05/30/2026
In 1906, Kiowa County, Colorado, the cattlemen’s association put a $5 bounty on coyotes. Drought had driven the predators to kill calves, and ranchers were broke. 17-year-old Tomás Archuleta, son of Mexican sheepherders, was the best shot for 100 miles. He didn’t do it for money — he did it because the coyotes took his sister’s pet lamb. For three winters he rode the High Plains alone with a Wi******er .30-30 and a half-blind dog named Diablo. He learned to call coyotes in with a dying-rabbit cry, to read tracks in alkali dust, to skin a hide in 4 minutes before it froze. He turned in 211 pelts. With the money, his family bought their first deed to land. He told the Denver Post in 1955: “I hunted them because they hunted us. But I respect them. They never wasted a kill.” He quit when the bounties ended and raised sheep for 60 more years.