In April 1937 an Arbon Valley rancher spoke up about a change in Idaho's wildlife policy. Idaho's new state game warden had called off his predecessor's campaign against the golden eagle, and Roy Lindley of Arbon wrote to object. A report from Pocatello in the Salt Lake Tribune of April 30, 1937, carried the news and quoted his letter at length.
A rancher who hunted
Twenty years earlier the American Falls Press had already shown Roy Lindley as a hunter. In the fall of 1917 the paper's farm columnist, who signed himself "The Pilgrim," was making his way through Arbon Valley. At Roy Lindley's ranch home, five miles southeast of the Arbon post office, he was served an elk dinner. Roy and his father had just come back from an elk hunt on the South Fork of the Snake River, near the Idaho side of Jackson's Hole, and Roy had also brought home a 20-inch native trout.
A later column that November said Roy and his father farmed 1,200 acres on the east side of the valley, on ranches "well up into the foothills." In winter, coyote hunting and trapping added to their income and gave them sport, and coyote pelts were worth money. The Pilgrim then wrote of one of the Lindleys, probably Roy, though the column says only "Mr. Lindley":
Mr. Lindley is a good rifle shot and brings down many coyotes in that manner, but the trap is not overlooked. Last winter on several occasions he had all four of his traps full the same night. It seems that the hills are still full of the chicken thieves to judge by the nightly concerts put up by them.
The "chicken thieves" were the coyotes. In November 1921 the Arbon News column of the Press reported that Roy Lindley and a visiting doctor from American Falls had gone hunting in Bull Canyon and come home with their limit of venison.
The letter of 1937
The writer was very probably the same Roy D. Lindley, who by then had also served, probably from 1929 to 1935, as the valley's member of the Power County commission. The Tribune introduced him only as a man of Arbon and "a sportsman well acquainted with depredations of the bird."
The paper set out the quarrel in a few lines. Reports of eagles attacking mountain sheep, goats and deer had led Amos Eckert, the veteran state game warden, to appoint a crew to thin out the birds. When William McIntyre took over the office, he rescinded the order.
Lindley's letter granted that Eckert may have made many mistakes, but said his drive against the golden eagle had been a real service to the sportsmen of Idaho. The young of mountain sheep and goats, he wrote, are born on steep, rugged mountainsides where they are nearly safe from every enemy but the eagle. As a destroyer of wildlife, especially of young mountain sheep and goats, he said, the eagle "makes the cougar and coyote look like pikers," that is, like small-timers, and to give up the fight against the birds "falls little short of a crime."
He said his view came from many years of watching for himself and of talking with people in the Salmon River country, the mountains of central Idaho. The digitized text of the article is garbled at this point, but he seems to have argued that unless the eagles were nearly wiped out, later generations of hunters would lose the chance to hunt those animals. His remedy was a bounty on eagles, so that prospectors, woodsmen, hunters and anyone else who carried a gun into the hills would keep watch for them. Next best, he thought, would be for the state or the government to hire experienced hunters.
What the papers do not say
The passages of the letter that the Tribune printed speak of the Salmon River country, not of Arbon Valley, and say nothing about eagles on the Lindley ranch. The papers read for this post print no answer from McIntyre or the game department, and do not say whether the drive against the eagles was taken up again. Where Lindley sent his letter, and whether it was printed in full anywhere, is not known.
The story as reported
Salt Lake Tribune, April 30, 1937, page 18. The original article is under copyright; this is our own report of what it said.
POCATELLO, Idaho — An Arbon sportsman objected after Idaho's new state game warden stopped the state's campaign against the golden eagle, arguing that the birds did more harm to the state's big game than any other predator.
Roy Lindley of Arbon, a hunter who knew well the damage the eagles did, made his case in a letter. It followed a decision by William McIntyre, recently named game warden, to cancel an order left by the man he replaced.
That order had come from Amos Eckert, the longtime warden. After reports that eagles were attacking mountain sheep, mountain goats and deer, Eckert had put a crew to work reducing the number of birds. When McIntyre took over the office, he withdrew the order.
In his letter, Lindley allowed that Eckert may have erred in many things as warden, but said the eagle campaign had served Idaho's sportsmen well. No creature, he wrote, killed more wildlife than the eagle, above all the newborn of the mountain sheep and goat. Those animals were born high on rough, steep slopes where nothing else could reach them, he said, and by his measure the eagle "makes the cougar and coyote look like pikers." To call off the effort, he wrote, "falls little short of a crime."
Lindley said his opinion rested on years of his own observation and on talks with many people in the Salmon River country. He warned that unless the eagles were nearly wiped out, hunters of later generations would lose the chance to hunt those animals.
His remedy was a bounty on eagles, which he said would set every prospector, woodsman, hunter and other person carrying a gun in the hills to watching for the birds. Short of a bounty, he favored having the state or the government hire experienced hunters to do the work.
On this site: the Lindleys are listed among the families found in land records on the Arbon area history, and Roy D. Lindley's place in the valley's line of county commissioners is told on the Evans family page.