Male English (house) sparrow (Wikipedia)
Illinois had a bounty on English sparrows from 1891 to 1901. The birds endured, but the bounty was a bonanza for young boys with BB guns.
The English sparrow (also known as the house sparrow), was introduced in the U.S. in 1851 in order to kill caterpillars that preyed on linden trees. The prolific birds reached central Illinois by the early 1870s.
As their population grew, however, the sparrows became a nuisance. In addition to bugs, sparrows ate farmers’ grain and fruit, and they also forced out native songbirds.
As a result, in spring 1891, Illinois legislators enacted a bounty of 2 cents per dead sparrow. It was to be in effect for three months each year, starting Dec. 1 and ending on the last day of February. Local governments were responsible for paying the bounties and for collecting the required proof – usually a head that had been twisted off a dead bird.
The Illinois State Register praised the idea in an editorial published in November 1891, two weeks before the bounty’s first effective date.
The State Register would not, as a usual thing, encourage boys in slaughtering birds – the sweet songsters of the woods. They should be allowed to live, and warble, and sport themselves in the sylvan shades. But the English sparrow is a songless, soulless and worse than useless bird – a bandit that robs and destroys – a bird unclean in habits, murderous in practice, with a song painfully rasping to every lover of bird music. …
Johnny, get your gun!
The first week of sparrow hunting in Springfield resulted in payments for about 500 birds. Alfred Mester, 15 (he would later serve as Springfield health administrator), was the most successful hunter, with 182 sparrows. Runner-up was future newspaperman Vincent “V.Y.” Dallman, 17, with 63.
“The only girl who seems to have had much success in sparrow hunting,” the Register reported, “was Florence Earley, who displayed 17 gory heads.” Early (the Register misspelled her last name) was only 12 years old.
Illinois State Register advertisement, December 1891 (Courtesy State Journal-Register)
By the end of the first sparrow season three months later, Sangamon County hunters, mostly young, had accounted for more than 10,000 sparrows and collected more than $500. As for the campaign’s effect on the sparrow population, however, the Illinois State Journal said:
“The general opinion seems to be that the boys have had an unusual amount of fun, but that they have not succeeded in thinning out the sparrows to any great extent.”
Not much changed over the next decade when it came to sparrow control, although some people came up with ways other than air guns to corral the birds. One approach was to set up attractive nesting sites, from which sparrow hunters could easily collect their prey; of course, that meant the hunters were increasing the sparrow population at the same time they were being paid to reduce it.
A Kankakee newspaper reported in 1892 that a popular bait there was whiskey, “which the sparrows like very well and get very tipsy on and are then easily caught.”
And in 1900, Macoupin County authorities arrested the village clerk and four residents of Nilwood for sparrow fraud. Officials got suspicious when the clerk authorized the other men to claim bounties on 6,500 sparrows over a two-week period.
Aside from whether the slaughter had much of an impact on the sparrow population, some people questioned its effects on children.
“I don’t care so much for the sparrows, though that is bad enough,” said John Shortall of the Illinois Humane Society, “but no one who has the interest of the coming generation at heart can fail to view with alarm this new method of educating children to take pleasure in destruction and murder.”
And in an advertisement headlined “Sparrow Hunters Beware,” the Springfield Electric Light and Power Co. offered a $10 reward for information leading to the conviction of anyone for shooting out the globe of a streetlight.
It took only a few years for officials to question whether the sparrow bounty was worth the effort. The sparrow population continued to grow, while local governments bore the burden of paying bounties and disposing of thousands of sparrow heads. (They were usually burnt.)
As to whether native birds were starting to rebound because the bounty reduced competition from sparrows, the state Board of Agriculture had this report in 1897:
One of the arguments used to secure the passage of the bill was that the English sparrow was driving out other desirable birds. Today the same kind of an argument is being used for its repeal, and now it is directed against the small boy, who is charged in his quest for sport with coolly slaughtering every species of bird that comes within range of his rifle. The advocates of repeal, whether justly or unjustly, will prefer this charge against the young nimrods, and they will be held up as a menace to public safety on account of the alleged reckless use of firearms.
It took several attempts, but legislators repealed the bounty in 1901.
Original content copyright Sangamon County Historical Society. You are free to republish this content as long as credit is given to the Society. Learn how to support the Society.
I would think that the slingshot was the more common weapon amongst the boys.