GAME ANIMALS OF AMERICA

By W. T. HORNADAY

THE MENTOR

DEPARTMENT OF NATURAL HISTORY

MENTOR GRAVURES

ELK

MOUNTAIN SHEEP

ROCKY MOUNTAIN GOAT

AUGUST 15 1916

MENTOR GRAVURES

CARIBOU

BULL MOOSE

THE BISON LEADER

Mountain Sheep Head

Entered as second-class matter March 10, 1913, at the postoffice at New York, N. Y., under the act of March 3, 1879. Copyright, 1916, by The Mentor Association, Inc.

Does anyone doubt that in North America the hunting of big game,—once marvelously abundant,—is fast becoming an extinct pastime? As a game animal, the American bison is gone. In the United States, antelope hunting is gone, forever. The Arizona elk is totally extinct. In the United States, mountain sheep hunting is extinct in all States save two: and it should be so in those also. Mountain goat hunting is possible in two States only. It is now next to impossible to find and kill a wild grizzly in the United States.

There are many persons, of whom I am one, who believe that in a brief span of years there will be no big-game hunting in the mountain States west of the great plains, save around the borders of big-game sanctuaries, such as the Yellowstone Park.

With the exception of the bison and the Arizona elk, we may even yet see in our mountain States good specimens of some of the big-game species that abundantly stocked them in pioneer days. We are glad that we live contemporaneously with the colossal moose and the unique antelope. We rejoice that we are on terms of intimacy with the lordly elk, and that we have a bowing acquaintance with the goat and sheep. We cherish the thought that we have seen real grizzly bears on their native rocks, and also that we have “done our bit,” as the English say, in saving the great American bison from oblivion.

It is not good for red-blooded men to live in a land that contains no big game. It seems effeminate. To correct such a condition as that, the New Zealanders took thought and colonized in their country the European red deer; and that species has waxed numerous, and produced tens of thousands of deer, for food and for sport.

North America has produced a good quota of big game species; but in that line of native industry we are far surpassed by Asia; and by Africa we are left completely out of sight. Really, Africa seems to have been created as an ideal home for big game. Her array of apes, antelopes, carnivores, and thick-skinned beasts compels unbounded admiration.

ON THE MONTANA BISON RANGE

From a photograph taken in the summer of 1913 by H. W. Henshaw, Chief of the Biological Survey

While our game endures, let us make much of it, and appreciate it to the utmost. And it is not all of game enjoyment to kill it, and cut off its head, and let the bulk of the meat go into the discard. The highest type of big-game hunting is the finding of fine animals in their haunts, photographing them movably and unmovably, and then bidding them go in peace. To be really and truly ignorant of such distinguished American citizens as the moose and musk-ox, caribou, sheep, goat, antelope, deer and Alaskan brown bear, is reprehensible, and should be punishable by a fine.

Many wild animals are more interesting per capita than some men. To learn to know our best wild animals is like annexing new territory. It increases our mental and moral resources, and provides a new channel for the disposition of surplus wealth. Like Cupid’s story, they never seem to grow old, and as long as one hoof or horn remains as a going concern, just that long our interest continues in the wearer thereof.

The most interesting side of every wild animal is its mind,—what it thinks, and why. First of all, however, we must know the personality of our animal and be able to speak its name as promptly as the politician names his voting acquaintances. To call an antelope a “deer” is to lose a vote.

The Saving of Big Game

The characteristic features of America’s big game animals are to be treated as natural history. The wasteful slaughter of them is unnatural history. Ever since the days of Daniel Boone, the American pioneers and exploiters of Nature’s resources have most diligently been exterminating our bison, elk, deer, moose, antelope, sheep, and goats. For twenty years we have been toiling to save the American bison from total extinction.

Thanks to the efforts of the United States and Canadian Governments, the New York Zoological Society and the American Bison Society, the buffalo now is secure against extinction. Our government now owns and maintains six herds, having a total of about 570 head, and the Canadian Government owns about 1,600 head. Our chief hope is based on the herd in the Montana National Bison Range, now containing 134 head, living in a rich pasture of 29 square miles, capable of supporting 1,000 bison without the purchase of a pound of hay. That herd has risen from 37 head presented in 1909 by the American Bison Society. The Wichita and Wind Cave National Herds were founded by herds drawn from the New York Zoological Park, and presented by the Zoological Society.

Excepting for the white-tailed deer and the elk, it is to-day a grave question whether there will be any big game hunting in the United States twenty years hence.

The Prong-Horned Antelope

It is now painfully certain that nevermore will there be any hunting of the prong-horned antelope in our country. There has been none for several years, but for all that the remaining bands are everywhere (save in two localities) reported as steadily diminishing. Even in the Yellowstone Park the antelope herds are now but little better than stationary. Excepting the goat and musk-ox, the prong-horn is North America’s most exclusively American species of big game. It is so very odd that it occupies a Family all alone. It is the only living hollow-horned ruminant that sheds its horns, every year.

But this nimble-footed rover is not fitted to withstand the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune A. D. 1916. It has no more staying power than a French poodle, and it wilts and dies literally at the first breath of adversity. It will not breed in captivity, nor does it live long in any kind of confinement. It is subject to an incurable mouth disease called lumpy-jaw, and will secretly and joyously carry the unseen germs of it for six months for the purpose of passing quarantine and inoculating an innocent herd in some unsuspecting Zoological Park.

PRONG-HORNED ANTELOPE

From a painting by Carl Rungius

Half a dozen Western States have little isolated bands of antelope that they are trying to preserve; but all save two are steadily diminishing. In the Montana and Wichita Bison Ranges, of 29 and 14 square miles, efforts are being made to establish herds. Canada is making two large prairie preserves, under fence, especially for the purpose of saving the antelope from extinction. Taking all these efforts together, there is a fighting chance that the species eventually will be saved from oblivion, but at present the odds are very much against it. As a sport with the rifle, however, legitimate prong-horned antelope hunting is already as extinct as mammoth-spearing on glacial ice.

Mountain Sheep

MOUNTAIN SHEEP

Over the Rocky Mountain sheep there is a halo of glamour that is to every big-game hunter a veritable cloud by day and pillar of fire by night. Standing out conspicuously apart from all other American hoofed game, the big-horn thrills and challenges the gentleman sportsman as no other big game does at this time. (There are fashions, even in the hunting of big game!) A sportsman will go farther, spend more and endure more to get “a big ram” as a trophy of his manhood in the chase than for any other species. Why is it? It is because the old big-horn rams are found where the scenery is grandest and most inspiring; they are the keenest of eye, nose and ear of all our big game, and hunting them successfully means real mountaineering. In Africa a lady can kill a big elephant, but in the Rocky Mountains ladies do not kill big-horn rams with the rings of eight or ten years on their horns.

There are times when hunting the mountain goat becomes sport for men; but many a goat has been killed by an easy fluke. The old big-horn ram, with horns that are worth while, requires real hunting, and many a man has taken the long trail for one and gone back empty-handed.

I should be mighty sorry to see sheep-hunting become an extinct pastime; for ye gods! it is the acme of sport with big game! Elephant hunting (in India, at least) is tame in comparison. Colorado has proved, through 26 years of watchful waiting, that to any mountain sheep State, sheep can be brought back by protection. Twenty-six years ago the sheep of that State were reduced to a dangerously-small remnant, of only a few hundred head. Then the lid was put on, sheep-hunting was forbidden, and, strange to say, even the residents of the sheep mountains elected to observe the law, and also to help enforce it!

The result is a great triumph in protection, to which the commonwealth of Colorado points with pride. To-day that State contains a grand total of 7,482 sheep; and to-day the wild herds come down into the streets of Ouray to be admired, and feted, and fed on hay and photographed. And last September when an urgent official request came to the State Game Warden for permission to kill six of Colorado’s mountain sheep “for scientific purposes,” the proposal was declared impossible without precipitating a riot of the populace.

The true big-horn ranges all the way from Pinacate Peak, in northwestern Sonora, Old Mexico, northward about to Latitude 56 in British Columbia and western Alberta. On the hot, black lava slopes of Pinacate, fearfully lacking in vegetation, the sheep grow small. The species culminates in southwestern Alberta, from the Waterton Lakes up to Wilcox Pass. The biggest head ever shot by a gentleman sportsman, so far as I know, had horns with a circumference of 17¾ inches; and the lucky hunter was Mr. A. P. Proctor, the wild-animal sculptor.

In the United States there are eleven States that still contain wild examples of mountain sheep, but in some cases the total number to a State is painfully small. New Mexico contains only 23 head. Sheep hunting is totally prohibited in all our States save two,—Wyoming and Washington.

No, good reader, mountain sheep do not “jump off precipices and alight safely on their horns.” They never did; and they never will. Their necks are just as breakable as ours are.

Mountain Goat

In oddity and picturesqueness, the white mountain goat and the moose are rivals; and it is hard to say which species is entitled to the championship.

Fortunately for him, the goat is not much sought by white men as food; its head is not inordinately prized as a trophy, and therefore he will survive on his wild and awesome summits long after the last sheep head has gone to grace some hunter’s “den,” and its flesh has been devoured by the golden eagles.

The mountain goat looks a bit like a snow-white pigmy buffalo with small black horns, and long, shaggy hair. It carries its head low, and its stick-like legs give it a stilted and awkward gait. Its shoulders, neck and hindquarters are covered with long, coarse hair, and when the animal is seen on a mountain-top the first thought is: “How very white it is!” I have compared a clean goatskin with a snowbank, and the latter had only one small point the advantage. The goat’s hair shows just a very faint tinge of pale yellow.

ROCKY MOUNTAIN GOAT

The real home of the Rocky Mountain goat is British Columbia, Alberta, and Southern Alaska, but detachments are even yet found sparingly in northwestern Montana, Idaho and Washington. The species should be introduced in the Montana National Bison Range, the Yellowstone Park, and a dozen other places, particularly in Washington and Oregon. It has plenty of stamina, it breeds successfully in captivity, and I believe that it can survive and thrive in any mountain region that is sufficiently cold and dry. It can not endure rain in winter! Everywhere in the United States where this remarkable species still survives, it should at once be given complete protection. In Glacier Park it is now almost a common occurrence for visitors to see wild mountain goats. I saw two myself, near the Sperry Glacier, in 1909, and the flocks are undoubtedly much more numerous to-day.

CARIBOU

In its summer coat, with its antlers “in the velvet”

Mentally and temperamentally the mountain goat is a remarkable animal. It seems to have no nerves! Under no circumstances does a goat lose its head—until it has been shot. Only a few months ago (December 25, 1915) two badly rattled white-tailed deer jumped off the Croton Lake railroad bridge on the Putnam Railroad, near New York, a distance down of about 40 feet, and both were killed by the leap. Two mountain goats would not have done that. They would have “stood pat” to the last second, and waited to see what the locomotive really meant to do. Deer and sheep are hysterical animals, and when cornered will leap off ledges to certain death; but the goat, never! He stands at bay, and calmly waits to see what will happen. That is why Mr. John M. Phillips, State Game Commissioner of Pennsylvania, was able in 1905, at the risk of his life, to obtain at a distance of eight feet the surpassingly fine photograph shown herewith. Considering it in every way, I think that this is the finest wild animal photograph I have ever seen, and surely one of the best that has ever been made.

CARIBOU FAWNS

In the New York Zoological Park

I believe that the mountain goat will be the last of the big-game species of the open mountains of North America to be exterminated by man. The sheep, moose, caribou and musk-ox will go long in advance of the ubiquitous goat. In protected areas like Glacier Park and the Elk River Game Preserve of southeast British Columbia, the species should endure for a century, or perhaps for two centuries. Why not? In such protected sanctuaries they should finally increase to such an extent that the natural overflow will make legitimate goat-hunting in the surrounding mountains. I should be sorry to see goat-hunting become a lost art; for it is mighty fascinating,—provided you stop with two goats and can return with a clear conscience.

The Caribou

Europe and Asia have the reindeer, but North America has a truly grand array of caribou species. In size and geography they range all the way from the absurd little Peary caribou of Ellesmere Land, which looks like a goat with deer antlers upon it, to the giant of the Cassiar Mountains, known as Osborn’s caribou. Roughly speaking, our North American species are divided by their antlers into two groups, the Woodland and the Barren Ground. The important species of the latter are the Greenland caribou, the Peary, the Barren Ground, the Grant and Kenai. Of the Woodland group the leading species are the Newfoundland, Canadian, Black-Faced, and Osborn’s. The gravure shown herewith is a very fine presentation of the Canadian Woodland species from an oil painting by Carl Rungius, now owned by the Duquesne Club, Pittsburgh.

ELK

Its antlers are “in the velvet”—only half developed. The animal has its summer coat of hair

The Barren Ground caribou exists in the greatest numbers of any mammalian species, great or small, now inhabiting the earth. The immense throngs that have been seen by Warburton Pike, C. J. Jones and others, while on their annual southward migration, literally stagger the imagination. Undoubtedly there are millions of individuals, and they offer a sharp commentary on the ability of Nature to multiply her live stock, and keep it up to the highest standard, without any help from man.

ELK HERD IN THE NEW YORK ZOOLOGICAL PARK

Is it not a pleasing thought that even in this age of universal slaughter there is one big-game species that still exists in millions, on our own continent? To-day the Barren Ground caribou is protected by distance and the frost king. But this condition is too bright to last. Ere long,—perhaps to-morrow,—the Canadians will build a railroad from Fort Churchill, on Hudson Bay, straight through the heart of the Barren Ground caribou range to the Arctic coast, and then the ranks of the caribou will be depleted.

The caribou are members of the Deer Family, but one and all they exhibit many unique features. Their antlers are flat, the females have horns, their muzzles are large and square-ended, their feet are very broad and spreading,—like snow-shoe hoofs,—and their heads are carried low. The caribou gait is a swift, far-striding trot.

In the United States caribou are found at two points only: in Maine and northern Idaho;—but we no longer guarantee the latter. South of the Barren Grounds of northern Canada the best localities for caribou are Newfoundland, the Cassiar Mountains, the Iskoot country of British Columbia, the White River country of western Yukon Territory and the Alaska Peninsula.

The Osborn caribou is a grand animal, every way considered. The white Peary caribou, of Ellesmere Land, is very small, its head is more deer-like than that of any other caribou, and it looks like a misfit white deer with imitation caribou antlers upon its head. Unlike all other members of the Deer Family, the female caribou has horns; but they are small and weak.

The Moose

The moose is an animal as odd and picturesque as if it had come to us straight from Wonderland. Walk between those colossal legs and under that high-holden body, gaze on those snow-shovel antlers, consider the amazing overhang of that nose, and then say where an equally amazing combination can be found on this continent.

BULL MOOSE—THE CHALLENGE

From a painting by Belmore Browne

This animal is the Colossus of the Deer Family. If his wits were equal to his bulk, no man with a gun ever would see a live moose save through binoculars, and we never would acquire any antlers save those discarded by the animal. The homeliest members of the Deer Family are its female moose in calving time, beside which warthogs and hippopotami are sirens and sylphs.

A full-grown bull moose in October or November is, as we have already insinuated, a wonder. No mammoth, nor mastodon, nor sabretoothed tiger ever was any more so. I am glad that I have lived in the day of that astounding beast. I never yet really wished to kill a moose, even though I have often been told that I should shoot one, for the sake of my reputation as a sportsman. But I never did. I would like to see 100 moose in a week,—as I once came near doing,—but I do not like the thought of destroying a big bull moose.

ANTLERS OF “GIANT” ALASKAN MOOSE

In the Reed-McMillin Collection, New York Zoological Park. The spread is 76 inches. Probably the finest pair of moose antlers “in captivity”

The moose of the greatest horns and the longest skulls are found in Alaska. The Kenai Peninsula is for them the greatest of all places, and there the grandest antlers have been produced. The bull stands seven feet high at the shoulders,—and no man ever yet has weighed a whole adult animal,—so far as is known to this writer. The finest moose picture ever made, by lens or by brush, is the great painting owned by the New York Zoological Society, which was executed by Carl Rungius in 1915. The model that posed for that bull’s antlers hangs in the Reed-McMillin collection of the National Heads and Horns, in the next room to mine, and the road for the doubting Thomases is short and easy.

No; the moose does not prefer to live in thick timber; although in Maine and northern Minnesota the timber of the moose is quite thick enough for all practical purposes. The ideal home of the moose is burned-over tracts of timber, wherein the brush grows rankly, the obstructing trees are absent, and in running or traveling the moose has only to stride over fallen trunks lying four feet high, and always about. The moose is the only land animal now living on this continent that is physically qualified, with a standing of 100 per cent, to travel fast over “down timber” and get away with it.

We must admit that in eastern captivity the moose cannot thrive anywhere south of Canada. The climate of New York city is like poison to moose, caribou and antelope. The salt-laden rains of winter, at 32° Fahrenheit are to blame. In New Brunswick, through wise laws rigidly enforced, (as a rule) the moose are increasing, even though hunted every year. In Maine, moose-hunting has been stopped. The great State game preserve in northern Minnesota contains many hundred moose, quite well protected. Strangest of all, there now are hundreds of moose in northwestern Wyoming, where the species long has been absolutely protected, and there are about 700 in the Yellowstone Park.

The Musk-Ox

During our own times, the Barren Ground musk-ox has been completely exterminated throughout the region west of the Mackenzie River, and also eastward from the Mackenzie for about 500 miles. Only seventy years ago, or thereabouts, herds of live musk-ox were found about fifty miles southeast of Point Borrow; but since that time the species has been exterminated throughout an area as long as from New York to Chicago.

MUSK-OX IN THE N. Y. ZOOLOGICAL PARK

To me every living musk-ox is a source of continual wonder. I am staggered by the fact that a warm-blooded animal, quite sheep-like in its general nature and mode of life, and which lives well in New York City, can survive and thrive and breed and be happy on the most northerly land in the world. The fact that whole herds of musk-ox can find food throughout the awful Arctic night, survive storms of unbelievable violence and duration, and cold that the human mind scarce can comprehend,—and voluntarily live under such conditions,—seems almost beyond belief.

And yet here in New York, wet in winter and hot in summer, we keep musk-ox comfortable in captivity for five years; and they do not suffer from the heat as much as do the men who take care of them. A part of our success is due to the fact that we keep our musk-ox dry, and never allow cold rains to come upon them. They have not yet bred; and we are at a loss to understand why.

A naturalist-historian given to light speaking might be tempted to say that the two musk-ox species were developed and placed in the frozen North for the support of explorers, and the promotion of geographic knowledge. For example, without the musk-ox herds as a base, Peary might never have attained the North Pole. It was he who killed and ate a musk-ox at the most northerly point of land in the world,—the northeast corner of Greenland. Whole herds of musk-ox have been killed and eaten by hungry explorers and the Eskimos and their dogs. The flesh of this animal should taste more like mutton than beef, but the man does not live who could distinguish it from beef of the same age. Evidently there are conditions under which a musk-ox bull has a perceptibly musky odor, but I have never been able to detect the slightest trace of it in any of the animals of my personal acquaintance.

There are two species. The White-Fronted Musk-ox has a broad band of soiled white hair across its face, just below the horns; and it inhabits Greenland and all the islands and lands westward thereof, down to the mainland of North America. The Barren Ground Musk-ox is the one of the Barren Grounds of northern Canada, and its lowest latitude is 64°, at the head of Chesterfield Inlet, which is at the northwestern corner of Hudson Bay.

Like nearly all the large land animals, the musk-ox is of gregarious habit, and maintains itself in herds of small size, usually not exceeding thirty or forty head. Its sharp, down-dropping horns seem to have been specially designed by nature to puncture the hide of the big white arctic wolf, which seeks big game at its farthest north. Whenever a musk-ox herd is attacked by wolves, or by dogs, the adult bulls and cows immediately form themselves into a hollow circle, with the calves inside; and thus they stand literally shoulder to shoulder, facing outward with horns at the “ready,” quite able to repel all attacks save those with firearms. If a dog or wolf comes near enough to a musk-ox so that there appears to be a chance to impale it, out rushes the musk-ox in a swift charge. Usually the nimble footed canine escapes unharmed, and as soon as it is beyond reach the musk-ox quickly returns to his place in the circle. The definiteness and precision with which the charge is made and the return accomplished shows a high degree of strategic intelligence; and thus is the fittest enabled to survive.

The musk-ox has two coats of hair—a sweater and a rain-coat. The sweater is of fine and dense fur, practically impervious to cold. The rain-coat is a suit of rather long and rather coarse straight hair, which hangs over and completely covers the inner coat, for the purpose of shedding snow and rain. The body color of the animal is a rich chocolate brown, and the legs are dull gray. Naturally one would expect to see a musk-ox provided with a broad, spreading hoof, like the snow-shoe hoof of the caribou; but this is not the case. The musk-ox hoof is rather small and compact.

Structurally this remarkable animal is half ox and half sheep,—just as its generic name, Ovibos, implies. It has no visible tail, and its drooping horns strongly resemble those of the Cape buffalo, of Africa.

For four years the New York Zoological Park has maintained the only herd of musk-ox ever kept in captivity. It started in 1910 with six animals, three of which still survive.