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Section 1 Be it enacted by the people of the State of Illinois represented in the General Assembly, That the Commissioners’ Court of any County in this State may hereafter allow such bounty on the scalps of the Big wolf and Prairie wolf of
six months old and upwards, as said Court may deem reasonable. The bounty so allowed to be paid out of the County Treasury,
wherever said Wolf or Wolves may be taken and killed, on the certificate of the Clerk
of the County Commissioners’ Court and said certificates shall be receivable by the Collectors of the Counties wherein
such allowance of bounty may have been made in all cases for taxes due their counties.2
Section 2 The person claiming such bounty shall produce the scalp or scalps, with
the ears thereon, within ninety days after the same shall have been taken, to the
County Commissioners’ Court of the County wherein such wolf or wolves may have been taken and killed, whereupon
the Clerk of said Court shall administer to said person, the following oath or affirmation, viz:—“You so
solemnly sware or affirm (as the case may be) that the scalp or scalps produced by you, were taken
from a wolf or wolves killed ^by yourself^ within this County, and within the Ninety days last passed, and that you believe
such wolf or wolves from which they were taken, were at least six months old.
Section 3 That the “act to encourage the killing of Wolves” approved Feby[February] 15, 1837 and all acts and parts of acts allowing the payment of a bounty on wolf
scalps, out of the State Treasury be, and the same are hereby repealed3
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A Bill for an act to insure the payment of a bounty on Wolf Scalps.
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Com[Committee] Finance
1William Fithian introduced SB 84 in the Senate on January 4, 1841. On January 12, the Senate agreed to engross the bill for a third
reading by a vote of 20 yeas to 17 nays. The Senate passed the bill by a vote of 21
yeas to 16 nays. On January 21, the House of Representatives indefinitely postponed further consideration by a vote of 56 yeas to 24 nays, with
Abraham Lincoln voting yea.
Illinois House Journal. 1840. 12th G. A., 218, 260; Illinois Senate Journal. 1840. 12th G. A., 134, 154, 157, 190.
2Illinois was originally home to large numbers of wolves and coyotes (also called “prairie
wolves”) that inhabited the margins where the prairie and timber ecosystems meet.
Pioneers also chose to settle in these edge habitats, which provided them with lumber,
water, pasture, and small game. As settlers depleted deer herds and replaced them
with domestic livestock, protection of livestock from hungry wolves became paramount.
By the early years of the nineteenth century, counties began paying bounties for wolf
scalps and settlers began to organize wolf hunts called “frolics.” The Illinois legislature first placed a bounty on wolf scalps in 1823, but repealed the provision in 1826.
M. J. Morgan, Land of Big Rivers: French and Indian Illinois (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2010), 201-04; Richard S. Fisher,
New and Complete Statistical Gazetteer of the United States of America, Founded on
and Compiled from the Census of 1850 (New York: J. H. Colton, 1857), 310; John Mack Faragher, Sugar Creek: Life on the Illinois Prairie (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986), 12, 135; “An Act to Encourage the Destruction
of Wolves,” 28 January 1823, Laws Passed by the Third General Assembly of the State of Illinois (1823), 86-88; Section 15 of “An Act Supplemental to ‘An Act Making Appropriations
for the Years 1825 and 1826,’ Approved January 18, 1825,” 28 January 1826, Laws (1826), 90-96.
3Section one of the February 15, 1837 act made provision for the payment of bounties out of the State Treasury. In 1839, the
General Assembly passed an act that, in part, repealed the first section of the 1837 act, but the first section
of the amending act retaining provision for payment out of the State Treasury. In
December 1840, the General Assembly considered a bill that would have repealed all laws that allowed the payment of a bounty for killing
wolves. In February 1843, the General Assembly passed a law that made bounties payable
out of county treasuries, repealing all laws allowing the payment of bounties out
of the State Treasury.
“An Act authorising counties to give a bounty on wolf scalps,” 15 February 1843, Laws of the State of Illinois (1842), 319-20.
Handwritten Document, 2 page(s), Folder 284, SB 84, GA Session 12-2,
Illinois State Archives (Springfield, IL) ,