Pennsylvania Game News - February 2020 - 13

there were so many men in Pennsylvania
willing to commit perjury for a dollar,"
Kalbfus wrote.
The investigations uncovered $75,000
in fraudulent claims and led to the imprisonment of more than a dozen officials and
many more claimants. But the fraud didn't
lead to a bounty repeal. It simply brought
about a tighter-written bounty law.
The march against predators continued.
"Unless certain destructive species of
birds and mammals not hunted for sport
to the same extent as game are kept under
control, all other conservation efforts will
amount to little...," Gordon wrote in an
article titled "How Pennsylvania Controls
Vermin" in American Wildlife magazine,
then the bulletin of the American Game
Protective Association, formed by gun
companies and endorsed by Theodore
Roosevelt.
"Through their effort to control undesirable species by a bounty system or
organized vermin operations, Pennsylvanians feel that they are simply helping
to right the balance of nature, instead of
upsetting it," Gordon wrote.
So, at a time when scientific observation had cleared most predators of the
accusations against them - citing good
habitat as more important to game than
predator reductions, prominent conservationists and wildlife-management organizations still were focused on giving The
People what they wanted. But it wasn't
cheap.

EXPANDING COVERAGE
The Game Commission created
a Bureau of Vermin Control, which
managed bounty payments and taught
trappers to become more efficient. The
bureau also asked game protectors and
refuge keepers to help manage "vermin."
FEBRUARY 2020

"Each of our 30 refuge keepers makes
a special effort throughout the entire year
to destroy vermin of all kinds, not only
in the refuges, but over as much adjacent
territory as he can cover along with other
duties," Gordon reported in American
Wildlife. "This work is done mostly with
traps of various sizes, but firearms and
dogs are also used quite extensively.
Strychnine (rat poison) is used to a limited extent, but during the past several
years we have depended mostly on traps,
firearms and dogs. Our regular game protectors kill vermin whenever possible, but
their many duties do not permit running
extensive traplines."
The Game Commission's use of
strychnine can be traced at least back to
1906, when Kalbfus reported his game
wardens had determined "... beyond
question, strychnine is the solution of the
vermin problem." It's unclear exactly how
long the agency used it.
The Game Commission, from June
1, 1924 to May 31, 1925, paid $66,159
in bounties for 438 wild cats, 7,177
gray foxes, 4,109 red foxes and 22,583
weasels.
But agency officers also killed 3,000
feral dogs and cats, 50 bobcats, 110 gray
foxes, 183 red foxes, 255 weasels, 9,979
crows, 397 hawks and 60 owls.
Predators were the Game Commission's public enemy No. 1 in the Roaring Twenties. It was an organizational
mind-set that would take decades to
lobotomize.
In 1929, goshawks were added to
the bounty list through legislation: a $5
bounty from Nov. 1 to May 1.
Pressure remained on predators in
the '30s. During the Great Depression,
in fiscal years 1932-33 and 1933-34,
the Game Commission paid more than
$120,000 in annual bounties.
13

Pennsylvania Game News - February 2020

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