author
Harold Warren Dobyns
1896–1984
Best known for a practical 1937 government booklet on coyote control, this Oregon-born wildlife field man wrote from direct experience on the western range. His surviving published work is brief, but it offers a clear glimpse of early 20th-century predator-control methods.
1 Audiobook
Den Hunting as a Means of Coyote Control
by Stanley Paul Young, Harold Warren Dobyns
About the author
Born on July 30, 1896, Harold Warren Dobyns was an American writer and wildlife worker whose name remains attached to Den Hunting as a Means of Coyote Control. In that 1937 Bureau of Biological Survey leaflet, he was credited as assistant leader of the Section of Predator and Rodent Control in the Division of Game Management, working alongside principal biologist Stanley P. Young.
Project Gutenberg currently lists one work under his name, which suggests that his published legacy is small and closely tied to technical wildlife management rather than a long literary career. The booklet is written in a plain, practical style and reflects the government approach to predator control in the American West during the 1930s.
Dobyns died in January 1984 at age 87, and obituary records place him in Pendleton, Oregon, late in life. Beyond those basic facts, easily confirmed biographical information is limited, so the clearest picture that survives is of a field-oriented government author whose work grew out of on-the-ground experience rather than a public literary profile.