THE SLAYERS

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 35, 4 May 1927, Page 14

THE SLAYERS

The Wild West of America is : yet conquered. There are farms orchards, there are grainfields, ti are teeming herds of cattle, drove horses, sheep without number; bui ancient Americans are there also, wolf, the bear, the puma, the coy the lynx, and some allied cats swarm in the West and prey on friendly animals reared by man. The animal which does most dan: is the grim timber wolf, but, bees of their greater numbers, the coy: small cousins of the wolf, are coll ively the most destructive. J comes the puma, which, while dtst: ing many deer, prefers horses to other pray—a strange fact, seeing: horses are really newcomers America. Some of the cattle-slaying vc become as well known in America solitary man-eating tigers in L r One timber wolf ranged a huge in the Custer district of South Ifcfor nine years, and in that time fc five thousand pounds’ worth of cs So wary and skilful was this b that it took the hunters six moc't track down ant destroy him. Kr as the Custer wolf, this feroc: brute was always accompanied a distance by two coyotes. They what he left behind of his prey, gave him warning of the approac: enemies. The trapper lured his last to a trap, and a gun did the —after nine years. A known wolf in Colorado t £. 600 worth of cattle in a year; wolves in Texas killed 72 sheepfortnight; one wolf in New

killed 25 cattle in a fortnigk • . another slew 150 cattle in six Two big Wyoming wolves K £ sheep and 7 colts in a mon other destroyed 20 bullocks, 15 sheep and a big sheep-w* I, went out to attack it. Of course these beasts 01 not eat all they kill. They y lij the sake of killing, as a cat a * fox in a poultry-run does, a® JUB does who hunts fox or or shoots birds by the hunor course of a day. 300^ 'Sp* During the last five years these slayers of have fallen to the hunters, rican spaces are so S real ’ 9o t SSh number of ferocious beasts cfr'Kr that it will be long before Si men in the wilds can coun n( j & ft* ing as many animals alive a the morning as they HI nightfall. A PEN PICTURE 1 The fields . . . Pastures pacing brooks, soft banks_ . of lowly hills, thymy sl °P € p 0 f overlooked by the blue h® -JH sea, crisp lawns, all dim . gcf-Hf dew, dinted by happy feet .nl ing in their fall the tf.gt voices—all these are sU those simple words. ****