The Great Pest Hunt
By Davis Bitton

It was January 1849. The Latter-day Saints in the Salt Lake Valley had survived their first winter and were now in their second one. Thanks to the gulls, they had avoided a complete crop failure, but it cannot be said that their crops in the fall harvest had been overly abundant. They were grateful for what they had.

But the pressure was still on. Incoming wagon trains had boosted the population of Saints in Utah to perhaps four or five thousand, which of course meant many mouths to feed. They would have to be frugal to make their limited supplies last until the next summer.

As for lodging, you were lucky if you had a cabin. Many were still housed in cramped quarters in the fort, and of those who arrived in the fall many decided to make do by living in a dugout or in their reinforced wagon box until spring. Without good insulation, all of these habitations were often drafty, wet, and cold. It was not a good situation for a newly-born infant or for feeble old-timers or anyone else suffering from a weakened immune system or general debilitation.

It was in this context that the community leaders organized a community pest hunt. It was not kindness-to-wild-animals time but a struggle for existence, and certain animals, identified as "noxious vermin," posed a threat. The more of these that could be eliminated, they thought, the more food would be available for the struggling humans.

To add to the enthusiasm, the leaders organized a competition between two teams, one led by John D. Lee and the other by the "redoubtable" John Pack. These two team leaders ended up by quarreling over the numbers. As the biographer of John Pack, I may not be a disinterested judge of which team actually won. What we can say is that the hunt stretched over the month of January 1849.

And we have the total animal victims: 2 bears, 783 wolves, 409 foxes, 2 wildcats, 2 wolverines, 331 minks, 9 eagles, 530 magpies, owls and hawks, and 1026 crows.

I wonder if they tried any of these delicacies for food. If you are hungry enough, the unthinkable might become thinkable. I wouldn’t be anxious to try it, but the phrase magpie pie has a nice ring to it.

What is a pest? My unabridged dictionary has three definitions, the second of which reads "an insect or other small animal that harms or destroys garden plants, trees, etc."

Why does it have to be a small animal? We notice that our mighty pest-hunters of 1849 went after some fairly good-sized creatures. Utahns of the present know that a deer can be a pest when, in search of food, it descends from the mountains and munches the shrubbery in a nicely groomed back yard. I assume that in 1849, deer were considered fair game at any season.

I’m rather surprised to find no mention of rabbits among the pests of 1849. Those wonderful animals, perhaps excluding jack rabbits, can provide both delicious meat and skins for clothing and warmth. But they also reproduce with incredible rapidity. Ask the Australians, who introduced rabbits to their continent and ever since have had to deal with them as a pest.

Point of View

A lot depends on point of view, doesn’t it? Who is doing the defining? In general, environmentalists want to protect all creatures in an ecosystem, leaving natural enemies to do the thinning out. Human beings are seen as the intruders. Thus wolves have been reintroduced into certain areas. Ranchers whose lambs and calves are killed by these wolves are understandably not enthusiastic about welcoming ravenous carnivores ― a point of view apparently shared by the pioneers of 1849.

One of the greatest threats to the pioneer Saints trying to survive were field mice. I don’t know how one "hunts" a mouse, and it would not be much of a trophy for the hunters to return with one. Traps could be of some effect, but lucky the family that had domestic house cat, especially a good mouser.

Choosing Your Pests

When we read of the animals brought across the plains, including cows, pigs, and chickens, dogs, and cats, the felines were not just cuddly pets for the children. They were expected to do good work in defending a household against mice. Under different circumstances nowadays cats can sometimes be viewed as pests.

Dictionary definition number three says a pest can be "a deadly epidemic disease, esp. a plague, pestilence. (The Latin pestis means plague.) Anyone who has studied the Black Death of the fourteenth century (Boccaccio has an unforgettable description in the beginning of his Decameron) knows how devastating the bubonic plague could be. Although there were differences from village to village and from country to country, this horrible plague could wipe out virtually an entire population, and it was not at all uncommon for half the people to fall victims.

Before an understanding of the germ theory of disease, people were limited in what they could do to combat infectious disease. This includes our Mormon pioneers. When cholera infected a wagon train crossing the plains, the loss of life could be fearsome. Since the hunters of 1849 did not have weapons that would work against disease, they were fortunate that no plague threatened the population at the time.

My dictionary definition number one says a pest is "an annoying or troublesome person, animal, or thing." Do Latter-day Saints of the present face anything that fits this definition? Each of us may have a different list, but I think we can agree that hate-mongers who spend their time denouncing and opposing the Church might qualify. And the relentless assault on families by voices utilizing movies, television, and the Internet is indeed troublesome.

We need wisdom and inspiration to know whether to go out as modern John D. Lees and John Packs and slay these dragons, to ignore them so as not to call attention to them, to do what we can to neutralize them, or, by filling our time with constructive interests and activities, to leave them with no purchase on our lives.

There is probably no good way of calculating the results of the great pest hunt of 1849. If even one human life was spared as a result, the hunters who participated would have considered it worth their effort.