American Big Game Hunting Part 1

American Big-Game Hunting.

by Various.

The Boone and Crockett Club

The aims of The Boone and Crockett Club are sufficiently set forth in Article II of its Const.i.tution, which reads as follows:

The objects of the Club shall be:

1. To promote manly sport with the rifle.

2. To promote travel and exploration in the wild and unknown, or but partially known, portions of the country.

3. To work for the preservation of the large game of this country, and, so far as possible, to further legislation for that purpose, and to a.s.sist in enforcing the existing laws.

4. To promote inquiry into and to record observations on the habits and natural history of the various wild animals.

5. To bring about among the members the interchange of opinions and ideas on hunting, travel, exploration, on the various kinds of hunting-rifles, on the haunts of game animals, etc.

The Club is organized primarily to promote manly sport with the rifle among the large game of the wilderness, to encourage travel and exploration in little-known regions of our country, and to work for game and forest preservation by the State. Attention has been paid to all three points by the Club, but especially to sport and protection.

Nevertheless exploration has not been neglected. In a trip after wilderness game the hunter is perforce obliged to traverse and explore little-known regions, at least when he is in search of the rarer animals, or is desirous of reaching the best hunting-grounds; and in addition to such exploration, which is merely incidental to the ordinary hunting trip, members of the Club have done not a little original exploration for its own sake, including surveying, and geographical and geological map-making. The results of these explorations, when sufficiently noteworthy, have appeared in periodicals devoted to such subjects, or in Government reports. The present volume is devoted to big-game hunting and to questions of game preservation.

In behalf of game protection the Club works through the State for the procuring and setting apart of reservations where forests and game alike shall be protected at all seasons by the law. These great forest reservations thus become the nurseries and breeding-grounds of game and of the large wild animals which are elsewhere inevitably exterminated by the march of settlement. Already several such reservations have been established in different States, both by National and by State action--for instance, the Adirondack Reserve in New York, the Colorado Canon Reserve in Arizona, the big timber reserves in Colorado and Washington, the island set apart in Alaska as an undisturbed breeding-ground for salmon and sea-fowl, the Yosemite Valley and the Sequoia Parks in California. The most important reservation, however, is the Yellowstone Park, which is owned by the National Government, and is the last refuge of the buffalo in this country, besides being the chief home of the elk and of many other wild beasts. This is the most striking and typical of all these reserves, and has been thought well worth special description in the present volume, with reference to its effects upon the preservation of game.

The enactment of laws prohibiting the killing of game anywhere, save at certain seasons and under certain conditions, must be left largely to the States themselves; and among the States there is the widest possible difference both as to the laws and as to the way they are enforced. It is enforcement which needs most attention. Very many of the States have good game laws, but in very few are they rigidly enforced. Maine offers a striking instance of how well they work when properly framed and administered with honesty and efficiency. There are undoubtedly many more moose, caribou, and deer in Maine now than there were twenty-five years ago; and if the Maine Legislature will see that the good work is continued, these n.o.ble beasts of the chase will continue to increase, to the delight, not only of the hunter, but of every lover of nature and of the hardy life of the wilderness, and to the very great pecuniary profit of the people of the State. In other States--Colorado, for instance--good has come from the enactment and enforcement of game laws; but in no other State have the governmental authorities acted with the wisdom displayed by those of Maine, and in no other State have the results been so noteworthy. It is greatly to be wished that such States as Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming, which inclose the best hunting-grounds now existing in the United States, would follow Maine's lead.

Another means by which the Club hopes to bring about a proper spirit for the preservation of our big game is by frowning on and discouraging among sportsmen themselves all unsportsmanlike proceedings and all needless slaughter. The Club has persistently discouraged anything tending to glorify the making of big bags of game, and it strives to discourage the killing of the females of any game species save under rigid limitations. No harm comes to any species from the destruction of a moderate number of bulls, bucks, or rams, and these are the legitimate objects for the hunter's skill. Only legitimate methods of sport should be followed; torch hunting and the slaughter of game in deep snow or in the water are held to be unsportsmanlike.

Hunting big game in the wilderness is, above all things, a sport for a vigorous and masterful people. The rifle-bearing hunter, whether he goes on foot or on horseback, whether he voyages in a canoe or travels with a dog-sled, must be sound of body and firm of mind, and must possess energy, resolution, manliness, self-reliance, and capacity for hardy self-help. In short, the big-game hunter must possess qualities without which no race can do its life-work well; and these are the very qualities which it is the purpose of this Club, so far as may be, to develop and foster.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT.

GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL.

American Big-Game Hunting

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Master of the Herd.

Photographed from life. From Forest and Stream.]

A Buffalo Story

On the last day of September, 1871, I joined my regiment, then in camp near Fort Hays, Kansas. At that time the different troops of the regiment had not been a.s.signed to their winter quarters. My own was on its way north from Texas, where it had been stationed since the close of the war. I was extremely anxious to learn what its destination was, for I had never killed any of the large game of the country; in fact, had never fired a rifle except at a target. Should my troop be ordered to Fort Riley, or Fort Harker, east of Fort Hays, or to Fort Dodge, south of Hays, I feared that my chance of meeting with large game would be doubtful. To my great delight, however, I found that my a.s.signment was to Fort Lyon, situated on the northern bank of the Arkansas River in eastern Colorado.

On October 12 about 10 A. M., we broke camp and took up our line of march for the west, following the old Smoky Hill stage-route. The autumn thus far had been very mild. The great migration of the buffalo to their winter range in Texas had not yet begun, and I had some lingering doubts as to whether we might not reach our destination before the head of their column would cross our road. We had gone only about ten miles from camp, however, when I espied a solitary old bull, and instantly I was all excitement, to the great amus.e.m.e.nt of my companions.

Taking an orderly from the ranks, I put spurs to my horse, and was soon in hot pursuit of this decrepit outcast. This was sport new both to my horse and myself. We were both excited and equally timid. At a range of fifty yards, or more, I emptied my revolver at the poor, tottering, old body, and a chance shot hit him and brought him to bay. It was now his turn to take up the chase. With some difficulty I recharged my weapon, and one or two more shots brought my first buffalo to earth. He was old and lean and mangy, and yet I was loath to allow one pound of his flesh to be wasted, and wanted to carry it _all_ back to camp. The orderly said, with a cynical smile, "Lieutenant, he ain't no good to eat, but you might take his tongue." His smile was changed to smothered laughter when he saw me attempting to carve up the corners of the animal's mouth in order to take the tongue out between the teeth. He dismounted, and with a single cut beneath the under jaw showed me how to take out the tongue properly.

As evening came on, small groups of buffalo were seen dotting the plain.

At sunrise we saw hundreds where the night before there had been only dozens. From this point on to Fort Wallace, we were never out of sight of these nomads of the "Great American Desert." From the higher points of our route, when the horizon was distant from ten to twenty miles, hundreds of thousands were visible at the same instant. They were not bunched together as cattle are, in droves, but were spread out with great regularity over the entire face of the land.

On the third day of our march, a severe snow-storm set in, accompanied by a fierce north wind--a genuine "norther." This night we were compelled to leave the road and go to the Smoky Hill River for water.

We made our camp at the mouth of a small ravine that led down to the stream through the bluffs, which there form its banks. Millions of buffalo were driven before the storm, and, being prevented by the high banks of the river from crossing either above or below this point, were huddled together in a dense ma.s.s which threatened to overwhelm our little command. By placing our camp a little to one side of this living tide, and under the friendly shelter of the bluff, we pa.s.sed the night in security, while the countless horde kept up its ceaseless tramp.

For six days we continued our way through this enormous herd, during the last three of which it was in constant motion across our path. I am safe in calling this a single herd, and it is impossible to approximate the millions that composed it. At times they pressed before us in such numbers as to delay the progress of our column, and often a belligerent bull would lower and shake his s.h.a.ggy head at us as we pa.s.sed him a few feet distant. Of course our fare was princ.i.p.ally buffalo meat during this trip, and killing them soon ceased to be a sport.

The next year--the winter of '72 and '73--this herd, during its southward migration, extended as far west as Fort Lyon, or some seventy miles farther west than its route of previous years. It was probably driven to this course by the extension westward of settlements in Kansas and Nebraska. This was the last great migration of the southern herd of buffalo. Millions and millions were killed this season, and their hides and tongues shipped east over the Union Pacific, Kansas Pacific, and Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe railroads, and this leads me to the short story I have to tell.

The winter had been especially severe. The entire country north of the Arkansas valley was deeply covered with snow, while the valley itself was comparatively open. The quarters in which I lived faced the south.

The yard in the rear of my house was inclosed by a board fence about seven feet high, and a wide gate afforded means for entrance.

One night, in the late winter, or early spring, the region was visited by one of those terrific storms for which this section is so justly celebrated. The wind blew with a violence such as I had never before experienced, the air was filled with drifting snow, and the temperature was in the neighborhood of zero.

About the break of dawn I was awakened by my servant, who said to me: "Lieutenant, the wind blew your back gate open last night, and a buffalo has come in and taken refuge under the shelter of the fence."

It was only necessary for me to raise myself in bed and look out of the window, which was at its foot, to verify this fact. I directed that my gun and a few cartridges should be brought me, and while my servant held up the window, I, still lying in bed, gave this solitary old bull a broadside at fifty yards range. At the salutation, he started out through the gate, and before I could reload, was out of sight behind the fence, so I rolled over to resume my morning's nap.

Two or three hours later, word was brought me that I had killed the buffalo, and that his body was lying about two hundred yards back on the plain. I went out to him and took his tongue as my reward. Investigation showed that I had shot him through the lungs, and that he had been able to go thus far before succ.u.mbing to his mortal wound.

Poor, miserable, old tramp! He had evidently been driven out of the herd to die, having become a useless member of its society, and in killing him I spared him a few days of further suffering, and scored a record of buffalo-killing rarely or never paralleled.

_George S. Anderson._

The White Goat and his Country

In a corner of what is occasionally termed "Our Empire of the Northwest," there lies a country of mountains and valleys where, until recently, citizens have been few. At the present time certain mines, and uncertain hopes, have gathered an eccentric population and evoked some sudden towns. The names which several of these bear are tolerably sumptuous: Golden, Oro, and Ruby, for instance; and in them dwell many colonels and judges, and people who own one suit of clothes and half a name (colored by adjuncts, such as Hurry Up Ed), and who sleep almost anywhere. These communities are brisk, sanguine, and nomadic, full of good will and crime; and in each of them you will be likely to find a weekly newspaper, and an editor who is busy writing things about the neighboring editors. The flume slants down the hill bearing water to the concentrator; buckets unexpectedly swing out from the steep pines into mid-air, sailing along their wire to the mill; little new staring shanties appear daily; somebody having trouble in a saloon upsets a lamp, and half the town goes to ashes, while the colonels and Hurry Up Eds carouse over the fireworks till morning. In a short while there are more little shanties than ever, and the burnt district is forgotten. All this is going on not far from the mountain goat, but it is a forlorn distance from the railroad; and except for the stage line which the recent mining towns have necessitated, my route to the goat country might have been too prolonged and uncertain to attempt.

I stepped down one evening from the stage, the last public conveyance I was to see, after a journey that certainly has one good side. It is completely odious; and the breed of sportsmen that takes into camp every luxury excepting, perhaps, cracked ice, will not be tempted to infest the region until civilization has smoothed its path. The path, to be sure, does not roughen until one has gone along it for twenty-eight hundred miles. You may leave New York in the afternoon, and arrive very early indeed on the fifth day at Spokane. Here the luxuries begin to lessen, and a mean once-a-day train trundles you away on a branch west of Spokane at six in the morning into a landscape that wastes into a galloping consumption. Before noon the last sick tree, the ultimate starved blade of wheat, has perished from sight, and you come to the end of all things, it would seem; a domain of wretchedness unspeakable. Not even a warm, brilliant sun can galvanize the corpse of the bare ungainly earth. The railroad goes no further,--it is not surprising,--and the stage arranges to leave before the train arrives. Thus you spend sunset and sunrise in the moribund terminal town, the inhabitants of which frankly confess that they are not staying from choice. They were floated here by a boom-wave, which left them stranded. Kindly they were, and anxious to provide the stranger with what comforts existed.

Geographically I was in the "Big Bend" country, a bulk of land looped in by the Columbia River, and highly advertised by railroads for the benefit of "those seeking homes." Fruit and grain no doubt grow somewhere in it. What I saw was a desert cracked in two by a chasm sixty-five miles long. It rained in the night, and at seven next morning, bound for Port Columbia, we wallowed northward out of town in the sweating canvas-covered stage through primeval mud. After some eighteen miles we drew out of the rain area, and from around the wheels there immediately arose and came among us a primeval dust, monstrous, shapeless, and blind. First your power of speech deserted you, then your eyesight went, and at length you became uncertain whether you were alive. Then hilarity at the sheer discomfort overtook me, and I was joined in it by a brother American; but two Jew drummers on the back seat could not understand, and seemed on the verge of tears. The landscape was entirely blotted out by the dust. Often you could not see the roadside,--if the road had any side. We may have been pa.s.sing homes and fruit-trees, but I think not. I remember wondering if getting goat after all--But they proved well worth it.

Toward evening we descended into the sullen valley of the Columbia, which rushes along, sunk below the level of the desert we had crossed.

High sterile hills flank its course, and with the sweeping, unfriendly speed of the stream, its bleak sh.o.r.es seemed a chilly place for home-seekers. Yet I blessed the change. A sight of running water once more, even of this overbearing flood, and of hills however dreary, was exhilaration after the degraded, stingy monotony of the Big Bend. The alkali trails in Wyoming do not seem paradises till you bring your memory of them here. Nor am I alone in my estimate of this impossible hole. There is a sign-post sticking up in the middle of it, that originally told the traveler it was thirty-five miles to Central Ferry.

But now the traveler has retorted; and three different hand-writings on this sign-post reveal to you that you have had predecessors in your thought, comrades who shared your sorrows:

Forty-five miles to water.

Seventy-five miles to wood.