Schoolma'am Gets $100 for Slaying Five Lions

1919

Pretty Girl Did Not Know How to Load Gun Three Years Ago.

REDDING, Cal. — Miss Hazel Hightower, teacher of the Lone Pine School, is adding to her fame as a modern Diana. Miss Hightower called on the county clerk when she visited town the other day and was paid another $100, the bounty on five mountain lions she killed near her school.

Miss Hightower is making a specialty, out of school hours, as a lion hunter — or huntress. During the three years she has taught the Lone Pine school she has killed over a dozen mountain lions. The State of California pays a bounty of $20 for each lion killed and Miss Hightower, who says she expects soon to return to Chicago and get her aged mother to come to live with her, is putting by quite a "nest egg."

The pretty little school teacher did not know how to load a gun, let alone shoot it, when she came to this county, three years ago. A cowboy, who could neither read nor write, decided to go to school. He learned to read and write and Miss Hightower learned from him how to shoot. She can handle a revolver as well as a rifle. With a shotgun she is said to be hard to beat.

Mountain Lions and Wolves Annoy Stockmen

1906

Cattle and Sheep Destroyed in Oklahoma by Animals from Game Preserve

Washington. — The Wichita reserve in Oklahoma, which President Roosevelt set apart as a refuge for game, is overrun with wolves and mountain lions, and many complaints have been received from cattle and sheep raisers.

John Goff, the hunter who acted as the president's guide on his hunting trip of a year ago, even with his skill, has not been able to exterminate the lions, and cattlemen and sheep raisers are hoping that the president will make another trip to that section and that he will bring with him all his friends capable of handling a rifle.

Practically similar conditions exist in the Gila reservation in New Mexico. Stockmen complain that because of the establishment of these reserves where wolves and mountain lions take refuge and cannot be hunted, they have increased to such an extent as seriously to threaten their business. Before the establishment of game refuges, stockmen by offering bounties for the scalps of wolves and mountain lions managed to keep them down.

Stockmen say that unless the government takes some action looking toward the extermination of these beasts it will not be possible for them to continue grazing their herds in or near the reserves.