CHAPTER XVIIPRESENT AND FUTURE OF NORTH AMERICAN BIG GAME(Concluded)
CHAPTER XVII
PRESENT AND FUTURE OF NORTH AMERICAN BIG GAME
(Concluded)
The White-Tailed Deer.—Five hundred years hence, when the greed and rapacity of "civilized" man has completed the loot and ruin of the continent of North America, the white-tailed 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 bawls nor bugles to attract its enemies, it can not 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 white-tailed deer, in the Montana river bottoms.
For the reasons given, the white-tail exists and persists in a hundred United States localities from which all other big game 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" still is 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 the 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 $1,000,000 to $2,000,000. In spite of heavy slaughter, and vigorous attempts at extermination by over-shooting, the deer of northern Michigan obstinately refuse to be wiped out.
There is, however, a large group of states in which this species 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. Cuppy, of Avoca, Iowa, purchased five deer, and placed them in a paddock on his 600-acre farm. By 1900 they had increased to 32 head; and then one night some one kindly opened the gate of their enclosure, and gave them the freedom of the city. Mr. Cuppy 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: they spread all through the suburbs and hinterland farms of Avoca, andthe 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!Queer people, those men and boys of Avoca. Nearly everywhere else in the world that I know, that history would have been ended differently. Here in the East, 90 per cent of our people are like the Avocans, but the other 10 per cent think only of slaying and eating, sans mercy, sans decency, 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 white-tailed deer has been brought back in Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and southern New York.
No state having waste lands covered with brush or timber need be without the ubiquitous white-tailed deer. Give them a semblance of a fair show, and they will live and breed with surprising fecundity and persistence. If you start a park herd with ten does, soon you will have more deer than you will know how to dispose of, unless you market them under a Bayne 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 of England are kept safe for unarmed people.
Dr. T.S. Palmer has taken much pains to ascertain the number of deer killed in the eastern United States. His records, as published in May, 1910, are as follows:
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 longclose 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 tide-water.
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 forty years ago, but no more. It is a deer of the bad lands 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 bad-lands is indeed quite small. It has been four-fifths exterminated by the resident hunter and ranchman, and to-day is found in the Rocky Mountain region most sparingly. Ten years ago it seemed right to hunt the so-called Rocky Mountain "black-tail" 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, of 11,000 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 okapi! Not one out of every hundred of them can recognize a 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 isthedeer of California and western Oregon, and it has been so ruthlessly slaughtered that today it is going fast. As conditions stand to-day, 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 to-day, 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 sight gave me much concern.
The Caribou, Generally.—I think it is not very difficult to forecast the future of the GenusRangiferin North America, from the logic of the conditions of to-day. Thanks to the splendid mass of 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 and northeastern Alaska will survive in great numbers for at least another century; that the caribou herds of Newfoundland will last nearly as long, and that in fifty 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 farfetched.
In the first place, the barren-ground caribou are to-day enormously numerous,—undoubtedly running up into millions. It can not be possible that they are being killed faster than they are breeding; and so they must be increasing. Their food supply is unlimited. They are protected by two redoubtable champions,—Jack Frost and the Mosquito. Their country never will 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 ever will 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 Newfoundland 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 is enforced as 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 of four other persons. He explained thus: "When the inspector comes around, I show him two caribou hanging in my woodshed, 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 never will 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. If 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 andthinforests,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 ten to twenty 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,—save that which might be able to depriveallthe inhabitants and all visitors of firearms,—can possibly save the game outside of a few preserves that are diligently patroled.
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 farther 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 criss-crossed 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 the forest bears 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 worth while.
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 it 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 the net results to him of a jail 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 thesame 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 100!" Up to date the size of adult antlers seem 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 Mirimachi country, lest it finally reduce the size and antlers of the moose of that region; but only the future can tell us just how that prospect stands to-day.
In Alaska, our ever thoughtful and forehanded Biological Survey of the Department of Agriculture has by legal proclamation at one stroke converted the whole of the Kenai Peninsula into a magnificent moose preserve. This will saveAlces gigas, the giant moose of Alaska, from extermination; and New Brunswick and the Minnesota preserve will saveAlces 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 twenty-dollar rifle and a license, the moose surely will disappear.
The moose laws of Alaska are strict—toward sportsmen, only! The miners, "prospectors" and Indians may kill as many as they please, "for food purposes." This opens the door to a great amount of unfair slaughter. Any coffee-cooler can put a pan and pick into his hunting outfit, go out after moose, and call himself a "prospector."
I grant that therealprospector, 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 living on wild game, any more than should the farmer, the steamboat man, the railway laborer, 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 a 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, and a good idea it is, too. I am glad there is one continent on which the "I'm-just-as-good-as-you-are" nightmare does not curse the whole land.
The Musk-Ox.—Now that the north pole has been safely discovered, and the south pole has become the storm-center of polar exploration, the harried musk-ox 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 in harrying a musk-ox herd with dogs, and picking off the members of it at "parade rest," as there is in shooting range cattle in a round-up. The habits of the animal positivelyeliminate the real essence of sport,—difficulty and danger. When a musk-ox 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 musk-ox herds do not seem to have perceptibly increased since man first encountered them. The number alive to-day 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 musk-ox population as a whole. This leads us to hope and believe that, through the difficulties involved in reaching them, the main bodies of musk-ox 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 wholesale slaughter of musk-ox 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 bulls, 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 bears, 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 troublesome and expensive tigers by poison. Mr. G.P. Sanderson tried it, and when his strychnine 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, the answer 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 other weapon 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. A Rocky Mountain without a grizzly upon it, orat least a bear of some kind, is only half a mountain,—commonplace and tame. Put 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 such charges. Certainly, there is not one-tenth enough real damage done by bears to justify their extermination. At the present time, we hear that the farmers (!) of Kadiak Island, Alaska, are being seriously harassed and damaged by the big Kadiak 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 Kadiak 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" in 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 Bitter Root Mountains and Clearwater Mountains of Idaho, there are grizzlies, but they hide so effectually under the snow-bent willows on the "slides" that it is almost impossible to get a shot. Northwestern Wyoming still contains a few grizzlies, but there are so many square miles of mountains around each animal it is now almost useless to go hunting for them. British Columbia, western Alberta and the coast mountains at least as far as Skaguay, and Yukon Territory generally, all contain grizzlies, and the sportsman who goes out for sheep, caribou and moose is reasonably certain to see half a dozen 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 close season. Even British Columbia should now place a bag limit on this species. This has seemed clear to me ever since two of my friends killed (in the spring of 1912)sixgrizzlies in one week! But Provincial Game Warden A. Bryan 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 ninety odd millions of people who live this side of Alaska. The skins of the Alaskan brown bears have little value save as curiosities, nailed upon the wall, where they can not be stepped upon and injured. Thehuntingof those bears, however, is a business for men; and it is partly for that reason theyshould be preserved. A bear-hunt on the Alaska Peninsula, Admiralty or Montagu Islands, is an event of a lifetime, and with a bag limit ofonebrown bear, the species would be quite safe from extermination.
THE WICHITA NATIONAL BISON HERD
Presented by the New York Zoological Society
In Alaska there is some dissatisfaction over the protection accorded the big brown bears; but those rules are rightas far as they go! A governor of Alaska once said to me: "The preservation of the game of Alaska should be left to thepeopleof 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:
1.—The game of Alaska doesnotbelong to the people who live in Alaska—with the intent to get out to-morrow! It belongs to the 93,000,000 people of the Nation.
2.—The preservation of the Alaskan fauna on the public domain should not be left unreservedly to the people of Alaska, because
3.—As sure as shooting, they willnotpreserve it!
Congress is right in appropriating $15,000 for game protection in Alaska. It is very necessary that the regulations for conserving the wild life should be fixed by the Secretary of Agriculture, with the advice of the Biological Survey.
The Black Bearis an interesting citizen. He harms nobody nor anything; he affords good sport; he objects to being exterminated, and wherever inNorth America he is threatened with extermination, he should at once be given protection! A black bearin the wildsis 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:
To-day, nearly one-half of the living bison are in very large governmental parks, perpetually established and breeding rapidly, as follows:
Of wild bison there are only three groups: 49 head in the Yellowstone National Park, about 75 Pablo "outlaws" around the Montana Bison Range, and between 300 and 400 head in northern Athabasca, southwest 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 two thousand 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.