Greenwood County History -
Commissioners After Crows -
“In July of 1905 the Greenwood County commissioners placed a bounty of three cents per head on crows, in quantities of ten or more. This was in conformity with the new law which was passed last winter by the Kansas Legislature. P.H. Landergin, representative of Greenwood County introduced the bill which became a law. The law is as follows: Section 1. That the board of county commissioners of each county in this state shall be authorized and is hereby empowered, by resolution adopted at a regular meeting of the board, to place, and thereafter pay, a bounty of not exceeding five cents for each crow that shall be captured and killed within such county.
Section 2. No person shall be entitled to receive any bounty as set forth in section one of this act without first making it appear by affidavit in writing filed with the county clerk, that the crow or crows for which a bounty is claimed was captured and killed within the limits of the county in which application is made, and subsequent to the date of the resolution of the board of county commissioners provided for in said section; and provided further, that whenever any such bounty is claimed, the person making application shall deliver to the county clerk at the time such application is made the head of each crow for which a bounty is claimed. The heads of crows so delivered shall be by the county clerk destroyed.
When this bill was introduced, there were a few legislators from some parts of the state who were inclined to treat the matter as a joke, but the representatives and senators from the cattle sections of Kansas where much corn and particularly cane and kaffir is raised, assured the doubting ones that the law was not only introduced in good faith but that it was badly needed in many portions of Kansas.
This applies perhaps, with greater force to Greenwood and Butler Counties than to any other counties in the state. Here every year crows destroy an inestimable amount of grain which cannot be spared by cattle feeders.
The law, it will be seen, make it optional with the county commissioners of the various counties, as to whether it shall be placed in effect. It is inoperative unless the board of commissioners of each county shall by resolution determine to place a bounty on the pests. The limit of such bounty is placed at five cents for each crow, but it rests with the commissioners whether the bounty shall be one, two, three, four, five cents, or any fraction thereof.
No doubt there will be those in the county who will maintain that such a law is unnecessary, but the farmers of Greenwood County will not object to paying any additional tax that may result from the killing of crows. The saving in grain will so far exceed the expense of killing of the pests that the tax will be willingly paid. It is probable should the people take advantage of this law and make a raid on the crow it would be only a short time until this black plague that not infrequently flies in such dense clouds as to temporally hide the sun, will find the climate of Greenwood County to hot for them, and will take their departure for other realms.
The following was an article written in the Hamilton Grit in January 1905 by E.W. Thrall, which may have encouraged Representative Landergin to introduce the bill from the above article.
‘The Crow Problem, How to Meet It.
To any one who has lived in the county for as long as fifteen years, the enormous increase in the number of this sable hued thief must by this time be at least a subject of remark, and if he is a farmer, the remark will be followed by a groan and plenty of vigorous cuss words.
Since Kaffir corn was added to the crops of the county, the crow has been unusually conspicuous in every field where the corn is grown, from the time it is put in shock till the last grain has vanished down his greedy throat, which is practically sure to happen if the shocks are left in the field for 80 days.
All of the corn fields near the streams and timber belts were levied upon by the same robber. Last August and September while the corn was in the roasting ear stage, the toll taken was most terrific. If the villain was even strictly vegetarian in his appetite, we might have a little patience with him but he is all but omnivorous.
He is the terror of the poultry keeper, causing more havoc and loss each year in the carrying off of young chickens and eggs than all other enemies of the fowls combined. He is immensely fond of fresh pork, lighting upon hogs big and little in the feed lot, right among cattle at that, and picking great holes in their backs.
He is undoubtedly the greatest disseminator of disease that has ever been among us. Many an outbreak of hog cholera can be traced with unerring certainty to him, feeding on carrion (decaying flesh of dead animals) as he often does, he can spread the fatal disease far and wide.
If he has any redeeming traits, his modesty has prevented them from coming to the writer’s observation during a close study of 33 years in the county. What are we going to do about this matter? In the early days in this county the crow was comparatively rare but they have multiplied in the last few years almost beyond computation. They are not a migratory bird, they breed here, feed here, live here, but apparently don’t die here, as naturalists put them in the long-lived class and say they have been known to live for 100 years, possibly this is the explanation of it never coming under my observation of one dying a natural death.
They are costing the farmers of this county untold thousands of dollars each year and unless some check is speedily put upon their further increase, they will become as bad as the plaques of Egypt. How would a small bounty of one or two cents per head offered by our County Commissioners do? To do that it would be necessary to have an act put through the Legislature permitting county commissioners to make the offer.
Farmers in the putting out of their crops must take all the chances of the season in the shape of weather, but surely, they are entitled to all of the protection the law can give them from the depredations of the filthy robbers on the crops they have labored so hard to make. What plans have my brother farmers to offer to abate this pest?
As a side note to this article is a little history on P. (Patrick) H. Landergin. Patrick and his brother John came to Greenwood County in the 1870s and bought three ranches southwest of Eureka, totaling 2,600 acres. They made a fortune fattening cattle and shipping them to England. There was a railroad spur put in because they shipped so many cattle on the Missouri Pacific railroad. It was called the Landergin Spur. The spur was located about 1 ¼ miles south of highway 54 on L Road. In 1881, the brothers went back to England after an older brother’s death and brought back two lion statues that had been on their brother’s estate. They placed them at the entrance to their home southwest of Eureka. This large house and ranch were later known as the “Sam Brookover Ranch.” Later the Landergin’s moved into Eureka and brought the lions into town. The Landergins eventually moved to Texas around 1905 and bought large amounts of land around Amarillo, Texas. The lions were left in Eureka and by 1912 they were at the entrance to Riverside Park where they still stand guard to the entrance of the park.’”
