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When Hancock was first
settled, in the last quarter of the 18th century,
there were many different species of wild animals
to be found here; however, only 100 years later,
several of these species had already completely
disappeared from town, succumbing to the habitat
devastation that accompanied large-scale land clearing
for farming, as well as having been hunted to the
point of scarcity.
In the first volume of the 1888 History of Hancock,
Reverend William Willis Hayward notes that wolves,
catamounts, wildcats, bear, deer and beaver, while
numerous at the time that the town was settled,
had long since disappeared. For example, he reports
that the last whitetail deer shot in Hancock had
been taken 70 years earlier, in 1818, near the Antrim
town line.
As in much of New England at that time, the extermination
of large predators in Hancock was deliberate, as
the early settlers sought to protect valuable livestock
from wolves and bears. And Hancock residents also
played their part in the national decimation and
eventual extinction of the passenger pigeon. Reverend
Hayward notes that pigeon nets or stands were frequently
set in town to capture and kill large quantities
of these "numerous" birds which could then be eaten
or put away to be consumed later.
There is irony in the fact that, along with the
steady rise in human population experienced in Hancock
since Reverend Hayward wrote in the 1880s, there
has been a concurrent rise in the wild animal population
in town.
Whitetail deer are no longer rare, in fact their
population is rapidly approaching the nuisance level,
particularly for local gardeners and orchardists.
And, although some large predators have returned,
most notably the black bear, the local wolf population
seems to have been replaced by the coyote, who has
assumed the role of most vexatious livestock and
pet predator. Rumors of catamount sightings surface
now and again, and the beaver has returned to local
waterways.
The return of pastures to woodland, stricter hunting
regulations and a general appreciation for and stewardship
of local wildlife habitats have all contributed
to the success-ful re-establishment of these species,
our wild neighbors, Hancock's earliest "native inhabitants."
Cindy Ryer, Hancock
Happenings, Volume 4, June
2001
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