A pathetic picture is printed in Dillon Wallace's splendid book, "Saddle and Camp in the Rockies." It tells a sad story. One settler told him there had been times when he could walk half a mile on the bodies of dead elk. Instead of helping its wards, the Federal Government actually gave permits to sheepmen which would have devastated the last refuge of the elks. The settlers saved the situation by holding an indignation meeting. "The sheepmen saw the point—and the rope—and discreetly departed."
In Germany the game animals are cared for in winter. While visiting Mark Twain's daughter and her husband, the eminent pianist-composer, Ossip Gabrilowitsch, in the Bavarian Highlands, in the summer of 1912, we met at their house a young tenor who was also a mighty hunter before the Lord. He gave us an account of the game laws and the general arrangements for preservation and multiplication, which convinced us that if we are to retrieve the errors and crimes of our predecessors, East and West, we must follow the example of Germany.
Pointing to the meadows round about, he explained that the hay made on these is preserved and fed to the deer in winter. Often one may see as many as a hundred at a time assembling for their daily meal, and people come all the way from Munich to see them at it.
As it had been found that too much hay or other dry food was not good for the deer, the owners of private game preserves, of which there are many, have taken to planting beets, turnips or potatoes, which remain in the ground till the animals dig them out from under the snow and soil.
A suggestive detail regarding the protection of birds is that thickets, bristling with thorns, are specially provided to help them during nesting time and when pursued by birds or beasts of prey. The clearing away of thickets in America has done almost as much as actual slaughter in exterminating birds. Lovers of song birds as well as epicures who like game for a change would unite in blessing our railway companies if they followed the German example of planting shrubs as homes for birds all along the railroad embankments.
While the Germans are fond of partridges and other game birds, their favorite food, so far as the feathered tribes are concerned, is the domesticated goose. In the markets, especially of the northern cities, more geese are exposed for sale than all other kinds of poultry combined, and in restaurants Gänsebraten is seldom absent from the menu. The French rather look down on roast goose, but that is because their roast goose is not so juicy and tender as the Prussian, whether owing to a difference in variety or rearing I cannot tell.
The Germans are most painstaking in the growing and the proper feeding of this bird. They know that corn fodder yields the largest amount of fat—and goose fat is much in demand—while the finest Flavor is secured by feeding barley malt.
The best goose, like the best beef, is grown where there is abundant pasturage. There is less of this in the Empire than there used to be, hence large numbers of geese are imported. From six to seven millions of them are annually brought across the border, mostly from Russia. Every day, a special "goose train," consisting of from fifteen to forty cars crosses the Russian frontier bound for Berlin or Strassburg.
Deer in German Forest