year Sheep Killed Sheep Killed Total Kansas Percent of Sheep By Dogs By Coyotes Sheep Population Killed

Population By Coyotes

1894 666 1,305 166,384 .781895 1,294 1,150 136,520 .841896 544 1,201 182,236 .661897 666 781 222,703 .351898 545 812 207,482 .3911899 484 797 200,301 .3971900 463 985 232,039 .4241901 549 874 186,987 .4671902 398 738 136,753 .5391903 742 991 167,004 .5931904 354 676 167,721 .4031905 477 870 158,591 .5481906 305 621 176,177 .3521907 504 573 159,241 .3591908 469 665 136,191 .4881909 1,463 1,272 159,271 .7981910 844 1,237 175,250 .7051911 1,198 908 326,684 .2781912 1,110 807 208,755 .3861913 1,030 1,132 196,151 .5771914 1,269 577 130,638 .4411915 1,033 636 138,082 .4601916 902 608 181,481 .3351917 1,264 604 180,877 .3331918 1,051 926 249,928 .3701919 1,114 1,223 267,963 .4561920 965 1,326 300,100 .4981921 1,281 1,767 266,055 .6641922 822 1,503 220,550 .681Data compiled from the annual reports of the Kansas State Board of Agriculture, 1894–1922.

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position of the average Kansas coyote’s diet. Hefound that more than half of that diet was rabbit andthat 27 percent of coyote food was carrion, which in-cluded domestic livestock. While Gier could not de-termine the exact percentage, he speculated that mostof the livestock consumed by coyotes was alreadydead at the time of consumption. Cattle and sheepthat died of disease or exposure made tasty meals foropportunistic coyotes. Gier’s work suggested that theaverage coyote did not attack domestic livestock on aregular basis.15

Although Gier’s findings undermined the stereo-type of the ravenous coyote thirsty for the blood ofsucculent livestock, they did not completely exoner-ate the species of all charges. Gier concluded that coy-otes were responsible for losses of sheep, calves, andother livestock worth close to a million dollars annu-ally during the 1950s. Breaking these figures downper farm, Gier calculated that coyotes cost each farmaround $12.35 in lost livestock per year. Gier furthercomplicated the issue by noting that coyotes con-sumed large numbers of rodents and rabbits that ate

forage needed by domesticated herbi-vores. He estimated that the value offorage saved by hungry coyotes prey-ing on rodents and rabbits at twenty-one dollars per coyote per year. Byfilling a particular ecological niche—consuming forage-eating rodents—inthe Kansas landscape, coyotes partial-ly “paid” for their predation on live-stock. Gier’s work clearly paints amore complicated picture of coyotepredation than that held by manyKansas stockmen.16

If, as these studies suggest, the eco-nomic impact of coyote predation on Kansas live-stock was relatively slight, anticoyote attitudes andpolicies apparently originated from a false premise.But leaving the argument here makes the matter toosimplistic and does Kansas farmers and ranchers adisservice. So how do we reconcile individual ranch-er accounts of vicious coyote attacks with the aboveconclusions? Wildlife management studies provide apossible answer.

Studies of coyote behavior suggest that individ-ual coyotes become comfortable with taking sheep orchickens while the large majority of coyotes abstainfrom attacking domestic stock. In his 1957 study Giernoted that coyote attacks, while not significant indus-try-wide, could devastate a single farm. Individualcoyotes could become “killer” animals that subsistedlargely on livestock. That is, individual coyotes, notthe average animal or the species as a whole, were re-

15. Gier, Coyotes in Kansas, 13–14.

16. Ibid., 31, 24, 35. Ecologists and ranchers are inclined, due to ed-ucation and experience, to instinctively argue on different sides in thepredator control debate. Nevertheless, granting that ecologists tend toargue for the protection of predatory animals against ranchers who callfor their destruction does not invalidate the evidence amassed by indi-viduals such as Gier who suggest that coyote predation was not as sig-nificant as stockmen claimed.

Biologist H.T. Gier found that rabbit constitutedmore than half the diet of many coyotes. Becausethey consumed large numbers of rabbits and ro-dents, which ate forage needed by domesticatedherbivores, the coyote at least partially paid forits relatively small-scale predation.

AGAINST KANSAS’S TOP DOG 167

17. Ibid., 69; David Case, “Kansas’ Top Dog,” Kansas Wildlife 42 (Jan-uary/February 1985): 27.

18. Gier, Coyotes in Kansas, 23.

19. Johnston, “The Need of Better Protection From Wolves,” 167; seealso George Laycock, “Travels and Travails of the Song Dog,” Audubon 76(September 1974): 30.

20. Dunlap, Saving America’s Wildlife, 113; E.D. King, “Problems ofthe Sheep Industry in Kansas,” in Kansas State Board of Agriculture,Twelfth Biennial Report, 1899–1900 (Topeka: Kansas Department of Agri-culture, 1901), 40; see also Laycock, “Travels and Travails of the SongDog,” 30.

21. Kansas State Board of Agriculture, Annual Report, 1873, 140;Steven C. Borell to Robert Docking, May 24, 1967, Docking Papers.

otes, so the argument went, not economics or themarket, were the major inhibiting factor preventingthe expansion of the sheep industry.19

Invisible market forces and uncertain pricesforced sheepmen throughout the West to reduceoverhead, which made their flocks more vulnerableto the very visible coyote attacks blamed for the stateof the industry. In his book Saving America’s Wildlife,Thomas Dunlap has made this argument. In Kansas,as nationwide, sheepmen reduced to bare minimumsthe amount spent on herders, fences, and sheds. Asone sheepman explained in 1901, “Hired labor is ourgreatest expense.” By cutting costs, sheepmen madetheir flocks more vulnerable to those coyotes accus-tomed to taking domestic stock.20

The historical record contains examples of Kansassheepmen accusing fellow operators of engaging indangerously lax herding practices. In 1872 the KansasState Board of Agriculture noted that “there has beena depletion of large flocks through wanton neglectand exposure, and a merciless abandonment to be theprey of wolves and vagabond dogs. . . . Neither pe-cuniary considerations nor the instincts of humanityhave been sufficient to induce careful and humanetreatment [of sheep].” One hundred years later, in afully settled Kansas, the accusation sounded the samewhen an observer wrote to Governor Robert Dock-ing: “It appears to me that the only folks having prob-lems with predators are those who do not properlycare for their livestock. . . . These farmers blame thepredators, namely the coyote for their laziness or ne-glect.” Certainly all Kansas sheepmen did not neglecttheir flocks; however, the evidence suggests that poorherding techniques made flocks easier prey for coy-otes and consequently augmented the coyote’s imageas a destroyer of livestock.21

sponsible for the majority of livestock predation. Re-ports of heavy predation on farms were thus likelythe result of individual animals doing significantdamage rather than widespread attacks by largenumbers of coyotes.17

Sporadic evidence of heavy coyote predation cou-pled with coyote tracks around the carcasses of live-stock who perished from natural causes seems tohave been enough for ranchers to transfer guilt to thewhole species. Stockmen did not have to conduct sur-veys to assess the true economic significance of thecoyote on their operations. Word of mouth, personalexperience, and the general reputation of the animalled many Kansans to argue that coyotes were a dan-gerous threat to the agricultural enterprise of Kansas.As Gier wrote, “most of the estimates [about coyotepredation] were no more than guesses.” Gier furthercommented that the attacks of individual coyoteswere “augmented by various fantasies that have de-veloped around the secretive and cunning nature ofthe coyote” in the minds of ranchers. Cold statisticalanalysis and findings that coyote predation did notsignificantly endanger the livestock industry inKansas did little to ease the minds of ranchers whohad encountered an animal accustomed to consum-ing sheep or chickens.18

Nevertheless, aside from legitimate com-plaints such as these against the coyote andthe generally poor reputation of the animal,

evidence suggests that the coyote became a scapegoatfor many struggling Kansas sheepmen. Throughoutthe late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries,hopes were high that large flocks would come to fillthe prairies and that sheep were the key for agricul-tural success for the common man. One Lawrencianin 1909 claimed that “Every farmer with 160 acrescould support a small flock of sheep that would turnthe waste products of the farm into gold while intheir stead they are feeding thousands of hungrywolves on the choicest meats they can produce.” Coy-

the entire species sup-ported the existing sys-tem of which he was apart. Granting these bi-ases, however, does notundermine the prepon-derance of the evidence.Evidence gathered by

Gier and the Kansas State Board of Agriculture aswell as other anecdotal data make a compelling casethat overwhelms possible bias.

The evidence presented here strongly suggests thatthe underlying assumption behind coyote control ef-forts—that coyotes significantly reduced livestockpopulations in Kansas—has been fundamentallyflawed from the time of settlement. Statistically, coy-ote predation never impacted the Kansas livestock in-dustry to the level of significance that rhetoric sug-gested. Certainly single coyotes could severelydamage individual operations, and these incidentsprovided ranchers with the evidence they needed tocontinue to indict the entire species. Individual sto-ries of predation could spread throughout a commu-nity of livestock owners breeding feelings of hatredagainst the entire species. The coyote also seems tohave served as an effective scapegoat to cover upmore fundamental economic problems in the Kansassheep industry. Finally, ample evidence suggests thatmuch of the damage to livestock attributed to coyotesactually may have been caused by wild dogs.

Whether coyotes truly deserved their reputationas livestock killers mattered less than the fact thatKansas stockmen believed the animals did slaughterlivestock and thus acted upon that belief. Kansasstockmen led the call for action against the animal

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Further, evidence suggests that wild dogs, asmuch as coyotes, attacked Kansas sheep. The data inTable 1 indicate that sheep losses by dogs often ex-ceeded the number of sheep killed by coyotes. Thedog problem was so severe in the late 1800s that onerancher wryly noted, “As there are now 74,905 dogsin the state, it is eminently proper that the number ofsheep should be speedily increased. Less than a mut-ton-and-a-half to the dog is a wholly inadequatetwelve months supply for any healthy canine.” AsGier observed, “it appears that many serious lossessustained by sheep raisers were from dogs ratherthan coyotes.”22

One must, however, examine the motives of thosewho challenged ranchers’ claims that coyote preda-tion threatened the survival of individual ranchersand entire sectors of the Kansas livestock industry. Bythe 1960s, in debates with ranchers throughout theWest, biologists and conservationists often champi-oned the cause of the predators. H.T. Gier worked forKansas State Agricultural College, which after 1949ran the Kansas extension trapper service that target-ed individual troublesome animals. Gier’s conclu-sions that individual coyotes were a threat and not

22. J.A. Anderson, “Sketch of Kansas Agriculture,” in Kansas StateBoard of Agriculture, Fourth Annual Report, 1875 (Topeka: Public Printer,1875), 86; Gier, Coyotes in Kansas, 31.

Because Kansas stockmenviewed the coyote as a livestockkiller, the Kansas legislature en-acted various bounty laws be-tween 1877 and 1960. Usuallyhunters had to deliver the ani-mal’s scalp including both earsto collect the bounty. The coyotepelts in this photograph werecollected northwest of Mankato,Jewell County, in 1946.

AGAINST KANSAS’S TOP DOG 169

23. O’Neill to Gray in “Sheep Husbandry,” 140. Here the writer islikely engaging in the aforementioned semantic fusion of “prairiewolves” (coyotes) and the gray wolf. The original 1864 bounty law isquoted in Fleharty, Wild Animals and Settlers on the Great Plains, 195.

24. Kansas Laws (1877), ch. 76.25. This summary of bounty changes is in Gier, Coyotes in Kansas, 73.

26. Lantz, The Relation of Coyotes to Stock Raising in the West, 17–18.27. “Kansas Scalp Bounty,” Kansas Official 14 (July 1930): 13.28. Johnston, “The Need of Better Protection from Wolves,” 167–68.

from the first coyote bounty in 1877 through the dis-pute over federal hunters in 1967. The first antipreda-tor bounty in Kansas was passed by the state legisla-ture in 1864 and targeted the gray wolf. In 1873 onesheepman wrote, “If the Legislature would enact alaw offering a good bounty for killing wolves, andplacing a heavy tax on dogs, wolves would soon dis-appear, and Kansas would become the best sheepraising State in the West.” Further, he reasoned, thebounty eventually would pay for itself as “more taxeswould be raised from sheep than would be paid forthe destruction of wolves after the first year.”23

By 1877 the Kansas legislature responded tocalls to control coyote predation with a newbounty law. This revised bounty legislation es-

calated the war against predators in Kansas by em-powering county commissioners to issue bounties ofone dollar for “every wolf, coyote, wild-cat, or fox,and five cents for each rabbit, that shall be killed with-in said county.” The hunter had to deliver the scalp ofthe animal, including both ears, to the county clerk forpayment. Bounty supporters assumed that financialincentives to take predators would reduce predationupon domestic livestock. Large bounty payouts byKansas counties, it was thought, served as a forecastof a predator-free and livestock-supportive state.24

Coyote populations seemed oblivious to changesin the Kansas bounty law. In 1885 the legislature in-creased the bounty to three dollars per coyote. By1907, probably to reduce the financial stress on coun-ty coffers by bounty claims, the legislature returnedthe bounty to one dollar. However, coyote popula-tions seemed to remain constant despite bountyhunters’ efforts, and sporadic coyote predation onlivestock continued.25

The high financial cost of the Kansas coyote boun-ty and its apparent ineffectiveness in reducing coyotenumbers led some Kansans to question the bountysystem. David Lantz of the U.S. Biological Survey

and a former Kansas rancher, was particularly con-cerned about fraud. He noted that Kansas countiespaid out more than twenty thousand coyote bountiesin 1905 alone. As Lantz noted, assessing the homeground of a coyote pelt brought in for payment was adifficult task.26

Fraud undoubtedly played some role in the highnumbers of coyote bounty claims in Kansas. One ex-ceptional case of fraud was exposed in 1930 when agroup of New Yorkers, in an attempt to collect thebounty, were caught bringing into Kansas coyotepelts discarded by New York furriers. The Kansas Of-ficial, the official organ of the Kansas Official Council,estimated that Kansas counties paid this group fiftythousand dollars in bounty payments. While theoverall importance of fraud paled before the stub-born persistence of coyote population numbers in in-flating coyote bounty appropriations, it seems certainthat Kansas counties paid bounties on many coyotesthat had never seen Kansas soil when alive.27

Kansas ranchers thought that the ineffectivenessof the bounty system in reducing coyote numberswas linked to the amount of the bounty and not thesystem itself. In 1911 livestock owner R.C. Johnstonof Lawrence noted the problem: “The number ofwolves is increasing rapidly. Our county recordsshow that we are paying out more money each yearfor the increasing number of scalps while the lossesof farmers are growing in like proportion each year.”He called for the legislature to dramatically increasethe bounty to five dollars which would lead “everyman and boy who has a day off to hunt and trap.”Further, Johnston argued, hunting coyotes was goodfor the soul as “it stimulates the boys to hunt forwolves to earn some extra money and affords themgood fun and exercise.”28

While stockmen like Johnston did not convincethe Kansas legislature to increase the amount of thebounty, they did successfully resist attempts to sub-stantively change it until the 1940s. By 1941 Kansascounty commissioners were paying out more moneyin bounties than they could afford. As a result, coun-

170 KANSAS HISTORY

29. Gier, Coyotes in Kansas, 73.30. For mention of the quick exhaustion of the 1941 appropriation,

see “Casualties in Kansas Coyote War,” Topeka Daily Capital, February 1,1943. The liquidation of claims is in “Coyote Scalps Leave Counties$21,000 Short,” Topeka State Journal, August 15, 1944.

31. “Kansas Looking For a Way to Control the Spread of Coyotes,”Kansas City Times, August 16, 1944; “Need Better Plan to Kill Coyotes,”Lawrence Daily Journal-World, July 18, 1946.

32. Kansas General Statutes (1949): 718–19; Kansas Laws (1961), ch.30. A summary of these laws is in Governor’s Records (Avery).

33. For a summary of research on coyote reproduction, see Guy E.Connolly, “Predator Control and Coyote Populations: A Review of Simu-lation Models,” in Coyotes: Biology, Behavior and Management, ed. MarcBekoff (New York: Academic Press, 1978), 327–46.

ty officials petitioned the Kansas legislature to createa fund to compensate county governments for coyotebounties. The legislature complied and appropriatedtwenty-five thousand dollars of state money for thebounty system later that year.29

State subsidies of the coyote bounty quicklyproved to be inadequate. In 1941 alone coyote bountyclaims exceeded the state fund by ten thousand dol-lars. By 1944 unpaid coyote bounty debts became sotroublesome that the State of Kansas liquidated allbounty claims at the rate of forty-two cents on thedollar leaving county governments to cover the restof the claims for that year. Despite the bounty on theirscalps, coyotes continued to breed and overburdenthe system designed to bring about their destruction.30

Kansas newspapers in the 1940s frequently re-ported on the coyote bounty fiscal crisis. The KansasCity Times humorously noted in 1944 that “Kansas au-thorities are looking for some means of exercisingbirth control over the coyotes or permission to build afence around three sides of the state to keep Nebras-ka, Colorado, and Oklahoma coyotes out of Kansas.”In 1946 the Lawrence Daily Journal-World noted thatthe state only had two outstanding debts: World WarI veteran bonus payments and coyote bounties.31

In 1949 the Kansas legislature finally moved tosubstantively reform the expensive coyote bountysystem. While support for the system was strongenough to prevent its abolition, the legislature estab-lished more state control. In a series of bills, the staterequired that any counties wishing to pay bountiesfor predatory animals must first contact Kansas StateAgricultural College (later Kansas State University)and request the services of college extension agents torecommend and organize a countywide predator con-trol program. Only after counties followed these stepswould the State of Kansas match a one-dollar contri-bution from county governments for a total bounty oftwo dollars. Further, the payment of bounties was no

longer compulsory. By the 1960s some counties un-willing to engage in cooperative predator control pro-grams with Kansas State University stopped payingbounties altogether. The flaws in the coyote bountysystem led the state to take a more active role inpredator control by authorizing the Kansas ExtensionService to help coyote-stricken counties rather thanthe state continuing to satisfy the inexhaustible fiscalneeds of the existing bounty system.32

The financial collapse of the bounty system andthe general ineffectiveness of coyote controlefforts in reducing animal populations can

only be explained by examining coyote physiology.Current knowledge suggests that coyote reproduc-tive rates vary with the availability of the food sup-ply. In areas containing few coyotes and abundantfood sources (rodents and rabbits in particular), fe-male coyotes have been known to produce seven toeight offspring. In areas where coyotes are moreabundant and the prey species less numerous, littersaverage between two and four animals. If coyote re-productive rates vary with the ratio of available foodand existing coyote populations, a problem for coyotecontrol efforts becomes apparent. By reducing coyotepopulations through poisoning or bounty-hunting,coyote control efforts actually increase coyote repro-ductive rates if the food supply remains the same.With fewer animals (due to control efforts) and moreabundant food per animal (due to fewer competingcoyotes) female coyotes produce more offspring andoffset the population decline caused by poisoningand hunting. Thus, even in Kansas where average an-nual takes of coyotes may have approached 40 per-cent of the total population, overall coyote popula-tions remained fairly constant as killed animals werereplaced by pups each year. This remarkable repro-ductive adaptability of the coyote made the Kansasbounty system too expensive and frustratingly inef-fective in reducing coyote numbers.33

AGAINST KANSAS’S TOP DOG 171

36. Dunlap, Saving America’s Wildlife on the Great Plains, 38–39.37. A copy of the agreement is in Forestry, Fish and Game Commis-

sion file, Correspondence, John Anderson Administration, Records of theGovernor’s Office, Library and Archives Division, Kansas State HistoricalSociety, hereafter referred to as Governor’s Records (Anderson). Refer-ences to actions taken under the agreement are made in Lewis Garlick toJohn Anderson, November 26, 1962, copy in U.S. Department of the Inte-rior file, Correspondence, Governor’s Records (Avery).

38. Dunlap, Saving America’s Wildlife on the Great Plains, 49, 68–69.

34. This discussion is based on A.E. Gray, “Predator and RodentControl in Kansas,” in Kansas State Board of Agriculture, Thirty-Sixth Bi-ennial Report, 1947–1948 (Topeka: State Printer, 1949), 130–35.

35. Ibid., 132, 135.

The 1949 coyote control system stressed individ-ual actions against individual animals as opposed toattempts to eradicate the entire species. It was a prag-matic compromise between the real needs of ownersprotecting their stock from individual animals andfiscal burdens that could not keep pace with coyotephysiology as seen in the older bounty system.

In effect, the Kansas stockmen who convinced Gov-ernor Avery to sign the 1966 agreement allowing fed-eral intervention in Kansas coyote control efforts werequestioning the extension trapper system set up in1949. The trapper program, administered by KansasState Agricultural College, evolved to the point thatextension agents did as much training of local ranch-ers to deal with troublesome individual animals asthey did killing of predators. Nevertheless, persistentcalls came for federal intervention in predator controlin Kansas. Precedents had been set earlier in the cen-tury for this kind of federal involvement, but thoseprojects had been temporary. During World War I em-ployees of the Department of Agriculture’s Bureau ofBiological Survey aided Kansas State AgriculturalCollege in a campaign against rodents. In 1941 a fed-eral hunter cooperated with the Comanche LivestockAssociation and killed 217 coyotes. In 1948 PARC en-tered into a cooperative agreement with the KansasForestry, Fish and Game Commission in which sevenhunters killed 514 coyotes in six months. This agree-ment ended in June 1948 for unclear reasons.34

PARC did not leave the state quietly in 1948. Inthe Kansas State Board of Agriculture 1948 reportPARC agent A.E. Gray wrote an article entitled“Predator and Rodent Control in Kansas” that clearlycalled for continued federal help in predator controlprograms. Gray noted that Kansas was one of only afew western states that had not entered into a sub-stantive cooperative agreement for continual federalinvolvement against unwanted animals like prairiedogs and coyotes. Gray’s article is a testament to thefrustration of a federal agency precluded from actionand thus unable to build its constituency in Kansas.35

PARC was the latest manifestation of federalpredator control efforts in the West designed to sup-port the livestock industry. Beginning in 1905 the U.S.Forest Service, responding to stockmen’s complaints,began to destroy predators on grazing lands withinnational forest boundaries. In 1915 Congress autho-rized the Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Bio-logical Survey to conduct campaigns against preda-tors throughout the West. Gradually this work wasconcentrated in the Department of Interior throughtheir Predator and Rodent Control Division (PARC)of the Fish and Wildlife Service, which was theagency seeking permanent access to Kansas in 1966.36

Some Kansans obviously agreed with Gray’s 1948assessment that Kansas required federal help to con-trol coyotes. In 1961, with the apparent approval ofGovernor John Anderson, the Kansas Forestry, Fishand Game Commission signed another temporaryagreement with PARC. Under this agreement PARCaided sheep owners of Sherman and Wallace Coun-ties in protecting their herds from prairie wolves.This federal intervention triggered the involvementof E. Raymond Hall, the head of the State BiologicalSurvey at the University of Kansas.37

Hall was no stranger to debates over predatorcontrol. He had been an assistant to JosephGrinnell at the Museum of Vertebrate Zool-

ogy at the University of California at Berkeley beforecoming to Kansas and had shared Grinnell’s viewthat the federal government was exterminating, notcontrolling, predators. In Hall’s view, such extermi-nation was wasteful and unnecessary. From the 1930sthrough the 1970s Hall repeatedly testified beforeCongress protesting federal predator poisoning pro-grams that took both innocent and guilty animals.38

applied to get this department into such a project.”Clearly, the Forestry, Fish and Game Commissionwanted federal funds to cover the intensified preda-tor control efforts desired by Kansas stockmen.Kansas officials tried to achieve the best of bothworlds: satisfy Kansas livestock interests withoutdipping into state coffers.40

Hall’s letters to PARC in 1962 led the federalpredator control agency to reconsider its activities inKansas. Although the actual letters are yet to befound, other correspondence suggests their existence.A 1962 letter from PARC Acting Regional DirectorLewis Garlick noted, “certain people in Kansas haveprotested the conducting of predator control in thestate to the Assistant Secretary of the Interior.” Thisbeing the case, Garlick continued, “we feel that weshould no longer conduct predator control work inKansas” until stronger agreements were signed. Asubsequent letter from Moore to Governor Andersonsuggested that Hall was a prominent protester.41

It is likely that Hall mentioned to PARC the 1961Kansas statute that placed the exclusive authority touse the deadly poison 1080 (sodium fluoroacetate) inthe hands of the chairman of the Forestry, Fish andGame Commission. This poison was PARC’s favoritetool in its fight against coyotes. It was first used inKansas by PARC officials in Seward, Comanche, andClark Counties in 1950 under another temporaryagreement. PARC treated bait at the ration of 1.6grams of poison per hundred pounds of meat withseveral thousand coyotes dying in these counties as aresult. In 1961 Hall’s opposition to federal efforts inprinciple and restrictions on use of 1080 seems tohave forced PARC to cancel the 1961 agreement.42

The growing number of Kansans who huntedcoyotes for sport also were concerned about possiblewidespread use of 1080. Organized coyote hunts oc-curred in Kansas as early as 1878. It seems likely that

172 KANSAS HISTORY

Clearly concerned about the 1961 working agree-ment with PARC, Hall wrote several letters to KansasForestry, Fish and Game Commission chairmanGeorge Moore. The proper course of action, he insist-ed, was to “direct Kansans wanting help, and out-landers wanting to help with predatory mammalcontrol, to the Extension Specialist . . . at Manhattan[Kansas State University].” For Hall, the Kansas sys-tem that relied on expert trappers to eliminate singleanimals clearly was preferable to federal broadcastpoisoning programs.39

Moore’s responses to Hall’s letters indicate thatfiscal concerns as well as pressure from livestock in-terests led to the 1961 PARC agreement. Moore wrotethat if PARC were not invited to handle the coyoteproblem in Kansas, “additional pressure would be

39. E. Raymond Hall to George Moore, December 18, 1962, Gover-nor’s Records (Anderson); Hall to Moore, December 4, 1962, ibid.

40. George Moore to E. Raymond Hall, December 10, 1962, ibid.;Moore to Hall, December 28, 1962, ibid.

41. Lewis Garlick to John Anderson, November 26, 1962, Governor’sRecords (Avery). The accusation against Hall is in George C. Moore toJohn Anderson, October 18, 1961, Governor’s Records (Anderson).

42. This discussion of 1080 is partially based on Dunlap, SavingAmerica’s Wildlife on the Great Plains, 112. For the 1950 Kansas effort, seeGier, Coyotes in Kansas, 87.

Federal intervention in coyote control triggered the involvement ofE. Raymond Hall, head of the State Biological Survey at the Universityof Kansas, who strongly objected to federal predator poisoning programsthat took innocent animals as well as guilty ones.

AGAINST KANSAS’S TOP DOG 173

43. James Schmidt II to Robert Docking, June 9, 1967, Docking Papers.44. For the hunt and its cost, see “You Get a Fast Ride and Bumps

when You Join a Coyote Hunt,” Kansas City Star, January 20, 1952; dogpack figures from Gier, Coyotes in Kansas, 35. For an interesting discussionof these hunts, see Richard Rhodes, The Inland Ground: An Evocation of theAmerican Middle West (New York: Atheneum, 1970), particularly 124–42.For a more recent coyote hunt in Chase County, see William Least Heat-Moon, PrairyErth (A Deep Map) (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1991),147–55.

45. Edward Weishauer to William Avery, February 24, 1966, Gover-nor’s Records (Avery).

46. James Schmidt II to Robert Docking, June 9, 1967, Docking Papers.47. Larry Hill to Robert Docking, March 15, 1967, ibid. In joining

with conservationists to stop the PARC coyote control program in Kan-sas, coyote hunters followed in a long tradition of sportsmen taking ac-tive roles in wildlife conservation efforts. See John Reiger, AmericanSportsmen and the Origins of Conservation, 2d ed. (Norman: University ofOklahoma Press, 1986).

48. Steven C. Borell to Robert Docking, May 24, 1967, Docking Pa-pers; Biology Department of Kansas State Teachers College to Docking,April 3, 1967, ibid.

as deer and antelope became scarce in Kansas,hunters found that coyotes made challenging re-placements. Oddly enough, when deer began return-ing to Kansas by the early 1960s, some coyote hunterscomplained. “Every time the dogs strike a goodtrail,” one hunter observed, “a deer passes by and thedogs go leaping and bounding after it, leaving thewolf or coyote trail to get cold.”43

These coyote hunts sometimes bordered on thecomical. Automobiles were used in hunts as early as1909. By the 1950s veteran coyote hunters had con-verted old trucks into “coyote wagons” that wouldbound through the brush and over the potholes of theKansas prairie at breakneck speed in search of the elu-sive animals. Once hunters spotted the coyote,trained dogs (often greyhounds or greyhound mixes)were released from the wagon to chase the animaldown. H.T. Gier estimated that Kansas coyote huntersin 1957 kept eight hundred packs of coyote hounds.44

Coyote hunts were largely for sport as they werenot cost effective, particularly after the demise of thecompulsory bounty system. In 1952 one hunter cal-culated the cost to each participant in a coyote huntto be fifty dollars per hunt as opposed to a total re-turn of six dollars on each coyote (largely from thepelt). Nevertheless, one sportsman called coyotehunting “Kansas’ Greatest Sport.”45

Although coyote hunters might at first glanceseem unlikely allies of those who would de-fend the coyote against federal control ef-

forts, sportsmen were very active in the debate overGovernor Avery’s 1966 agreement with PARC.Avery’s agreement was more definitive than earlieragreements signed in the 1950s and 1960s, and the1967 Kansas City Star article stirred up public debate

that previous agreements had escaped. Coyotehunters participated in this debate. In particular, theyfeared that PARC use of 1080 would kill as manyhunting dogs as coyotes. James Schmidt wrote toGovernor Docking in 1967 articulating the hunter’sposition: “I have eleven trailhounds and I wouldn’twant to lose any of them because of someone tryingto poison coyotes.” Further, Schmidt complained thattoo much poisoning would deprive the coyotehunters of animals to hunt.46

Another coyote hunter noted that he spent $150each for his coyote-hunting greyhounds, and ratherthan lose his dogs to poison he proposed that, “if wecoyote hunters knew the counties that are so thick inthem we would be more than happy to go there tohunt them.”47 Coyote hunters joined a broader coali-tion of Kansans opposed to PARC involvement inKansas predator control. Following the lead of indi-viduals such as E. Raymond Hall, Kansans cognizantof the coyote’s role in Kansas ecosystems wrote toGovernor Docking urging him to terminate the PARCagreement signed by Governor Avery. An examina-tion of these letters provides a glimpse at the ecolog-ical sophistication of Kansans in 1967.

The letters argued that coyotes served an impor-tant role on Kansas prairies. One student fromKansas State University wrote that coyotes were “im-portant in the balance of nature” and that coyote de-struction would lead to increased populations oftroublesome rodents and rabbits. The biology depart-ment of Kansas State Teachers College argued in a pe-tition that the Kansas livestock industry “is not suffi-ciently well informed in the discipline of ecology tomake sound judgements concerning the far-reachingeffects of indiscriminate predator control” and, byimplication, neither was PARC.48

The termination of the 1966 PARC agree-ment enabled the much maligned coyoteto survive efforts aimed at its destruction.

ter that would notify PARC of thetermination.49

One should resist, however,the conclusion that an increasedecological consciousness playedthe decisive role in defeating theAvery agreement. Protests of Kan-sas stockmen and antifederal sen-timent also had an impact. ManyKansans opposed PARC interven-tion on the grounds that they re-sented any federal intrusion intotheir affairs. Mrs. Harold Harnarpleaded that Docking not let “theFederal government take over ourstate.” One rancher protested, “Idon’t want them, or any darn Fed-eral employee on mine [land].”

Another Kansan sarcastically commented that “Ifgovernment men do come in to kill coyotes and ifthey succeed, you can be sure that they will lookaround for something else to help us with.” Perhapsthe most colorful antifederal letter came from H.Howland who noted that he was “born and raised ona farm and the coyotes and wolves that give troubleare located in Washington, D.C.” Such antifederal at-titudes made opposing the Avery agreement an op-portunity to stand for Kansans’ rights against an in-trusive Washington-based bureaucracy.50

Other Kansans opposed PARC intervention be-cause they believed that the state-run trapper system

While it is not particularly surprising to seecollege faculty members and students ar-ticulating ecological ideas, Kansans out-

side academia echoed their arguments in defense ofthe coyote. Individual Kansans joined environmentalgroups such the Kansas Ornithological Society, theKansas Academy of Science, and the WichitaAudubon Society in opposing the Avery agreement.One rancher’s wife recalled in a letter “the story offarmers who decided to have a 100% kill of coyotesone year. They did. The next year, the rodents took thecrops.” The Docking letters contain many referencesto maintaining the “balance of nature.” Docking sup-ported this argument, writing, “I believe the balanceof nature must be allowed to function.” While today’secologists, influenced by chaos theory, find ideas suchas “the balance of nature” naive, this conception al-lowed many Kansans to find a place for coyotes onthe Kansas plains. Governor Docking terminated theAvery agreement in 1967 and asked Hall to draft a let-

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49. Dora Marshall to W.R. Brown Jr., Chairman of the Kansas Houseof Representatives Livestock Committee, April 2, 1967, ibid.; RobertDocking to Jack Shafer, March 31, 1967, ibid. For a view of the historicaldevelopment of ecology, see Donald Worster, Nature’s Economy: A Historyof Ecological Ideas, 2d ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press,1994). The document drafted by Hall terminating the agreement withPARC is in Docking Papers.

50. Harold Harnar to Robert Docking, May 19, 1967, ibid.; J.M. Gille-hay to Docking, April 4, 1967, ibid.; H.W. Shemray to Docking, April 13,1967, ibid.; H. Howland to Docking, April 7, 1967, ibid.

51. Ben Powell II to Robert Docking, June 16, 1967, ibid. The cost fig-ures are in “Kansas May Trade State Predator Plan for Federal Killers,”Kansas City Star, April 2, 1967.

52. For the ex-Kansas Livestock Association member, see Fred Lauberto Robert Docking, June 9, 1967, Docking Papers; Ralph Allen to Docking,April 7, 1967, ibid.; R.G. Shafer to Docking, March 29, 1967, ibid.

53. Testimony of E. Raymond Hall, “Predator Control and RelatedProblems,” Hearings Before the Senate Committee on Appropriations, U.S.Senate (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1972), 103–12; tes-timony of Tom Garrett, “Predator Control,” Hearings Before the Subcom-mittee on the Environment, U.S. Senate (Washington, D.C.: GovernmentPrinting Office, 1973), 220.

54. In her book Silent Spring (1962), Rachel Carson warned againstthe dangers of increasing chemical (particularly pesticide) use in the Unit-ed States. Her book helped direct public opinion against widespread useof chemical poisons as well as pollution more generally. In the wake ofCarson’s work, widespread use of chemicals or poisons faced increasingopposition across the nation, including Kansas. Programs like the Kansastrapper system, which avoided indiscriminate poisoning of animals, werethus regarded as more environmentally benign.

AGAINST KANSAS’S TOP DOG 175

Earth, went so far as to recommend that new federalefforts “should be modeled much more than beforeon the extension programs in Kansas and Missouri.”53

Environmentalists were attracted to the Kansastrapper system of coyote control because of its selec-tivity. By abandoning widespread poisoning pro-grams, the Kansas system avoided the destruction ofnontarget wildlife that occurred throughout the West.The Kansas legislature in 1949 saw the main virtue ofthis selectivity as its cost efficiency rather than as itsecological benefits. Nevertheless, this selectivityserved the Kansas trapper system well as the nationentered the post-Silent Spring era.54

This history of coyote control efforts in Kansasreveals several key points. First, the unques-tioned assumption created in the nineteenth

century that all coyotes threatened the livelihood ofKansas stock raisers and therefore deserved destruc-tion is not supported by the preponderance of the ev-idence. Secondly, a number of Kansans came to ques-tion this assumption that had guided Kansas coyotecontrol efforts, and by 1967 these more ecologicallyminded Kansans joined with a coalition of unlikelyallies including hunters and antifederal zealots tokeep PARC poisoning programs out of the state. Ulti-mately, the very existence of the debate over the 1967PARC agreement is testimony to the ability of thecoyote to survive efforts aimed at its destruction. Thecoyote, like aridity, remains an integral part of theplains landscape with which Kansans continue tograpple and where nights continue to echo with theyips and barks of Kansas’s top dog.

based through Kansas State University was sufficient.A letter from Ben Powell called for the support of“our own state control which has proved so satisfac-tory.” Several other letters to Governor Docking re-flected the comparison of costs between state and fed-eral programs cited in the Kansas City Star article in1967. The Star reported that the Kansas system costthe state $17,000 in 1965 as opposed to federal “coop-eration” in Oklahoma that cost $250,000 with little re-duction in coyote numbers.51

Even Kansas livestock owners were somewhat di-vided over the Avery agreement. One Kansas Live-stock Association member quit the organization whenit called for increased federal use of 1080. Ralph Allennoted, “I have farmed and raised livestock for manyyears and have had very little loss from coyotes.”Rancher R.G. Shafer wrote that his family had a largeherd of cattle and did not believe that “coyotes andother wildlife has been a detriment to us.” Cattlemen,with their stock less vulnerable to predation, weremore likely to oppose the Avery agreement than weresheepmen. Nevertheless, some stockmen joined theanti-PARC coalition of Kansans who opposed federalintervention in state affairs, those who wanted tomaintain the cheaper state-run trapper system, thosewho believed in the ecological importance of the coy-ote, and those who wished to preserve coyote huntingas Kansas’s “greatest sport.”52

The state-run trapper system preserved by Dock-ing was held up before Congress as a predator controlmodel in several hearings in the early 1970s. In 1971E. Raymond Hall noted the twenty-two-year historyof success in destroying troublesome individual ani-mals at low cost and with little loss among nontargetanimal populations. National environmental organi-zations like the Friends of the Earth also endorsed theKansas coyote control system at hearings in 1973.Tom Garrett, wildlife director of the Friends of the