Wild Animals at Home

By the Same Author THE BOOK OF WOODCRAFT AND INDIAN LORE WILD ANIMALS I HAVE KNOWN TWO LITTLE SAVAGES BIOGRAPHY OF A GRIZZLY LIFE HISTORIES OF NORTHERN ANIMALS ROLF IN THE WOODS THE FORESTERS' MANUAL

I. A Prairie-dog town In N. Y. Zoo. Photo by E. T. Seton
by Ernest Thompson Seton Author of Wild Animals I Have Known , Two Little Savages , Biography of a Grizzly , Life Histories of Northern Animals , Rolf in the Woods , The Book of Woodcraft . Head Chief of the Woodcraft Indians With over 150 Sketches and Photographs by the Author
Garden City New York Doubleday, Page & Company 1923
Copyright, 1913, by Ernest Thompson Seton All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

My travels in search of light on the Animals at Home have taken me up and down the Rocky Mountains for nearly thirty years. In the canyons from British Columbia to Mexico, I have lighted my campfire, far beyond the bounds of law and order, at times, and yet I have found no place more rewarding than the Yellowstone Park, the great mountain haven of wild life.
Whenever travellers penetrate into remote regions where human hunters are unknown, they find the wild things half tame, little afraid of man, and inclined to stare curiously from a distance of a few paces. But very soon they learn that man is their most dangerous enemy, and fly from him as soon as he is seen. It takes a long time and much restraint to win back their confidence.
In the early days of the West, when game abounded and when fifty yards was the extreme deadly range of the hunter's weapons, wild creatures were comparatively tame. The advent of the rifle and of the lawless skin hunter soon turned all big game into fugitives of excessive shyness and wariness. One glimpse of a man half a mile off, or a whiff of him on the breeze, was enough to make a Mountain Ram or a Wolf run for miles, though formerly these creatures would have gazed serenely from a point but a hundred yards removed.