PFOP: Settlers waged war of extinction against wolves 

Indeed, dens left unattended while adult wolves were off hunting presented easy pickings for hunters. Jacob Bishop, who eventually settled in Randolph Township in southern McLean County, once “dug out a den and found five little wolf puppies. The old ones were looking on in the distance, but did not dare to come up.” Such was the character of this merciless campaign against Canis lupus.

Wolves were but one of countless species that staggered and then fell before the onslaught of Euro-American settlement in Central Illinois. Indigenous mammals as dissimilar as the prairie chicken and black bear were hunted for food and sport, and they too were removed from their homeland, never to return. Wolves faced a similar fate, though they provoked an unmatched level of contempt and cruelty, and this in an era when violence toward the natural landscape and the creatures upon it was near universal.

Early McLean County settler William Crose, who “had great sport with wolves,” attempted to tame a captured wolf so he could lead it like a domesticated dog. “He tied a chain to its neck and fastened the other end of the chain to his wagon, but the wolf would allow itself to be dragged for miles without walking.” Alfred Stringfield dragged a captured wolf home, and after keeping it a week he had his dogs maul it to death at his mother’s quilting bee.

Wolves have long been associated with sin and the supernatural, and wolf hatred was deeply ingrained in Euro-American culture. Even modern perceptions of wolves are tinged with the bedtime stories of youth, and our unwarranted fear of wolves is more a reflection of legend and lore than the hard science of wolf biology and behavior. That said, if anything doomed Canis lupus in Central Illinois, it was pioneer’s ferocious defense of livestock, as wolves naturally turned to the relatively slow-footed and defenseless newcomers such as sheep, hogs and calves.

At this time, the coyote, Canis latrans, was also called a wolf, so sometimes it’s uncertain if pioneers were referring to a wolf proper or its smaller relative. Fortunately, they often employed descriptive vernacular terms that differentiated the two species. One can be reasonably certain that talk of “large,” “big,” “gray” (sometimes spelled “grey”), or “timber” wolves usually meant true wolves. On the other hand, “prairie wolf” was a common term for what’s today called a coyote.

At various times and with varying degrees of success, government officials encouraged the killing of wolves and other predators through bounty programs. In 1823, the state legislature dangled $200 in prize money to the wolf killer who could produce the most scalps (“with ears entire”). In 1860, McLean County offered a reward of $3 for grown wolf scalps, and 50 cents for wolf pups, with no distinction made between wolves or coyotes.

The preferred method of dispatching wolves was chasing them down on horseback. Once overrun, the animal could be dispatched with a firearm, club, knife, riding stirrup, or simply be trampled to death under hoof. As with all methods of wolf killing, this was anything but a fair fight. When chased to exhaustion, the wolf “crouches on the ground and quietly receives the blow, which kills it,” related a McLean County history published in 1874.

Although pioneer recollections stressed the economic necessity of killing wolves to defend livestock, it is interesting to note the frequent distinction made between hunting and wolf killing as a sport. For instance, Martin Township settler Lytle Royston Wiley, it was said, “was never a hunter but occasionally took amusement by chasing wolves.” Likewise, Stringfield, of Randolph’s Grove, made no boast as to his hunting prowess, but was “sometimes pretty lively in chasing wolves.”

Frequently, dogs were used in horseback chases. William Crose of Money Creek Township “took a great interest in sporting, and kept the finest and fleetest hounds for running wolves and deer.” Based on pioneer accounts, it was not uncommon for these chases to stretch 10 or more miles. Circle or ring hunts were the embodiment of wolf killing as amusement. Participants would employ horns, cowbells and hounds to drive wolves, foxes and other animals into a predetermined killing ground, usually a field marked with a pole and flag.

As with all wolf killing, the danger to hunters was not from the fangs of Canis lupus, but rather from incidental mishaps, for “riding over the prairie at a breakneck pace has dangers sometimes not thought of.” For example, Ebenezer Mitchel was once thrown 20 feet when his horse “plunged into a slough and fell,” and during another chase, the horse of James Rumsey Means broke its neck when it stepped into a badger hole.

Wolves were also trapped in cages and pits, or poisoned with strychnine. William Wilcox was said to have “caught these cunning and treacherous animals in pens, with dogs and horses, and in every way that ingenuity could suggest.” Money Creek settler Samuel Ogden, for one, “never considered it a sin to kill a wolf on Sunday or any other day.”

According to the standard reference work on mammals in Illinois, wolves disappeared from the Prairie State “sometime before 1860.” Yet other sources offer conflicting dates, and small numbers may have survived into the latter decades of the 19th century. Coyotes, though, were never entirely exterminated in Illinois, and the number of “prairie wolves” in McLean County may be greater today than that of the pioneer era.