Game and Fish

OPINION 46-104 January 18, 1946 (OPINION) GAME AND FISH RE: Trapping - Sale of Hides This will acknowledge the receipt of your letter of January 16, 1946, in which you say that a question has been submitted to you by one of your trapper constituents as to whether or not hides of predatory animals may be sold after the bounty has been paid. You say that, "he was quite insistent that this office had given an opinion some time ago holding that after a bounty has once been paid the hides cannot be sold." I cannot find that this office has at any time given an opinion to the effect that the hides of predatory animals on which bounties have been paid cannot be sold. It would be an anomalous situation if the valuable hides of predatory animals could not be marketed. A bounty is paid not as the purchase price of the hide. It is paid as a reward for killing a predatory animal. A bounty is paid as an inducement to trappers and hunters to take or kill such animals. A hunter or trapper, therefore, has the legal right to sell the hides. Section 20-1303 of the 1943 Revised Code provides that the skins shall be examined by the county auditor, etc., the ears punched, and the skins returned to the person exhibiting them. The hide of a predatory animal or any wild animal, legally taken, is the personal property of the hunter or trapper. He can collect his bounty by complying with the provisions of the statute relating thereto, and he may then sell or dispose of this hide as he sees fit. NELS G. JOHNSON Attorney General