Page 180 - Our Vanishing Wild Life

158 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE
Northwestern Wyoming: Thousands of elk in fall and winter; a few 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-tail 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 m. - ation 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,caribouandelkshouldnotbekilled.
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 grand-children 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 des- perate. 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 this situation. In a country where any and every individual can rise and bluster, "I'm- ju3t-a3-good-as->'0M-are," and bellow for his "rights" as a "tax-payer," 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 ex- clusively, 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 outsidethepreservesisdoomedtosureandquickextermination. This is not an individual opinion, merely: it is b, fact; and a hundred thousand men know it to be such.
Last winter (1911-12), because the deer of Montana v/ere driven by cold and hunger out of the mountains and far down into the ranchmen's val-
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