Many statements to the contrary notwithstanding, I venture to assert that, in spite of the evil doings of the ‘scallawag’ and the meat-hunter, there is still quite enough big game in many parts of the American continent to amply satisfy the desires of any reasonable big game hunter, meaning by that term one who is content to work moderately hard in an exquisite climate, free from fever and other Oriental troubles, for a few good trophies every season, and enough meat to keep his camp supplied.
It is undoubtedly true that you cannot any longer kill hundreds of head of big game to your own rifle in one season; it is also true that the game laws of Canada and the United States have somewhat curtailed the liberty of the sportsman; but it is true too that amongst English sportsmen the number of those who would care to shoot down hundreds of stags, &c. in one season is limited, and that not a few of them realise that the game laws of America, though often ill-framed and always badly enforced, are still in the best interests of those whom they control. There are, of course, mistakes in every code of laws. For instance, it is a mistake I think to protect sheep absolutely in Colorado, while wapiti are not similarly protected; for sheep are now more numerous there than wapiti, are much less easily obtained by the meat-hunter, and are less profitable to him when he has obtained them.
Still, if the Americans would enforce their own laws as rigidly against the native meat-hunter who makes a profit out of shooting as against the alien who pays for his sport, I think no one could justly complain.
Of course the buffalo has disappeared, and the antelope is not as plentiful as he was, while some of the old shooting grounds dear to the memories of the fortunate hunters of twenty years ago have been very much shot out. This is true; but it is also true that if the successors of the Williamsons, Buxtons, Jamiesons, and others of an earlier day would display as much enterprise as those gentlemen did before them, they would probably find fairly good sport still.
The man who follows another to an old shooting ground, getting there by a well-cut trail, or even by railway, to find camps made and the country thoroughly surveyed, naturally does not get as good sport as the ‘first man in,’ and does not deserve it.
An old friend, whose reputation as an Indian sportsman stands as high as any man’s, told me that, though the old grounds were certainly a good deal shot out in India, he knew that close to them were other grounds unvisited which were almost as good (if not quite as good) as the old ones, and this he proved by sending a subaltern nephew off an old route for a very short distance into a country usually passed by, with the result that he got almost as good sport in the nineties as his uncle had had in the sixties.
So it is in America to-day. One man follows another, as sheep follow their leader, and if you trust to guides they will, of course, take you to the places they know from experience, an experience which has been obtained at considerable cost to the game of the district.
As I write I am reminded of an excellent example of that of which I am writing. There is in British Columbia a certain Irish baronet, a most excellent sportsman, who has probably had better sport with cariboo and grizzly than anyone else in the country. His two favourite grounds are now overrun by his followers, but in the year that he cut the trail to his cariboo ground (it took him several days) he had excellent sport, and in Alaska he did so well with bear that next year a friend and myself found that all the skin-hunters in the country were on Sir Richard’s tracks. Of course we went elsewhere. So it is always. On the grounds which you find for yourself you may get excellent sport: on the grounds found for you by other people you have hardly a right to expect it.
Before dealing then with the game list of North America in detail, let me say to the intending sportsman, Don’t be discouraged by every evil report: go and see for yourself: if possible get a hint as to where game is likely to be and then look for a country yourself, not slavishly following your predecessors or entirely depending upon men whom perhaps you don’t know very well to present a stranger with an accurate chart of the best hunting grounds they are acquainted with, the way to which they have discovered by their own hard work.
As in everything else in life, so it is in sport: if you want to get anything worth having, you have got to earn it yourself in one way or another.