Page 381 - Our Vanishing Wild Life

PRIVATE GAME PRESERVES
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slaughter of half-tame elk, deer and birds that have been bred in a preserve does not appeal in the least. He knows that in the protection of a preserve, the wild creatures lose much of their fear of man, and become easy marks ; and shall a real sportsman go out with a gun and a bushel of cartridges, on a pony, and without warning betray the con- fidenceofthewildintermsoffireandblood? Othersmaydoitifthey like; but as a rule that is not what an American calls "sport." wide-awake and well-armed grizzly bear or mountain sheep outwitted on a mountain-side is worth more as a sporting proposition than a quarter of a mile of deer carcasses laid out side by side on a nice park lawn to be photographed as "one day's kill."
In America, the shooting of driven game is something of which we know little save by hearsay. In Europe, it is practiced on everything from Scotch grouse to Italian ibex. The German Crown Prince, in his fascinating little volume "From My Hunting Da^^-Book," very neatly fixes the value of such shooting, as a real sportsman's proposition, in the following sentence:
"The shooting of driven game is merely a question of marksmanship, and is after all more in the nature of a shooting exercise than sport."
I have seen some shooting in preserves that was too tame to be called sport; but on the other hand I can testify that in grouse shooting as it is done behind the dogs on Mr. Carnegie's moor at Skibo, it is sport in whichthehunterearnseverygrousethatfallstohisgun. Atthesame time, also, I believe that the shooting of madly running ibex, as it is done by the King of Italy in his three mountain preserves, is sufficientlv difficult to put the best big-game hunter to the test. There are times when shooting driven game calls for far more dexterity with the rifle than is ordinarily demanded in the still-hunt.
In America, as in England and on the Continent of Europe, private game preserves are so numerous it is impossible to mention more than a veryfewofthem,unlessonedevotesavolumetothesubject. Probabl}- there are more than five hundred, and no list of them is "up to date" for more than one day, because the number is constantly increasing. I make no pretense even of possessing a list of those in America, and I mention only a few of those with which I am best acquainted, by wav of illustration.
One of the earliest and the most celebrated deer parks of the United States was that of Hon. John Dean Caton, of two hundred acres, located near Ottawa, 111., established about 1859. It was the experiments and observations made in that park that yielded Judge Caton's justly famous book on "The Antelope and Deer of America."
The first game preserve established by an incorporated club was "Blooming Grove Park," of one thousand acres, in Pennsylvania, where great success has been attained in the breeding and rearing of white- tailed deer.
In the eastern United States the most widely-known game preserve is Blue Mountain Forest Park, near Newport, New Hampshire. It was
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