Page 259 - Our Vanishing Wild Life

GAME AND AGRICULTURE; DEER AS FOOD 237
At present our land of liberty contains only 9,354 game wardens.* The states that contain the greatest areas of wild lands naturally lack in population and in tax funds, and not one such state can afford to put into the field even half enough salaried game wardens to really protect her game from surreptitious slaughter. The surplus of "personal liberty" in this liberty-cursed land is a curse to the big game. The average frontiersman never will admit the divine right of kings, but he does ardently believe in the divine right of settlers,—to reach out and take any of the products of Nature that they happen to fancy.
Wild Meat as a Food Supply.—We hear much these days about the high cost of living, but thus far we have made no move to mend the situation. Withcoalgoingstraightuptotendollarsperton,beefgoing up to fifteen dollars per hundred on the hoof and wheat and hay going- up—heaven alone knows where, it is time for all Americans who are not richtoarouseandtakethoughtforthemorrow. Whatarewegoingto do about itf The tariff on the coarser necessities of life is now booked to come down; but what about the fresh meat supply?
I desire to point out that between Bangor and San Diego and from Key West to Bellingham, our country contains millions of acres of wild, practically uninhabited forests, rough foot-hills, bad-lands and mountains that could produce two million deer each year, without deducting $50,000ayearfromthewealthofthecountry. Igrantthatinthetotal number of deer that would be necessary to produce two million deer per annum, the farms situated on the edges of forests, and actually within the forests, would suffer somewhat from the depredations of those deer.
As I will presently show by documentary records, every one of those individual damages that exceeds two dollars in value could be com- pensated in cash, and afterward leave on the credit side of the deer account an enormous annual balance.
Stop for a moment, you enterprising atid restless men and women who travel all over the United States, and think of the illimitable miles of unbroken forest that you have looked upon from your Pullman windows in the East, in the South, in the West and in southern Canada. Recall the wooded mountains of the Appalachian system, the White Mountain region, the pine forests of the Atlantic Coast and the Gulf States, the forests of Tennessee, Arkansas and southern Missouri; of northern Minnesota, and every state of the Rocky Mountain region. Then, think of the silent and untouched forests of the Pacific Coast and tell me whether you think five million deer scattered through all those
forests would make any visible impression upon them.
only about twenty-five times as many as are there now! I think the forests would not be over populated; and they would produce two mil- lion killable deer each year!
Last year, 11,000 deer were forced down out of their hiding places intheRockyMountains,andwerekilledinMontana. Eventhenatives
*Ofthisforce,thereareonly1,200salariedwardens. Themostofthosewhoserve without salaries naturally render but little continuous or regular service.
That would be