York in American History: Hunting predators for a bounty

Notes: This article documents the profound impacts on the New England landscape during the Colonial period due to the massive and unrelenting hunting and extirpation of the top of the chain predators, especially the wolf, long since gone. Used to their absence in England and most of Europe, the English settlers offered bounties that encouraged their eradication.

“The wolves are very troublesome," Thomas Gorges wrote from Point Christian to Sir Ferdinando Gorges in 1642, “pulled down 2 of the best calves ... almost at the door."  From the earliest years of the settlement, a bounty for the hunting of wolves was in place. "We have made an order," the younger Gorges informed his kinsman, the Maine proprietor in 1640, that if an Englishman kills a wolf, he will be paid twelve pence, and if an Indian, "then we are to buy him a coat."

The colonists who had arrived here in the first migration confronted a world very different from contemporary England, largely "void of noisome beasts," where wolves had been hunted aggressively from the Middle Ages. King Edward I was responsible for a royal edict for the extermination of wolves from the nation in 1281, and they were close to complete elimination by the childhoods of the first generation of townsmen.

The sustained campaign of hunting in England had proven so effective that farmers could allow their livestock "in the field without any herdsman or keeper."  But in the heavily wooded Maine frontier, they were, as Thomas Gorges discovered, extremely vulnerable. John Josselyn had only been in this region for a few weeks during the summer of 1638, when he witnessed a group of wolves attack goats that had strayed from the grounds of a homestead.

Naturalists have estimated that an adult wolf annually requires the dietary equivalent of 15 to 20 deer. When this figure is multiplied several times, the full dimensions of the crisis colonial farmers faced becomes apparent, and why bounties and other strategies were so widely practiced. They were present not only throughout New England. A Virginia author would write in 1726, "the wolves of late are much destroyed by virtue of a law which allows good rewards for their heads."

During the decades before the American Revolution, the hunting of wolves in York, was combined with the direct hunting of bears and wild cats, for which a bounty, usually referred to at the time as a premium, was also paid, money obtained each year from the provincial government in Boston. The source of information for this activity is the Constable's Book and the town records. The names of the hunters can be identified, and specific details related to the animals they killed.

York in American History: The fate of Thomas Venner

So, how much money was rewarded as a bounty? In 1728, 5 pounds was paid for a grown wolf, and 50 shillings for a whelp, an immature individual. An interesting distinction was made in 1751, that casts some light on the activity, with an additional payment of 20 shillings offered to "those who kill wolves by watching or hunting without baiting with dead bait.”

It was constantly stressed that to be eligible for the bounty, the kill had to occur "within the bounds of the town." This statement reflects awareness of an effort by some to take advantage of the opportunity to collect payment for wolves obtained at locations remote from the immediate area, not a risk to local livestock.

Among the most active hunters was a relatively small group of men who were most frequently credited. Samuel Willard's name appeared repeatedly in the records. A few examples from the 1750s: "To Samuel Willard for killing four wolves whelps," and "To Samuel Willard for killing two wolves and a cat." Another of the men was Peter Nowell Jr. and others of his family. There is a suggestion that the hunters were organized into what were termed companies, formed by friends, neighbors, or kinsmen, and that the bounty was shared among them.

York in American History: The men who built the Nubble and Boone Island Lighthouses

The larger predators seemed to no longer pose a threat by the first quarter of the nineteenth century, as bears and wolves vanished from the pages. Wild cats however, continued to be pursued as late as 1818. Then, these would have included the mountain lion, the Canada lynx and the bobcat. The bounty for these animals had declined in value to one dollar. Cats had become such a rarity in Maine that by 1906-1907, there were only three reports of any being observed for those years. Wolves had disappeared from the state by this time.

Multiple environmental impacts closely followed colonization, as forests were cleared, swamps were drained, and rivers were dammed. The livestock that was introduced, the planting of non-indigenous crops, and the elimination of native species of animals were all consequences that only led to other effects as the landscape was transformed and woodlands yielded to farmland. The massive consumption of wood for domestic hearths, mills, shipbuilding, was unrelenting, and resources though considerable, were steadily encroached upon. As forests and other native habitat receded, the original animals experienced the effects.

Some insight into the full extent of forest clearance, expansion of farming, and actual numbers of livestock for early nineteenth century York, less than two centuries from the era of Thomas Gorges, can be gleaned from Moses Greenleaf's “Survey of the State of Maine” published in 1829. This town stands out in many respects from the majority of Maine towns.

Only two other towns came as close to York's 8,700 acres of pasture, and three other towns, one of which was Berwick, were comparable in the population of 1,200 "Cows and Steers 3 years old and Up."  This town was without equal in the 624 oxen, though Berwick again was close with 620.

The survey also reveals the fact that York County possessed the largest total area of pasture: 59,400 acres – and cows and steers – 16,300 – and from these figures can be extrapolated just how much was devoted to farming here, as part of the group of oldest towns in the new state.

James Kences is the town historian for the town of York. 

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: York in American History: Hunting predators for a bounty