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It may seem today like a grisly subject, but up and down
the plains, den hunting for coyotes was a source of much-needed cash to
rural folk of previous generations. One of my favorite family photographs
shows my Grandpa Dunekeck chomping a cigar and showing off a batch of
coyote pups he had taken in Barton County, Kansas. And one of my favorite
literary scenes is the one after the hard winter the middle of Wolf Willow,
by Wallace Stegner, when the Saskatchewan ranching couple decides to stick
it out on the ranch, after digging out a litter of coyotes.
The point of the enterprise, of course, was the bounties offered by the
respective states and provinces. Ernie Zahn, of Velva, North Dakota, told
me about the importance of coyote hunting in the finances of his large
German-Russian family when he was growing up in the 1920s and 1930s.
“One of the things we would do was, the state department of agriculture
was paying a bounty on coyotes, and we would do a lot of den hunting,”
he explained. “We knew where every den of coyotes was; these coyotes
have a territory.
“In fact one Sunday we were eating dinner and a brother and I were
talking about going out to find a den of coyotes. I said, you know that
hole over on that east hill, right below that rock on the hill? Right
there is where the den of coyotes is this year. We drove over to that
pasture, drove up to that hole, and there was the den of coyotes.
“These coyote dens would have anywhere from five to fifteen pups
per den. The department of agriculture was paying three dollars bounty
on pups, five dollars on adults. So if we could find a den with ten or
twelve pups, this was a pretty big check for us.” Especially considering
that a farmhand in those days might receive fifteen dollars a month and
found, country school teachers thirty a month, likely in scrip.
“One spring,” Ernie recalled, “we had 127 pups we turned
in for bounty.”
Just after Ernie got married he and his wife bought a 200-acre farm for
taxes, making a deal with the county to pay the taxes in installments.
About the same time he and his brothers went to South Dakota and bought
a pair of greyhounds for hunting fox and coyote. “I never did tell
my wife how much we paid for them greyhounds,” Ernie confessed. “We
paid $125 for the pair.”
A few days later they saddled horses, took the dogs out, and pretty soon
jumped a fox, which the hounds easily ran down. Then another fox, which
the hounds also dispatched. Then a third fox, and this time the dogs ran
a little, then gave up the pursuit. “They were just wore out, because
we had ridden about ten miles trailing the dogs,” Ernie explained.
So the boys cut a shaft from a local grove, attached it to a little two-wheel
trailer, and prepared to hitch two horses to it. Onto the trailer they
mounted a high box. “We filled the lower half of this box with straw,
and then we put the hounds in. We would transport them from one place
to another, and they would be resting and sleeping.”
This worked well. The horses even got into the hunting spirit, perking
up and lunging in pursuit when a fox would bolt from cover. That alerted
the hounds to hop out and do their work.
“That winter,” Ernie recalls with satisfaction, “we caught
enough fox that I paid up the tax contract to the county in full. We had
this 200-acre farm all our own.”
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