 Chapter 15 of Our Vanishing Wildlife This is a LibraVox recording. All LibraVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibraVox.org. This reading by Lucy Burgoyne. Our Vanishing Wildlife by William T. Hornaday. Chapter 15 Unfair Firearms and Shooting Ethics For considerably more than a century, the states of the American Union have enacted game protective laws based on the principle that the wild game belongs to the people, and the people's senators, representatives and legislators generally may therefore enact laws for its protection, prescribing the manner in which it may and may not be taken and possessed. The soundness of this principle has been fully confirmed by the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Gear v Connecticut on March 2, 1896. The tendency of predatory man to kill and capture wild game of all kinds by wholesale methods is as old as the human race. The days of the club, the stone axe, the bow and arrow and the flintlock gun were contemporaneous with the days of great abundance of game. Now that the advent of breach loaders, repeaters, automatics and fixed ammunition has rendered game scarce, in all localities save a very few, the thoughtful man is driven to consider measures for the checking of destruction and the suppression of wholesale slaughter. First of all, the deadly floating batteries and sailboats were prohibited. Today, a punt gun is justly regarded as a relic of barbarism and any man who uses one place as himself beyond the pale of decent sportsmanship or even of modern pot hunting. Strange to say, although the unwritten code of ethics of English sportsmen is very strict, the English to this day permit wildfowl hunting with guns of huge caliber, some of which are more like shot cannons than shotguns, and they say, well, there are still wild duck on our coast. Beyond question, it is now high time for the English people to take up the shotgun question and consider what today is fair and unfair in the killing of waterfowl. The supply of British ducks and geese cannot forever withstand the market gunners and their shot cannons. Has not the British wildfowl supply greatly decreased during the past 15 years? I strongly suspect that a careful investigation would reveal the fact that it has diminished. The Society for the Preservation of the Fauna of the Empower should look into the matter and obtain a series of reports on the condition of the waterfowl today, as compared with what it was 20 years ago. In the United States, we have eliminated the squibble guns, the punk guns and the very big ball guns. Among the real sportsmen, the tendency is steadily toward shotguns of small calibre, especially under 12 gauge. But outside the ranks of sportsmen, we are now face to face with two automatic and five pump shotguns of deadly efficiency. Of these, more than 100,000 are being made and sold annually by the five companies that produce them. Recently, the annual output has been carefully estimated from known facts to about as follows. Winchester Arms Company, New Haven, Connecticut One automatic and one pump gun 50,000 guns Remington Arms Company, Illinois, New York Automatic and one pump gun, 25,000 Marlin Firearms Company, New Haven, Connecticut One pump gun, 12,000 Stephen Arms Company, Chickpea Falls, Massachusetts One pump gun, 10,000 Union Firearms Company, one pump gun, 5,000 103,000 guns The ethics of shooting and shotguns are the American people willing that their wild birds shall be shot by machinery. In the ethics of sportmanship, the anglers of America are miles ahead of the men who handle the rifle and shotgun in the hunting field. Will the hunters ever catch up? The anglers have steadily diminished the weight of the rod and the size of the line, and they have prohibited the use of gang hooks and nets. In this respect, the initiative of the tuner club of Santa Cantolina is worthy of the highest admiration. Even though the leaping tuner, the dewfish and the swordfish are big and powerful, the club has elected to raise the standard of sportsmanship by making captures more difficult than ever before. A higher degree of skill and nerve judgment is required in the angler who would make good on a big fish, and incidentally the fish has about doubled the show that it had 15 years ago. That is sportsmanship. But how is it with the men who handle the shotgun? By then, the tuner club's high class principle has been exactly reversed. In the making of fishing rods, commercialism plays small part, but in about 40 cases out of every 50, the making of guns is solely a matter of dollars and profits. Accepting the condemnation of automatic and pump guns, I think that few clubs of sportsmen have laid down laws designed to make shooting more difficult and to give the game more of a show to escape. Thousands of gentlemen sportsmen have their own separate unwritten codes of honour, but so far as I know, few of them have been written out and adopted as binding rules of action. I know that among expert wing shots it is an unwritten law that quail and grass should not be shot on the ground, nor ducks on the water. But among the three million gunners who annually shoot in the United States, how many think you are their who in actual practice observe any sentimental principles when in the presence of killable gain? I should say about one man and boy out of every 500. Up to this time the great mess of men who handle guns have left it to the gun makers to make their codes of ethics and hand them out with the loaded cartridges, all ready for use. For 50 years the makers of shotguns and rifles have taxed their ingenuity and resources to make killing easier, especially for amateur sportsmen, and take still greater advantages of the game. Look at this scale of progression. 50 years increase in the deadlines of firearms. Kind of gun, estimated degree of deadliness. Single shot, muzzle loader, 10. Single shot, breech loader, 30. Double barrel breech loader, 50. Choke ball, breech loader, 60. Repeating rifle, 60. Repeating rifle with silencer, 70. Pump shotgun, 6 shots, 90. Automatic or auto-loading shotguns, 5 shots, 100. The output of 1911 at a recent hearing before a committee at the House of Representatives at Washington, a representative at the gun making industry reported that in the year 1911, 10 American manufacturing concerns turned out the following. 391,875 shotguns, 666,643 rifles, and 580,042 revolvers. There are 66 factories producing firearms and ammunition, employing $39,377,000 of invested capital and 15,000 employees. The sole and dominant thought of many gun makers is to make the very deadliest guns that human skill can invent. Sell them as fast as possible and declare dividends on their stock. The Remington, Winchester, Marlin, Stevens and Union companies are engaged in a mad race to see who can turn out the deadliest guns and the most of them. On the market today there are 5 pump guns that fire 6 shots each in about 6 seconds, without removal from the shoulder by the quick sliding of a sleeve under the barrel that injects the empty shell and inserts a loaded one. There are 2 automatics that fire 5 shots each in 5 seconds or less by 5 pulls on the trigger. The auto loading gun is reloaded and cocked again wholly by its own recoil. Now if these are not machine guns what are they? In view of the great scarcity of feathered game and the number of deadly machine guns already on the market, the production of the last and deadliest automatic gun by the Winchester Arms Company already in great demand is a crime against wildlife no less. Every human action is a matter of taste and individual honour. It is natural for the duck butchers of Karatuck to love the automatic shotguns as they do because they kill the most ducks per flock with 2 of them in his boat holding 10 shots. One expert duck killer can and sometimes actually does so it is said get every duck out of the flock up to 7 or 8. It is natural for an awkward and blundering wing shot to love the deadliest gun in order that he may make as good a bag as an expert shot can make with a double barrel gun. It is natural for the hunter who does not care a rap about the extermination of species to love the gun that will enable him to kill up to the bag limit every time he takes the field. It is natural for men who don't think or who think in circles to say so long as I observe the lawful bag limit what difference does it make what kind of gun I use. It is natural for the Remington and Winchester and Marlon gun makers to say as they do enforce the laws shorten the open seasons reduce the bag limit and then it won't matter what guns are used. But don't touch auto loading guns don't hamper inventive genius. Is it not high time for American sportsmen to cease taking their moral principles and their codes of ethics from the gun makers? Here is the question that I would like to put before every hunter of game in America. In view of the alarming scarcity of game, in view of the impending extermination of species by legal hunting, can any high minded sportsman, can any good citizen either sell a machine shotgun or use one in hunting? A gentleman is incapable of taking an affair advantage of any wild creature, therefore a gentleman cannot use punt guns for ducks, dynamite for game fish or automatic or punt guns in bird shooting. The machine guns and silences are grossly unfair unlike gang hooks, nets and dynamite for trout and bass. Their use in hunting must everywhere be prohibited by law. Times have changed and the lines of protection must be more tightly drawn. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, Judge Allady, has decided that the Pennsylvania law against the use of automatic guns in hunting is entirely constitutional because every state has a right to say how its game may and may not be killed. It is up to the American people to say now whether their wildlife shall be sorted by machinery or not. If they are willing that it should be, then let us be consistent and say away with all conservation. The game conservators can endure a game-less and bird-less continent quite as well as the average citizen can. How they work, there are a few apologists for the automatic and punt guns who cheerfully say, so long as the bag limit is observed, what difference does it make how the birds are killed? It is strange that a conscientious man should ask such a question when the answer is apparent. We reply, the difference is that an automatic or punt gun will kill fully twice as many waterfowl as a double barrel, if not more. And it is highly undesirable that every gunner should get the bag limit of birds or any number near it. The birds cannot stand it. Moreover, the best dates for the ducks and geese have no bag limits on those birds. Today, on Karatuk Sam, for example, the market hunters are killing all the waterfowl they can sell. On March Island, Louisiana, one man has killed 369 ducks in one day, and another market gunner killed 430 in one day. The automatic and the punt shotguns are the favorite weapons of the game-home who makes a specialty of geese and ducks. It is no uncommon thing for a gunner who shoots a machine gun to get with one gun as high as a bird's at one flop. A man who has himself done this has told me so. The champion game slaughter case. Here is a story from California that is no fairy tale. It was published, most innocently, in a Western magazine with the illustration that appears herewith, and in which please notice the automatic shotgun. February 5th, I and a friend were at one of the Glen Counties Club's camps. Neither of us having ever had the pleasure of shooting over live decoys. We were anxious and could hardly wait for the sport to commence. On arriving at the scene, we noticed holes which had been dug in the ground, just large enough for a man to crawl into. These holes were used for hiding places and were deep enough so the sportsman would be entirely out of sight of the game. The birds are so wild that to move a finger will frighten them. The decoys are wild geese which had been crippled and tamed for this purpose. They are placed inside of silk net fences which are located on each side of the holes dug for hiding places. These nets are the colour of the ground and it is impossible for the wild geese flying overhead to detect the difference. After we had investigated everything, the expert caller and owner of the outfit exclaimed, into your holes. We noticed in the distance a flock of geese coming. Our caller in a few seconds had their attention and they headed towards our decoys. Soon they were directly over us but out of easy range of our guns. We were anxious to shoot but in obedience to our boss had to keep still and soon noticed that the birds were soaring around and in a short time were within 15 or 20 feet of us. At that moment we heard the command, punch them and the bombardment that followed was beyond imagining. We had fired 5 shots apiece and found we had bagged 10 geese from this one flock. At the end of one hour shooting we had 218 birds to our credit and were out of ammunition. On finding that no more shells were in our pits we took our dead geese to the camp and returned with the new supply of ammunition. We remained in the pits during the entire day. When the sun had gone behind the mountains we summed up our kill and it amounted to 450 geese. The picture shown with this article gives a view of the first hour shoot. A photograph would have been taken of the remainder of the shoot but at being warm weather the birds had to be shipped at once in order to keep them from spoiling. Supper was then eaten after which we were driven back to Willows both agreeing that it was one of the greatest days of sport we ever had and wishing that we might through the courtesy at the Glean County Goose Club have another such day. Another picture was published in a Canadian magazine illustrating a story from which I quote, One a double and the other a five shot automatic when I saw a braced of birds coming toward me. They sailed in over my decoys. I rose to the occasion and the leader up ended the tumble in among the decoys. The other bird unable to stop quick enough came directly over me. He closed his wings and struck the ground in the rear of the blind. More and more followed. Sometimes they came singly and then in twos and threes I kept busy and attended to each bird as quickly as possible. Whenever there was a lull in the flight I went out in the boat and picked up the dead leaving the wounded to take chances with any gunner lucky enough to catch them in open and smooth water. A bird handy in the air is worth two wounded ones in the water. Twice I took six dead birds out of the water for seven shots and both guns empty. The ball thus open the birds commenced to move in all directions until this morning's flight was over. I was kept busy pumping lead first with the 10 then with the automatic reloading picking up the dead etc. And the reader will observe that the harmless, innocent, inoffensive automatic shotgun that don't matter if you enforce the bag limit figures prominently in both stories and both photographs. A story of two pump guns and geese. It comes from Aberdeen SD Sand Lake in the spring of 1911. Mr. J. J. Humphrey tells it in Outdoor Life magazine for July 1911. Smith and I were about 100 yards from them, the flock of Canada geese. When Murphy scared them they rose in a dense mess and came directly between Smith and me. We were about gunshot distance apart and they were not over 30 feet in the air when we opened up on them with our pump guns and number five shot. When the smoke cleared away and we had rounded up the cripples we found we had 21 geese. I have heard of bigger killings out in this country but never positively knew of them. So then those two gunners average 10.5 wild geese per pump gun out of one flock and yet there are wise and reflective sportsmen who say what difference does a kind of gun make so long as you live up to the law. I think that the pump and automatic guns make about 75% of difference against the game. That is all. The number of shotguns now in use in the United States is almost beyond belief. About six years ago a gentleman interested in the manufacture of such weapons informed me and his statement has never been disputed that every year about 500,000 new shotguns were sold in the United States. The number of shot cartridges annually produced by our four great cartridge companies has been reliably estimated as follows. Winchester Arms Company, 300 million, Union Metallic Cartridge Company, 250 million, Peace's Cartridge Company, 150 million, Western Cartridge Company, 75 million, 775 million. We must stop all the holes in the barrel or eventually lose all the water. No group of bird slaughterers is entitled to immunity. We will not limit the bag and enforce the laws while we permit the makers and users of auto loading and pump guns to kill at will as they demand. Illustration copy of letter, National Association of Audubon Societies, founded 901, Incorporated 906 for the protection of wild birds and animals. William Dutcher, President, John E. Thayer, First Vice President, DOS Palmer, MD, Second Vice President, T. Gilbert Pearson, Secretary, Frank M. Chapman, Treasurer, Samuel T. Carter, Jr., Attorney, Officers, 525, Manhattan Avenue, New York City. Illustration map showing shaded, states which have adopted the AOU, Model Law Protecting the Non-Game Birds, 141, Broadway, Feb, 26, 1906. My dear Mr. Hornaday, it is with much surprise that I learned through your communication of even date that certain persons are claiming that the National Association of Audubon Societies for the protection of wild animals and birds is in favour of the use of automatic or pump guns, and consequently is not in favour of the passage of laws to prevent the use or sale of such firearms. I beg officially to state that the National Association of Audubon Societies is absolutely opposed to either the manufacture, sale or use of such firearms and therefore hopes that the meritorious bill introduced by the New York Zoological Society will become a law. I beg further to add that any statement contrary to the above in effect is unauthorised. This society is working for the preservation of the wild birds and games of North America and it is sincerely should not stultify itself by advocating the use of one of the most potent means of destruction that has ever been devised. You are at liberty to use this communication either publicly or privately. Very sincerely yours. Signature, William Dutcher. President, a letter that tells its own story. Yes, we will limit the bag and enforce the laws, but the machine guns and the alien shooters shall be eliminated at the same time. Each state has the power to regulate, absolutely, down to the smallest detail. The manner in which the game of the people shall be taken or not taken and such laws are absolutely constitutional. If we can legislate punt guns and dynamite out of use, the machine guns and silences can be treated similarly. No immunity for wildlife exterminators. The following unprejudiced testimony from a New York businessman who is a sportsman with a fine game preserve of his own should be of general interest. It was written to G.O. Shields, March 21, 1906. Dear sir, regarding the use of the automatic shotgun would say that I am a member of two southern ducking clubs where these guns are used very extensively. I have seen a flock of ducks come into a blind where one, two or even three of these guns were in use and have seen as many as 11 shots pulled into a single flock. We have considerable poaching on one of these clubs, the territory being so extensive that it is impossible to prevent it. We own 60,000 acres and these poachers, I am told, nearly all use the automatic guns. They frequently kill six or eight ducks out of one flock, first taking a raking shot on the water and then getting in the balance of the magazine before the flock is out of range. In fact, some of them carry two guns and are able to discharge a part of the second magazine into the same flock. As I told you the other evening, I am not so much against the gun when in the hands of gentlemen and real sportsmen, but on account of its terrible possibilities for market hunters, I believe that the only safe way is to abolish it entirely and that the better class should be willing to give up this weapon as being the only means of putting a stop to this willful game slaughter. Very truly yours, Arthur Robinson. How gentlemen, sportsmen, regard automatic and pump guns. Each one of the following organizations, chiefly clubs of gentlemen, sportsmen have adopted strong resolutions condemning the use of automatic guns in hunting and either requesting or recommending the enactment of laws against their use. New York Zoological Society, Henry Fairfield Osborne President, the Campfire Club of America, Daniel C. Byrd President, Boone and Crocker Club, W. Austin Wadesworth President, New York State Fish Game and Forest League, 81 Clubs and Association, New York Association for the Protection of Fish and Game, Alfred Wagstaff President, Lewis and Clark Club, John N. Phillips President, League of American Sportsmen, G.O. Shields President, Wildlife Protective Association, W.T. Hornaday President, where automatic guns are barred out by law, Pennsylvania 1907, New Jersey 1912, Saskatchewan 1906, New Brunswick 1907, British Columbia 1911, Ontario 1907, Manitoba 1909, Alberta 1907, Prince Edward Island 1906, Sportsmen's Clubs, wherein they are barred by codes of ethics and rules. Addironduck League Club, New York, Bloomingrow Park Hunting and Fishing Club, Penn, Green Week, Gun Club, Ottawa, Illinois, Western Ducking Club, Detroit, Minnesota, Bolsa Chica Club, Los Angeles, California, Westminster Club, Los Angeles, California, Los Padres Club, Los Aragles, California, Pocahontas Club, VA, Tobacco Hunting Club, Corklin, Michigan, Turtle Lake Club, Turtle Lake, Michigan, Orsable Forest Farm Club, Michigan, Wallace Ducking Club, Wildfowl Bay, Michigan, La Mita Club, Los Angeles, California, Golden West Club, Los Angeles, California, Recreation Club, Los Angeles, California, A model bill to prohibit the use of automatic and repeating shotguns in hunting. Section 1. It shall be unlawful to use in hunting or shooting birds or animals of any kind, any automatic or repeating shotgun or pump gun, or any shotgun holding more than two cartridges at one time. All that may be fired more than twice without removal from the shoulder for reloading. Section 2. Violation of any provision of this act shall be punished by a fine of not less than twenty-five, no more than one hundred dollars, for each offense, and the carrying or possession in the woods or in any field or upon any water of any gun or other weapon, the use of which is prohibited, as aforesaid shall be prima facie evidence of the violation of this act. The English three-barrel scatter rifle for ducks. All gunners who find machine guns good enough for them will be delighted by the news that an Englishman whose identity is concealed under the initial FMM has invented and manufactured a three-barrel rifle specially intended to kill ducks that are beyond the reach of a chokeball shotgun. The weapon discharges all three barrels simultaneously in the London field of December 9, 1911. It is described by a writer who also thoughtfully conceals his identity under a non-deplume. After a trial of forty-eight shots, the writer declares that the three-barrel is a really practical weapon, and that with it one could bag wild fowl that were quite out of reach of any shotgun. Just why a Gatling gun or a Maxim should not be employed for the same purpose? The writer fails to state. The use of either would be quite as sportsman-like and as fair to the game. There are great possibilities in ducking mortars also. The Sunday Gun, a new weapon of peculiar form and great deadliness to songbirds, has recently come into use. Because of the manner of its use, it is known as the Sunday Gun. It is specially adapted to concealment on the person. A man could go through a reception with one of these deadly weapons absolutely concealed under his dressed coat. It is a weapon with two barrels, rifle shot, and it enables the user to kill anything from a hummingbird up to a deer. What the short barrel could not kill, the rifle will. It is not a gun that any sportsman would own, save as a curiosity or for target use. The state ornithologist of Massachusetts, Mr. E. H. Forbush, informs me that already the Sunday Gun has become a scourge to the bird life of that state. Thousands of them are used by men and boys who live in cities and towns and are able to get into the country only on Sundays. They conceal them under their coats on Sunday mornings, go out into the country and spend the day in shooting small birds and mammals. The dead birds are concealed in various pockets. The Sunday Gun goes under the coat and at nightfall the gorilla rides back to the city with an innocent smile on his face as if he had spent a day in harmless enjoyment of the beauties of nature. The Sunday Gun is on sale everywhere and it is said to be in use both by American and Italian killers of songboods. It weighs only two pounds, eight ounces, and its cost is so trifling that any gorilla who wishes one can easily find the money for its purchase. There are in the United States at least a million men and boys quite mean enough to use this weapon on songboods, swallows, woodpeckers, nut hatches, rabbits and squirrels and like other criminals hide both weapon and loot in their clothing. So long as this gun is in circulation, no small bird is safe at any season, near any city or town. Now, what are the people going to do about it? My recommendation is that each state enact a law in the following terms. Be it enacted, etc., that from and after the passage of this act it shall be unlawful for any person to use in hunting or to carry concealed on the person any shotgun or rifle or combination of shotgun and rifle with a barrel or barrels less than 28 inches in length or with a skeleton stop fixed on a hinge. The carrying of any rifle or shotgun concealed on the person shall constitute a felony. The penalties for hunting with any gun, specially adapted to concealment should be not less than $50 fine or two months imprisonment at hard labour and the carrying of such weapons concealed should be $100 or four months at hard labour. Incidentally, we wonder what will be the next devilish device for the destruction of wildlife that American inventive genius will produce. End of Chapter 15 Chapter 16 of Our Vanishing Wildlife This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Sarah Jennings Our Vanishing Wildlife by William T. Hornaday Chapter 16 The Present and Future of North American Big Game Part 1 The subject of this chapter opens up a vast field of facts and conclusions quite broad enough to fill a whole volume. In the space at our disposal here, it is possible to offer only a summary of the subject, without attempting to prove our statements by the production of detailed evidence. To say that all over the world the large land mammals are being destroyed more rapidly than they are breeding would not be literally true, for the reason that there are yet many areas that are almost untouched by the destroying hand of civilized man. It is true, however, that all the unspoiled areas rapidly are growing fewer and smaller. It is also true that in all the regions of the earth that are easily penetrable by civilized man, the wildlife is being killed faster than it breeds, and of necessity it is disappearing. This is why the British are now so urgently besturing themselves to create game preserves in all the countries that they own. It is one of the inexorable laws of nature, to which I know of not one exception, that large hoofed animals which live on open plains, on open mountains, or in regions that are thinly forested, always are easily found and easily exterminated. All such animals have a weak hold on life. This is because it is so difficult for them to hide, and so very easy for man to creep up within the killing range of modern high powered long range rifles. Is it not pitiful to think of animals like the caribou, moose, white sheep, and bear trying to survive on the naked ridges and bald mountains of Yukon territory and Alaska? With a modern rifle, the greatest duffer on earth can creep up within killing distance of any of the big game of the north. The gray wolf is practically the only large animal that is able to hide successfully and survive in the treeless regions of the north, but his room is always preferable to his company because he too is a destroyer of big game. I am tempted to try to map out roughly what are today the unopened and undistroyed wild haunts of big game of North America. In doing this, however, I warn the reader not to be deceived into thinking that because game still exists in those regions, those areas therefore constitute a permanent preserve and safe breeding ground for large mammals. That is very, very far from being the case. The further opening up of the wilderness areas, as I shall call them for convenience, can and surely will quickly wipe out their big game, for throughout nine-tenths of those areas it holds to life by very slender threads. Today the unopened and undistroyed wilderness areas of North America, where in large mammals still live in a normal wild state, are in general as follows. The arctic barren grounds, or arctic prairies, north of the limit of trees, embracing the barren grounds of northern Canada, the great arctic archipelago, Ellesmere, Melville, and Grantlands and Greenland. This region is the home of the muskox and three species of arctic caribou. The Alaska Yukon region, inhabited by the moose, white mountain sheep, mountain goat, four species of caribou, and half a dozen species of Alaska brown, grizzly, and black bears. Northern Ontario, Quebec, Labrador, and Newfoundland, inhabited by moose, woodland caribou, white-tailed deer, and black bear. British Columbia, inhabited by a magnificent big game fauna embracing the moose, elk, caribou of two species, white sheep, black sheep, bighorn sheep, mule deer, white-tailed deer, mountain goat, grizzly, black, and inland white bears. The Sierra Madre of Mexico, containing jaguar, puma, grizzly, and black bears, mule deer, white-tailed deer, antelope, mountain sheep, and peccaries. I have necessarily omitted all those regions of the United States and Canada that still contain a remnant of big game, but have been literally shot to pieces by gunners. In the United States and Southern Canada there are about fifteen localities which contain a supply of big game sufficient that a conscientious sportsman might, therein, hunt and kill one head per year with a clear conscience. All others should be closed for five years. Here is the list of available, and regarding it there will be about as many opinions as there are big game sportsmen hunting grounds in and near the United States and Southern Canada wherein it is right to hunt big game. The Maine Woods, well-stocked with white-tailed deer. New Brunswick, well-stocked with moose, a few caribou, deer, and black bear. White Mountains of New Hampshire and Vermont, for deer. The Adirondacks, New York, well-stocked with white-tailed deer only. Pennsylvania Mountains contain many deer and black bears, and soon will contain more. Northern Minnesota, deer and moose. Northern Michigan and Wisconsin, white-tailed deer. Northwestern Wyoming, thousands of elk in fall and winter. No deer, grizzly and black bears, but no sheep that it would be right to kill. Western and Southwestern Montana, elk in season, mule and white-tailed deer. No sheep that it would be right to kill. Northwestern Montana, mule and white-tailed deer only. No sheep, bear, moose, elk, or antelope to kill. Wyoming, east of Yellowstone Park, a few elk, by migration from the park. A few deer and bear of two species. Northern Woods of Ontario and Quebec, moose, deer. Southern British Columbia, goat, a few sheep and deer, grizzly bear. Moose, caribou, and elk should not be killed. Northern British Columbia, six fine species of big game. Northwestern Alberta, grizzly bear, big horn, and mountain goat. Under existing conditions I regard the above-named hunting grounds as nearly all in which it is right or fair for big game hunting now to be permitted, even on a strict basis. Nearly all others should immediately be closed for large game for ten years. Of course such a proceeding, if carried into effect, would provoke loud protests from sportsmen, gunners, game hogs, pot hunters, and others, but I only wish to high heaven that we had the power to carry such a program as that into effect. Then we would see some game in ten years, and our grandchildren would thank us for some real big game protection at a critical period. Except in the few localities above mentioned, I regard the big game situation in the United States and Southern Canada as particularly desperate, unless there is an immediate and complete revolution in this country, from an era of slaughter to an era of preservation. As sure as the sun rises on the morrow, outside of the hard and fast game preserves, and places like Maine and the Adirondacks, this generation of Americans and near-Americans will live to see our country swept clean of big game. Two years ago I did not believe this, but I do now. It is impossible to exaggerate the wide extent or the seriousness of the situation. In a country where any and every individual can rise and bluster, I'm just as good as you are, and bellow for his rights as a taxpayer, there is no stopping the millions who kill whenever there is an open season. And to many Americans, no right is dearer than the right to kill the game, which by even the commonest law of equity belongs not to the shooter exclusively, but partly to two thousand other persons who don't shoot at all. Unless we come to an about face in quick time, all our big game outside the preserves is doomed to sure and quick extermination. This is not an individual opinion merely. It is a fact, and a hundred thousand men know it to be such. Last winter, 1911-12, because the deer of Montana were driven by cold and hunger out of the mountains and far down into the ranchman's valleys, eleven thousand of them were ruthlessly slaughtered. State Game Warden of R.A. says that often heads of families took out as many licenses as there were persons in the family, and the whole quota was killed. Such people deserve to go deerless in the future, but we cannot allow them to rob innocent people. Our species of big game, the prong-horned antelope, unique and wonderful, will be one of the first species of North American big game to become totally extinct. We may see this come to pass within twenty years. They cannot be bred in protection, save in very large, fenced ranges. They are delicate, capricious, and easily upset. They die literally at the drop of a hat. They are quite subject to actinomycosis, lumpy jaw, which in wild animals is incurable. Already all the states that possess wild antelope accept Nevada have passed laws giving that species long closed seasons, which is highly creditable to the states that have done their duty. Nevada must get in line at the next session of her legislature. In 1908, Dr. T. S. Palmer published in his annual report of Progress and Game Protection the following in regard to the prong-horned antelope. Antelope are still found in diminished numbers in fourteen western states. A considerable number were killed during the year in Montana, where the species seems to have suffered more than elsewhere since the season was opened in 1907. A striking illustration of the decrease of the antelope is afforded by Colorado. In 1898 the state warden estimated that there were twenty-five thousand in the state, whereas in 1908 the game commissioner places the number at only two thousand. The total number of antelope now in the United States probably does not exceed seventeen thousand, distributed approximately as follows. Colorado two thousand. Colorado two thousand. Idaho two hundred. Montana four thousand. New Mexico thirteen hundred. Oregon fifteen hundred. Wyoming four thousand. Yellowstone park two thousand. Other states two thousand. Plus Saskatchewan two thousand. Totalling nineteen thousand. Today, 1912, Dr. Palmer says the total number of antelope is less than it was in 1908, and in spite of protection the number is steadily diminishing. This is indeed serious news. The existing bands, already small, are steadily growing smaller. The antelope are killed lawlessly and the crimes of such slaughter are in nearly every instance successfully concealed. Previously we have based strong copes for the preservation of the antelope species on the herd in the Yellowstone park. But those animals are vanishing fearfully fast. In 1906 Dr. Palmer reported that about fifteen hundred antelope came down to the feeding grounds near the haystacks in the vicinity of Gardner. In 1908 the Yellowstone park was credited with two thousand head. Today the number alive by actual count is only five hundred head. And this after twenty five years of protection. Where have the others gone? This shows alas that perpetual close seasons cannot always bring back the vanished thousands of game. Here is a reliable report, June 29th 1912, regarding the pronghorned antelope in Lower California from E.W. Nelson. Antelope formerly ranged over nearly the entire length of Lower California, but are now gone from a large part of their ancient range and their steadily decreasing numbers indicate their early extinction throughout the peninsula. In captivity the antelope is exasperatingly delicate and short lived. It has about as much stamina as a pet monkey. As an exhibition animal in zoological gardens and parks it is a failure for it always looks faded, spiritless and dead, like a stuffed animal ready to be thrown into the discard. Zoologists cannot save the pronghorned species save at long range and preserve so huge that the sensitive little beast will not even suspect that it is confined. Two serious attempts have been made to transplant and acclimatize the antelope in the Wichita National Bison Range in Oklahoma and in the Montana Bison Range at Ravalli. In 1911 the Boone and Crockett Club provided a fund which defrayed the expenses of shipping from the Yellowstone park, a small nucleus herd to each of those ranges. Eight were sent to the Wichita Range, of which five arrived alive. Of the seven sent to the Montana Range, four arrived alive and were duly set free. While it seems a pity to take specimens from the Yellowstone park herd the disagreeable fact is that there is no other source on which to draw for breeding stock. The provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan and Canada still permit the hunting and killing of antelope, which is wholly and entirely Rome. The Bighorn Sheep Of North American big game, the bighorn of the Rockies will be after the antelope, the next species to become extinct outside of protected areas. In the United States that event is fast approaching. It is far nearer than even the big game sportsmen realize. There are today only two localities in the four states that still think they have killable sheep in which it is worthwhile to go sheep hunting. One is in Montana and the other is in Wyoming. In the United States a really big creditable ram may now be regarded as an impossibility. There are now perhaps half a dozen guides who can find killable sheep in our country but the game is nearly always young rams under five years of age. That Wyoming, Montana, Idaho and Washington still continue to permit sheep slaughter is outrageous. Their answer is that the sportsmen won't stand for it stopping altogether. I will add and the great mass of people are too criminally indifferent to take a hand in the matter and do their duty regardless of the men of blood. The seed stock of bighorn sheep now alive in the United States aggregates a pitifully small number. After 25 years of unbroken protection in Colorado Dillon Wallace estimates after an investigation on the ground that the state possesses perhaps 3,500 head. He credits Montana and Wyoming with 500 each, which I think is far too liberal a number. I do not believe that either of those states contains more than 100 unprotected sheep at the very utmost limit. If there are more where are they? In the Yellowstone Park there are 210 head safe and sound and slowly increasing. I cannot understand why they have not increased more rapidly than they have. In Glacier Park now under permanent protection three guides on Lake McDonald in 1910 estimated the number of sheep at 700. Idaho has in her rugged, bitter, root and clear water mountains and elsewhere a remnant of possibly 200 sheep. And Washington has only what chemists call a trace. It has recently been discovered that California still contains a few sheep and in southwestern Nevada there are a few more. In Utah the bighorn species is probably quite extinct. In Arizona there are a few very small bands very widely scattered. They are in the Santa Catalina Mountains, the Grand Canyon Country, the Gaila Range and the Keto-Vakita Mountains near Sonoita. But who can protect from slaughter those Arizona sheep? Absolutely no one. They are too few and too widely scattered for the game wardens to keep in touch with them. The prospectors have them entirely at their mercy and the world well knows what prospector's mercy to edible big game looks like on the ground. It leads straight to the frying pan, the coyotes and the vultures. The Lower California Peninsula contains about 500 mountain sheep. Without the slightest protection save low desert mountains, heat and thirst. But that is no real protection whatever. Those sheep are too fine to be butchered the way they have been and now are being butchered. In 1908 I strongly called the attention of the Mexican government to the situation and the departamento de Fomento secured the issue of an executive order forbidding the hunting of any big game in Lower California without the written authority from the government. I am sure however that owing to the political and military upheaval it never stopped the slaughter of sheep. In such easy mountains as those of Lower California it is a simple matter to exterminate quickly all the mountain sheep that they possess. The time for President Madero and his cabinet to inaugurate serious protective measures has fully arrived. Both British Columbia and Alberta have even yet fine herds of bighorn and we can count three large game preserves in which they are protected. They are the Goat Mountain Park, East Kootenay District between the Elk and Bull Rivers, the Rocky Mountains Park near Banff and Waterton Lakes Park in the southwestern corner of Alberta. In view of the number of men who desire to hunt them, the bag limit on bighorn rams in British Columbia and Alberta is still too liberal by half. One ram per year for one man is quite enough, quite as much so as one moose is the limit everywhere. Today a big old ram is regarded by sportsmen as a much more desirable and creditable trophy than a moose because moose killing is easy and the bagging of an old mountain ram in real mountains requires five times as much effort and skill. The splendid high and rugged mountains of British Columbia and Alberta form an ideal home for the bighorn and mountain goat and it would be an international calamity for that region to be denuded of its splendid big game. With a resolute intent and judicial treatment that region can remain a rich and valuable hunting ground for five hundred years to come. Under falsely liberal laws it can be shot into a state of complete desolation within ten years or even less. Other Mountain Sheep In northern British Columbia, north of Viscute Lake, there lies a tremendous region extending to the Arctic Ocean and comprehending the whole area between the Rocky Mountain Continental Divide and the waters of the Pacific. Over the southern end of this great wilderness ranges the Black Mountain Sheep and throughout the remainder with many sheep-less intervals is scattered the White Mountain Sheep. Owing to the immensity of this wilderness, the well-nigh total lack of railroads and also of navigable waters, accepting the Yukon, it will not be thoroughly opened up for a quarter of a century. The few resolute and pneumonia-proof sportsmen who can wade into the country pulling boats through icy cold mountain streams are not going to devastate those millions of mountains of their big game. The few head of game which sportsmen can and will take out of the great northwestern wilderness during the next twenty-five years will hardly be missed from the grand total, even though a few easily accessible localities are shot out. It is the deadly resident trappers, hunters, and prospectors who must be feared and again who can control them. Can any wilderness government on earth make it possible? Therefore in time even the great wilderness will be denuded of big game. This is absolutely fixed and certain, for within much less than another century every square rod of it will have been gone over by prospectors, lumbermen, trappers, and skin hunters and raked again and again with fine-toothed combs. A railway line to Dawson, the Copper River and Cook Inlet, is today merely the next thing to expect after Canada's present railway program has been wrought out. Yes indeed, in time the wilderness will be opened up and the big game will all be shot out, saved from the protected areas. The Mountain Goat Even yet this species is not wholly extinct in the United States. It survives in Glacier Park, Montana, and the number estimated in that region by three guide friends is two astoundingly large to mention. This animal is much more easily killed than the big horn. Its white coat renders it fatally conspicuous at long range during the best hunting season. It is almost devoid of fear and it takes altogether too many chances on man. Thanks to the rage for sheep horns, the average sportsman's viewpoint regarding wildlife ranks a goat head, about six contours below old ram heads, in desirability. Furthermore most guides regard the flesh of the goat as almost unfit for use as food and far inferior to that of the big horn. These reasons taken together render the goats much less persecuted by the sportsmen, ranchmen, and prospectors who enter the home of the two species. It was because of this indifference toward goats that in 1905 Mr. John M. Phillips and his party saw 243 goats in 30 days in Goat Mountain Park and only 14 sheep. Unless the preferences of western sportsmen and gunners change very considerably the coast mountains of the great northwestern wilderness will remain stocked with wild mountain goats until long after the last big horn has been shot to death. Fortunately the skin of the mountain goat has no commercial value. I think it was in 1887 that I purchased in Denver 150 nicely tanned skins of our wild white goat at 50 cents each. They were wanted for the first exhibit ever made to illustrate the extermination of American large mammals and they were shown at the Louisville Exposition. It must have cost the price of those skins to tan them and I was pleased to know that someone lost money on the venture. At present the mountain goat extends from northwestern Montana to the head of Cook Inlet but it is not found in the interior or in the Yukon Valley. Whenever man decides that the species has lived long enough he can quickly and easily exterminate it. It is one of the most picturesque and interesting wild animals on this continent and there is not the slightest excuse for shooting it save as a specimen of natural history. Like the antelope it is so unique as a natural curiosity that it deserves to be taken out of the ranks of animals that are regularly pursued as game. The elk. The story of the progressive extermination of the American elk or Wapiti covers practically the same territory as the tragedy of the American bison. One third of the mainland of North America. The former range of the elk covered absolutely the garden ground of our continent omitting the arid region. Its boundary extended from central Massachusetts to northern Georgia, southern Illinois, northern Texas and central New Mexico, central Arizona the whole Rocky Mountain region up to the Peace River and Manitoba. It skipped the arid country west of the Rockies but it embraced practically the whole Pacific slope from central California to the north end of Vancouver Island. Mr. Seton roughly calculated the former range of canadensis at two and a half million square miles and adds, we are safe therefore in believing that in those days there may have been ten million head. The range of the elk covered a magnificent domain. The map prepared by Mr. Ernest T. Seton after twenty years of research is the last word on the subject. It appears on page 43, volume 1, of his great work, Life Histories of Northern Animals and I have the permission of author and publisher to reproduce it here as an object lesson in wild animal extermination. Mr. Seton recognizes, for convenience only, four forms of American elk, two of which, sea nanodies and occidentalists still exist on the Pacific coast. The fourth, Service Mariami, was undoubtedly a valid species. It lived in Arizona and New Mexico but became totally extinct near the beginning of the present century. In 1909 Mr. Seton published in the work referred to above a remarkably close estimate of the number of elk then alive in North America. Recently a rough count, the first ever made, of the elk in and around the Yellowstone Park revealed the real number of that largest contingent. By taking those results and Mr. Seton's figures for elk outside the United States we obtain the very close approximation of the wild elk alive in North America in 1912. Yellowstone Park and vicinity, 47,000. Idaho, 600. Washington, 1200. Oregon, 500. California, 400. New York, Adirondacks, 400. Minnesota, 50. Vancouver Island, 2000. British Columbia, Southeast, 200. Alberta, 1000. Saskatchewan, 500. In various parks and zoos, 1000. Total for all America, 54,850. In 1905 a herd of 20 of the so-called Dwarf elk of the Senoacan Valley, California were taken to the Sequoia National Park and placed in a fenced range that had been established for it on the Kawiyau River. The extermination of the Wapiti began with the settlement of the American colonies. Naturally the largest animals were the ones most eagerly sought by the meat hungry pioneers and the elk and bison were the first game species to disappear. The colonists believed in the survival of the fittest and we are glad that they did. The one thing that a hungry pioneer cannot withstand is temptation in a form that embraces 500 pounds of succulent flesh and let it not be supposed to the Indian Eastern states there were only a few elk. The Pennsylvania Salt Licks were crowded with them and the early writers described them as existing in immense bands and great numbers. Of course it is impossible for wild animals of great size to exist in countries that are covered with farms, villages and people. Under such conditions the wild and the tame cannot harmonize. It is a fact however that elk could exist and thrive in every national forest and national park in our country and also on uncountable hundreds of thousands of rough wild timbered hills and mountains such as exist in probably 25 different states. There is no reason except man's short-sighted greed and foolishness why there are not today 100,000 elk living in the Allegheny Mountains furnishing each year 50,000 three-year-old males as free food for the people. The trouble is the greedy habitants could not be induced to kill only three-year-old males in the fall and let the cows, cows and breeding bulls alone. By sensible management the Rocky Mountains, the Sierra Nevada's and the Coast Range would support enough wild elk to feed a million people but we Americans seem utterly incapable of maintaining anywhere from decade to decade a large and really valuable supply of wild game. Outside the Yellowstone Park in northwestern Wyoming the American elk exists only in small bands mere remnants and samples of the millions we could and should have. If they could be protected and the surplus presently killed according to some rational working system then every national forest in the United States could be stocked with elk. In view of the awful cost of beef today ten and a half cents per pound in Chicago on the hoof it is high time that we should consider the raising of game on the public domain and such lines that it would form a valuable food supply without diminishing the value of the forests. Just now, 1912, the American people are sorely puzzled by a remarkable elk problem that each winter is presented for solution in the Jackson Hole Country, Wyoming. Driven southward by the deep snows of winter the elk thousands that in summer graze and grow fat in the Yellowstone Park down into Jackson Hole to find in those valleys less snow and more food. Now it happens that the best and most of the former winter grazing grounds of the elk are covered by fenced ranches. As a result the elk that's drive to winter there, about fifteen thousand head are each winter threatened with starvation and during three or four winters of recent date an aggregate of several thousand calves, weak yearlings and weakened cows perished of hunger. The winters of 1908, 1909 and 1910 were progressively more and more severe and in 1911 saw about twenty five hundred deaths as an leak. In 1909-10 the state of Wyoming spent seven thousand dollars for hay and fed it to the starving elk. In 1911 Wyoming spent five thousand more and appealed to Congress for help. Thanks to the efforts of Senator Lodge and others Congress instantly responded with a splendid emergency appropriation of twenty thousand dollars partly for the purpose of feeding the elk and also to meet the cost of transporting elsewhere as many of the elk as it might seem best to move. The starving of the elk ceased with 1911. Outdoor Life magazine, Denver, Colorado for August 1912 contains an excellent article by Dr. W. B. Shore entitled Trapping and Shipping Elk. I wish I could reprint it entire for the solid information that it contains. It gives a clear and comprehensive account of last spring's operations by the government and by the state of Montana in capturing and shipping elk from the Yellowstone Park herd for the double purpose of diminishing the elk surplus in the park and stocking vacant ranges elsewhere. The operations were conducted on the same basis as the shipping of cattle the coral, the chute, the open car and the car load and bulk. Dr. Shore states that the undertaking was really no more difficult than the shipping of range cattle but the presence of a considerable portion of young and tender calves such as are never handled with beef cattle led to 8.8% of deaths in transit. The deaths and the percentage are nothing at which to be surprised when it is remembered that the animals had just come through a hard winter and their natural vitality was at the lowest point of the year. The following is a condensed summary of the results of the work. One car, start up Washington. 60 calves, yearlings and 2 year olds. 94 hours on the road. 11 killed or died in car. 7 died after unloading. One car, Hamilton, Montana. 43 cows and calves. 30 hours on the road. 4 killed or died in the car. 1 died after unloading. 1 car, Thompson Falls, Montana. 40 elk. 30 hours. 2 died in car. 0 died after unloading. Stevensonville, Montana. 36 elk. 30 hours on the road. 1 died in car. 1 died after unloading. Dear Lodge, Montana. 40 elk. 24 hours on the road. 2 died in car. 0 died after unloading. Hamilton, Montana. 40 elk. 24 hours on the road. 0 died in car. 0 died after unloading. Mount Vernon, Washington. 46 elk. 4 days on the road. Unloaded and fed twice. 7 died in the car. 0 died after unloading. Total 305 elk. 27 total killed or died in car. 9 total died after unloading. The total deaths in transit and after of 36 elk out of 305 amounted to 11.4%. All those shipped to Montana points were shipped by the state of Montana. In order to provide adequate winter grazing grounds for the Yellowstone Wyoming elk, it seems imperative that the national government should expend between 30,000 and 40,000 and buying back from ranchmen certain areas in the Jackson Valley, particularly attract known as the swamp, and others on the surrounding foothills where the herds annually go to graze in winter. The measure to render this possible was presented to Congress in the winter of 1912 and without opposition an appropriation of 45,000 dollars was made. The splendid photographs of the elk herds that recently have been made by S.N. Leek of Jackson Hole clearly reveal the fact that the herds now consist chiefly of cows, calves, yearlings, and young bulls with small antlers. In one photograph showing about 2,500 elk, there are not visible even half a dozen pairs that belong to adult bulls. There should be a hundred. This condition means that the best bulls with the finest heads are constantly being selected and killed by sportsmen and others who want their heads, and the young immature bulls are left to do the breeding that alone will sustain the species. It is a well-known principle in stock breeding that sires should be fully adult of maximum strength and in the prime of life. No stock breeder in his senses ever thinks of breeding from a youthful immature sire. The result would be weak offspring, not up to the standard. This inexorable law of inheritance and transmission is just as much a law for the elk, moose, and deer of North America as it is for domestic cattle and horses. If the present conditions in the Wyoming elk herds continue to prevail for several generations, as sure as time goes on we shall see a marked deterioration in the size and antlers of the elk. If the foundation principles of stock breeding are correct, then it is impossible to maintain any large mammal species at its zenith of size, strength, and virility by continuous breeding of the young and immature males. By some sportsmen it is believed that through long-continued killing of the finest and largest males, the red deer of Europe have been growing smaller, but on that point I am not prepared to offer evidence. In regard to the inbreeding of the elk herds in large open parks and preserves throughout North America, there are positively no ill effects to fear. Wild animals that are closely confined to generation after generation are bound to deteriorate physically, but with healthy wild animals living in large open ranges, feeding and breeding naturally, the inbreeding that occurs produces no deterioration. In the twin certainties of overpopulation and deterioration from excessive killing of the good sires, we have to face two new problems of very decided importance. Nothing short of very radical measures will provide a remedy. For the immediate future I can offer a solution. While it seems almost impossible deliberately to kill females, I think that the present is a very exceptional case, and one that compels us to apply the painful remedy that I now propose. Premises. One. There are at present too many breeding cows in the Yellowstone herds. There are far too few good breeding bulls. Conclusion. For five years entirely prohibit the killing of adult male elk and kill only females and young males. This would gradually diminish the number of calves born each year by about 2,500. And by the end of five years it would reduce the number and the annual birth of females to a figure sufficiently limited that the herds could be maintained on existing ranges. Corollary. At the end of five years stop killing females and kill only young males. This plan would permit a large number of bull elk to mature and then the largest and strongest animals would do the breeding, just as nature always intends shall be done. South America. Of all the big game regions of the earth, South America is the poorest. Of hoofed games she possesses only a dozen species that are worth the attention of herdsmen, and like all other animal life in that land of little game they are desperately hard to find. In South America you must work your heart out in order to get either game or specimens that will be worth showing. At present we need not worry about the marsh deer, the pampas deer, the guamal or the venado, nor the tapir, jaguar, ocelot and bears. All these species are abundantly able to take care of themselves and to find and kill many of them as a man's task. In Patagonia the need of stew wastefully slaughter the guanacos and there are times also when great numbers of guanacos come down in winter to certain mountain lakes, presumably in search of food and perish by hundreds through starvation. H. Hesketh Pritchard. Mexico. About ten years more we'll see the extinction of the mountain sheep of lower California. In the wake of the recently exterminated Mexican sheep in Lake's region, in 1908 I solemnly warned the government of President Diaz and at that time the Mexican government expressed much concern. It is a great pity that just now the political conditions are completely a stopping wildlife protection in Mexico, but it is true. If the code of proposed laws that I drew up by request in 1908 and submitted to Minister Molina were adopted it would have a good effect on the fauna of Mexico. In Mexico there is little hoof game to kill, deer of the white-tailed groups, seven or eight species, the desert mule deer, the brocket, the pronghorned antelope, the mountain sheep and the peckery. The deer will not so easily be exterminated, but the antelope and sheep will be utterly destroyed. They will be the first to go, and I think they cannot by any possibility last longer than ten years. Is it not too bad that Mexico should permit her finest species of hoofed and horned game to be obliterated before she awakens to the desirability of conservation? The Mexicans could protect their small stock of big game if they would, but in lower California they are leasing huge tracts of land to cattle companies, and they permit the lessees to kill all the wild game they please on their leased lands even with the aid of dogs. This is a vicious and fatal system and contrary to all the laws of nations. End of Chapter 16 Chapter 17 of Our Vanishing Wildlife This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Sarah Jennings Our Vanishing Wildlife by William T. Hornaday Chapter 17 Present and Future of North American Big Game Part 2 The Whitetailed Deer 500 years hence when the greed and rapacity of civilized man has completed the loot and ruin of the continent of North America the Whitetailed Deer will be the last species of our big game to be exterminated. Its mental traits, its size, its color, and its habits all combine to render it the most persistent of our large animals and the best fitted to survive. It neither bulls nor bugles to attract its enemies. It cannot be called to a sportsman like the moose and it sticks to its timber with rare and commendable closeness. When it sees a strange living thing walking erect it does not stop to stare and catch soft-nosed bullets but dashes away in quest of solitude. The worst shooting that I ever did or saw done at game was at running whitetailed deer in the Montana river bottoms. For all the reasons given whitetail exists and persists in a hundred United States localities from which all other big games save the black bear have been exterminated. For example, in our Adirondacks the moose were exterminated years and years ago but the beloved wilderness called the North Woods is still populated by about 20,000 deer and about 8,000 are killed annually. The deer of Maine are sufficiently numerous that in 1909 a total of 15,879 were killed with some assistance from this thin sprinkling of moose and caribou the deer of Maine annually draw into that state for permanent dedication a huge sum of money variously estimated at from 1 million to 2 million dollars. In spite of heavy slaughter and vigorous attempts at extermination by overshooting the deer of Northern Michigan obstinately refused to be wiped out. There is however a large group of states where the disease has been exterminated the states comprising it are Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa and adjacent portions of seven other states. As if to shame the people of Iowa a curious deer episode is recorded. In 1885 W. B. Cuppey of Avoka, Iowa purchased five deer and placed them in a paddock on his 600 acre farm. By 1900 they had increased to 32 head and one night someone kindly opened the gate of their enclosure and gave them the freedom of the city. Mr. Cuppey made no effort to capture them possibly because they decided to annex his farm as their habitat. When a neighbor led them with a bait of corn to their owner's door he declined to impound them on the ground that it was unnecessary. By 1912 those deer had increased to 400 and the portion of this story that no one will believe is this. There were no suburbs and hinterland farms of Avoka and the people not only failed to assassinate all of them and eat them but they actually killed only a few protected the rest and made pets of many. We're people these men and boys of Avoka nearly everywhere else in the world and I know the history would have been ended differently. Here in the East 90% of our people are like the Avokans but the other 10% think only of slaying and eating and see sans law. Now the state of Iowa has taken hold to capture some of those deer and set them free in other portions of the state. Elsewhere I shall note the quick and thorough success with which the whitetailed deer has been brought back in Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Southern New York. No state having wastelands covered with brush or timber need be without the ubiquitous whitetailed deer. Give them a semblance of a fair show and they will live and breed in surprising fecundity and persistence. If you start a park herd with 10 does, soon you will have more deer than you know how to dispose of unless you market them under a bane law, duly tagged by the state. In close confinement this species fares rather poorly. In large preserves it does well but during the rutting season the bucks are to be dreaded and those that develop aggressive traits should be shot and marketed. This is the only way in which the deer parks are safe for unarmed people. Dr. T. S. Palmer has taken much pains to ascertain the number of deer killed in the United States. His records as published in May 1910 are as follows. 1908 59,878 1909 57,494 1910 60,150 At this date deer hunting is not permitted at any time in Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas where there are no wild deer nor in Rhode Island, Connecticut, Delaware, Tennessee or Kentucky. The long close seasons in Massachusetts, Connecticut and southern New York have caused a great migration of deer into those once depopulated regions in fact right down to Tidewater. The Mule Deer This will be the first member of the deer family to become extinct in North America, outside of the protected portions of its haunts. Its fatal preference for open ground and its habit of pausing to stare at the hunter have been and to the end will be its undoing. Possibly there are now two of these deer in the United States and British Columbia for every 98 that existed 40 years ago but no more. It is a deer of the Badlands and foothills and its curiosity is fatal. The number of sportsmen who have hunted and killed this fine animal in its own wild and picturesque Badlands is indeed quite small. It has been four fifths exterminated by the resident hunter and ranchman and today is found in the Rocky Mountain region most sparingly. Ten years ago it seemed right to hunt the so-called Rocky Mountain Blacktail in Northwestern Montana because so many deer were there it did not seem to spell extermination. Now conditions have changed since last winter's great slaughter in Northwestern Montana and over 100,000 hungry deer the species has been so reduced that it is no longer right to kill mule deer anywhere in our country and a universal close season for five years is the duty of every state which contains that species. The real black-tailed deer of the Pacific Coast Odocoileus Columbianus is to most sportsmen of the Rocky Mountains and the East actually less known than the O'Cappy. Not one out of every hundred of them is the mounted head of it at sight. It is a small, delicately formed delicately antlered understudy of the big mule deer and now painfully limited in its distribution. It is the deer of California and western Oregon and it has been so ruthlessly slaughtered that today it is going fast. As conditions stand today and without a radical change on the part of the people of the Pacific Coast this very interesting species is bound to disappear. It will not be persistent like the white-tailed deer but in the heavy forests it will last much longer than the mule deer. My information regarding this deer is like the stock of specimens of it in museum collections meager and unsatisfactory. We need to know in detail how that species is faring today and what its prospects are for the immediate future. In 1900 I saw great piles of skins from it in the fur houses of Seattle and the site gave me much concern. The caribou generally. I think it is not very difficult to forecast the future of the genus Rangerfur in North America from the logic of the conditions of today. Thanks to the splendid massive information that has been accumulated regarding this group we are able to draw certain conclusions. I think that the caribou of the Canadian barren grounds at northeastern Alaska will survive in great numbers for at least another century and the numbers of Newfoundland will last nearly as long and that in 50 years or less all the caribou of the great Northwestern wilderness will be swept away. The reasons for these conclusions are by no means obscure or far-fetched. In the first place the barren ground caribou are today enormously numerous undoubtedly running up into the millions. It cannot be possible that they are being killed faster than they are breeding and so they must be increasing. They are protected by two redubitable champions Jack Frost and the Mosquito. Their country will never contain a great human population. The natives are so few in number and so lazy that even though they should become supplied with modern firearms it is unlikely that they will ever make a serious impression on the caribou millions. The only thing to fear for the barren ground caribou throngs is disease a factor that is beyond human prediction. It is reasonably certain that the barren grounds never will be netted by railways unless gold is discovered over a wide area. The fierce cold and hunger and the billions of mosquitoes of the barren grounds will protect the caribou from the wholesale slaughter that civilized man joyously would inflict if he had the chance. The caribou thousands of newfound land are fairly accessible to sportsmen and pot hunters but at the same time the colonial government can protect them from extermination if it will. Already much has been done to check the reckless and wicked slaughter that once prevailed. A bag limit of three bull caribou per annum has been fixed which has enforced us to non-residents and sportsmen but in a way that is much too American it is often ignored by residents in touch with the game. For instance the guide of a New York gentleman whom I know admitted to my friend that each year he killed about 25 caribou for himself and his family and his friends. He explained thus when the inspector comes round I show him two caribou hanging in my wood shed but back in the woods I have a little shack where I keep the others until I want them. The real sportsmen of the world will never make the slightest perceptible impression on the caribou of Newfoundland for one thing the hunting is much too tame to be interesting. If the caribou of that island ever are exterminated it will be strictly by the people of Newfoundland themselves. The government will tighten its grip on the herds they need never be exterminated. The caribou of New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario are few and widely scattered. Unless carefully conserved they are not likely to last long for their country is annually penetrated in every direction by armed men white and red. There is no means by which it can be proven but from the number of armed men in those regions I feel sure that the typical woodland caribou species is being shot faster than it is breeding. The sportsmen and naturalists of Canada and New Brunswick would render good service by making a close and careful investigation of that question. The caribou of the northwestern wilderness are in a situation peculiarly their own. They inhabit a region of naked mountains and thin forests wherein they are conspicuous easily stalked and easily killed. Nowhere do they exist in large herds of thousands or even of many hundreds. They live in small bands of from 10 to 20 head and even those are far apart. The region in which they live is certain to be thoroughly opened up by railways and exploited. Fifty years from now we will find every portion of the now wild northwest fairly accessible by rail. The building of the railways will be to the caribou and to other big game the day of doom. In that wild, rough region no power on earth saved that which deprived all the inhabitants and all visitors of firearms can possibly save the game outside of a few preserves that are diligently patrolled. The big game of the northwest region in which I include the interior of Alaska will go. It is only a question of time. Already the building of the city of Fairbanks and the exploitation of the mining districts surrounding it have led to such harassment and slaughter of the migrating caribou that the great herd which formerly traversed the Tanana country once a year has completely changed its migration route and now keeps much further north. The crossing of the Yukon near Eagle City has been abandoned. A hundred years hence the northwestern wilderness will be dotted with towns and crisscrossed with railways but the big game of it will be gone except in the preserves that are yet to be made. This will particularly involve the caribou moose and mountain sheep of all species which will be the first to go. The mountain goat and forest bearers will hold out longer than their more exposed neighbors of the treeless mountains. The moose. In the United States the moose is found in five states. Maine, Minnesota, Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. There are 550 in the Yellowstone Park. In Maine and Minnesota only may moose be hunted and killed. In the season of 1909 184 moose were killed in Maine. A large number considering the small moose population of that state. In northern Minnesota we now possess a great national moose preserve of 909,743 acres and in 1908 Mr. Fullerton, after a personal inspection in which he saw 189 moose in nine days estimated the total moose population of the present day at 10,000 head. This is a moose preserve worthwhile. Outside of protected areas the moose is the animal that is most easily exterminated. Its trail is easily followed and its habits are thoroughly known down to three decimal places. As a hunter's reward it is great. Strange to say New Brunswick has found that the moose is an animal that is possible and even easy to protect. The death of a moose is an event that is not easily concealed. Wherever it is thoroughly understood that the moose law will be enforced the would-be poacher pauses to consider a real sentence. In New Brunswick we have seen two strange things happen during our own times. We have seen the moose migrate into and permanently occupy an extensive area that previously was destitute of that species. At the same time we have seen a reasonable number of bull moose killed by sportsmen without disturbing in the least the general equanimity of the general moose population. And at this moment the moose population of New Brunswick is almost incredible. Every moose hunter who goes there sees from 20 to 40 moose and two of my friends last year saw in round numbers about a hundred. Up to date the size of adult antlers seems to be maintaining a high standard. In summer the photographing of moose in the rivers, lakes, and ponds of Maine and New Brunswick amounts to an industry. I am uneasy about the constant picking off of the largest and best breeding bulls of the Miramachi country that only reduced the size and antlers of the moose of that region. But only the future can tell us just how that prospect stands today. In Alaska our ever-thoughtful and four-handed biological survey of the Department of Agriculture has by legal proclamation at one stroke converted the whole of the Kani Peninsula into a magnificent moose preserve. This will save Elsie's G-Gas the giant moose of Alaska from extermination. And New Brunswick and the Minnesota preserve will save Elsie's Americanus. But in the Northwest we can positively depend upon it that eventually wherever the moose may legally be hunted and killed by any Tom Dick or Harry who can afford a $25 bifal and a license the moose surely will disappear. The moose laws of Alaska are strict. Towards sportsmen only. The miners, prospectors, and Indians may kill as many as they please This opens the door to a great amount of unfair slaughter. Any coffee-cooler can put a pen and pick into his hunting outfit, go out after a moose, and call himself a prospector. I grant that the real prospector who is looking for ores and minerals with an intelligent eye and knows what he is doing should have special privileges on game to keep him from starving. The settled miner, however, is in a different class. No miner should ask the privilege of playing a game any more than should the farmer, the steamboat man, the railway leper, or the soldier in an army post. The Indian should have no game advantages whatever over a white man. He does not own the game of any region any more than he owns its minerals or its water power. He should obey the general game laws just the same as white men. In Africa as far as possible the white population wisely prohibits the natives from owning or using firearms too. I am glad that there is one continent on which the I'm just as good as you are nightmare does not curse the whole land. The Muscox Now that the North Pole has been safely discovered, and the South Pole has become the storm center of polar exploration, the Herried Muscox herds of the farthest north are having a rest. I think that most American sportsmen have learned that as a sporting proposition there is about as much fun and glory as the Muscox heard with dogs and picking off the members of it at parade rest as there is in shooting range cattle in a roundup. The habits of the animal positively eliminate the real essence of sport difficulty and danger. When a Muscox band is chased by dogs or by wolves, the full grown members of it, bulls and cows alike instantly form a close circle around the calves facing outward shoulder to shoulder and stand at bay. Without the aid of a gunner and a rifle, such a formation is invincible. Mr. Paul Rainey's moving pictures tell a wonderful story of animal intelligence, bravery and devotion to the parental instinct. For some reason the Muscox herds do not seem to have perceptibly increased since man first encountered them. The number alive today appears to be no greater than it was fifty years ago and this leads to the conclusion that the present delicate balance could easily be disturbed the wrong way. Fortunately it seems reasonably certain that the Indians of the Canadian barren grounds, the Eskimo of the far north and the stray explorers all live outside the haunts of the species and come in touch only with the edge of the Muscox population as a whole. This leads us to hope and believe that through the difficulties involved in reaching them, the main bodies of Muscox of both species are safe from extermination. At the same time the time has come for Canada, the United States and Denmark to join in formulating a stiff law for the prevention of the wholesale slaughter of Muscox for sport. It should be rendered impossible for another sportsman to kill twenty-three head in one day, as once occurred. Give the sportsman a bag of three bowls and no more. To this no true sportsman will object and the objections of game hogs only serve to confirm the justice of the thing they oppose. The grizzly bear. To many persons it may seem strange that anyone should feel disposed to accord protection to such fierce predatory animals as grizzly bear lions and tigers. But the spirit of fair play springs eternal in some human breasts. The sportsmen of the world do not stick at using long range high power repeating rifles on big game but they draw the line this side of traps, poisons and extermination. The sportsmen of India once thought for about a year and a day that it was permissible to kill some inexpensive tigers by poison. Mr. GP Sanderson tried it and when his strict nine operations promptly developed three bloated and disgusting tiger carcasses even his native followers revolted at the principle. That was the alpha and omega of Sanderson's poisoning activities. I am quite sure that if the extermination of the tiger from the whole of India were possible and the to be or not to be were put to a vote of the sportsmen of India would be a thundering no, says Major J. Stevenson Hamilton in his animal life in Africa it is impossible to contemplate the use against the lion of any weapon other than the rifle. The real sportsmen and naturalists of America are decidedly opposed to the extermination of the grizzly bear. They feel that the wilds of North America are wide enough for the accommodation of many grizzlies without crowding the proletariat. They do not live without a grizzly upon it or at least a bear of some kind is only half a mountain commonplace and tame but one two-year-old grizzly cub upon it and presto every cubic yard of its local atmosphere reeks with romantic uncertainty and fearsome thrills. A few persons have done considerable talking and writing about the damage to stock inflicted by bears but I think there is little justification for the charges. There is one tenth enough real damage done by bears to justify their extermination. At the present time we hear that the farmers of Cadillac Island, Alaska are being seriously harassed and damaged by the big Cadillac bear an animal so rare and shy that it is very difficult for a sportsman to kill one. I think the charges against the bears if the Cadillac Islanders ever really have made any need to be proven by the production of real evidence. In the United States, outside of our game preserves, I know of not one locality in which grizzly bears are sufficiently numerous to justify a sportsman in going out to hunt them. The California grizzly, once represented by Monarch and Golden Gate Park, is almost, if not wholly, extinct. In Montana, outside of Glacier Park it is useless to apply for wild grizzlies. In the Bitterroot Mountains and Clearwater Mountains of Idaho there are grizzlies, no-bent willows on the slides that is almost impossible to get a shot. Northwestern Wyoming still contains a few grizzlies but there are many square miles of mountains around each animal and it is now almost useless to go hunting for them. British Columbia, Western Alberta and the Coast Mountains at least as far as Gagway and Yukon Territory generally all contain grizzlies and the sportsman who goes out for sheep, caribou and moose is reasonably certain that the grizzly bears and kill at least one or two. In those countries the grizzly species will hold forth long after all killable grizzlies have vanished from the United States. I think that it is now time for California, Montana, Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Wyoming to give grizzly bears protection of some sort. Possibly the situation in those states calls for a five-year closed season. Even British Columbia should now place a bag limit on this species. It is clear to me ever since two of my friends killed in the spring of 1912 six grizzlies in one week but provincial game warden A. Brian Williams says that at present it would be impossible to impose a bag limit of one per year on the grizzlies of British Columbia and Mr. Williams is a sincere game protector. The Brown Bears of Alaska these magnificent monsters present a perplexing problem which I am inclined to believe can be satisfactorily solved by the biological survey only in short periods say of three or four years each. Naturally the skin hunters of Alaska ardently desire the skins of those bears for the money they represent. That side of the bear problem does not in the least appeal to the 90 odd millions of people who live this side of Alaska. The skins of the Alaskan brown bear have little value save as curiosities nailed upon the wall where they cannot be stepped upon and injured. The hunting of those bears however is a business for men and it is partly for that reason that they should be preserved. A bear hunt on the Alaska peninsula Admiralty or Montague Islands is an event of a lifetime and with a bag limit of one brown bear the species would be quite safe from extermination. In Alaska there is some dissatisfaction over the protection according to the big brown bears but those rules are right as far as they go. A governor of Alaska once said to me the preservation of the game of Alaska should be left to the people of Alaska it is their game and they will preserve it all right. The answer not by a long shot only three things were wrong with the ex-governor's view. One the game of Alaska does not belong to the people who live in Alaska with the intent to get out tomorrow it belongs to the 93 million people of the nation. Two the preservation of the Alaskan fauna should not be left unreservedly to the people of Alaska because three as sure as shooting they will not preserve it. Congress is right in appropriating $15,000 for game protection in Alaska. It is very necessary that the regulations for conserving the wildlife should be fixed by the secretary of agriculture with the advice of the biological survey. The black bear is an interesting citizen he harms nobody or anything he affords good sport he objects to being exterminated and wherever in North America he is threatened with extermination he should at once be given protection a black bear in the wilds is harmless in captivity posed as a household pet he is decidedly dangerous and had best be given the middle of the road in big forests he is a grand stayer and will not be exterminated from the fauna of the United States until Washington is wrecked by anarchists The American Bison I regard the American Bison species as now reasonably secure against extermination. This is due to the fact that it breeds persistently and successfully in captivity and to the great efforts that have been put forth by the United States government the Canadian government the American Bison Society the New York Zoological Society and several private individuals the species reached its lowest ebb in 1889 when there were only 256 head in captivity and 835 running wild the increase has been as follows 1888 W. T. Hornaday's Census 1300 1902 S. P. Langley's Census 1394 1905 Frank Baker's Census 1697 1908 W. T. Hornaday's Census 2047 1910 W. P. Wharton's Census 2108 1912 W. P. Wharton's Census 2097 Today nearly one half of the living Bison are in very large governmental parks perpetually established and breeding rapidly as follows In the United States Yellowstone Park fenced herd founded by Congress 125 Montana National Bison Range founded by the American Bison Society 69 Wichita Bison Range founded by the New York Zoological Society 39 Wind Cave Bison Range, South Dakota founded by American Bison Society to be stalked Niobrara, Nebraska National Bison Range now in process of creation to be stalked In Canada Buffalo Park, Wainwright, Alberta 1052 Elk Island Park, Alberta 53 Rocky Mountains Park, Banff, Alberta 27 Total National and Provincial Preserves 1365 Of wild Bison there are only three groups 49 head in the Yellowstone National Park About 75 Pablo Outlaws from the Montana Bison Range and between 300 and 400 head in Northern Athabasca of Fort Resolution existing in small and widely scattered bands The efforts of man to atone for the great Bison slaughter by preserving the species from extinction have been crowned with success Two governments and 2,000 individuals have shared this task solely for sentimental reasons In these facts we find reason to hope and believe that other efforts now being made to save other species from annihilation will be equally successful End of Chapter 17