Strychnine has always been a favorite weapon of hunters for wolf pelts and bounties. A half century ago hunters on the prairies killed the buffalo for its pelt, and added to their income by killing the wolves that followed the daily slaughter. A little strychnine inserted in the skinned carcass of a buffalo enabled them to secure many pelts of the gray wolf and occasionally one of the coyote; but not often the latter: he was regarded as much too shrewd to be taken by ordinary methods of poisoning. Resides, the pelt was small and not sufficiently valuable in comparison to warrant special efforts to secure it. Even in 1819 Thomas Say, who first gave a scientific name to a coyote, found this animal more abundant than the gray wolf.[F] Yet the number killed for their pelts has never been great.
[Footnote F: Long's Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, p. 168, 1823.]
As an illustration of the coyote's shrewdness in avoiding poisoned bails, a farmer in Oklahoma gave the writer the following experience: After butchering some hogs he poisoned a hogskin and left it with other offal for a coyote that nightly prowled about his premises. In the morning everything but the poisoned skin had been cleared away. He left it two more nights, but it remained untouched. Thinking that the animal would not eat the poisoned bait, he buried it. That night the coyote dug up the pigskin and ate it, falling a victim to its deadly contents. Since then the farmer says he has never failed to poison coyotes when he buries the bait.
Another method of poisoning coyotes is to insert the strychnine in small chunks of meat that can be easily swallowed. Success by this method depends largely upon the condition of the animal as regards hunger, and may be helped by making what is known as a 'drag' in the neighborhood of the bait. A small animal--a bleeding dead rabbit is good--is dragged over the prairie and the morsels of bail left at intervals along the 'drag.' Two days previous to a general coyote hunt in Oklahoma a steer badly affected by 'lumpy jaw' was killed, opened, and left in the middle of the area to be hunted. During the first night coyotes howled all night in the vicinity of the carcass, but failed to touch it. The second day a hind quarter was separated from the carcass and dragged in a circuit of a mile or two, the drag coming hack to the carcass. During the following night the coyotes picked the bones of the carcass hare. Thus gorged with beef, they were in a condition favorable for their slaughter in the drive of the following day.