Off they started again. The old bull, however, had neither seen me nor smelt me, and when I heard his whistle of rage I knew he had misinterpreted the reason for the departure of his cows, and in another moment he came in sight, evidently bent on rounding them up. On his way he attacked and drove off one of the yearlings, and then took after the cows, while the yearling ran toward the outlying bull. The latter evidently failed to understand what had happened; at least he showed no signs of alarm. Neither, however, did he attempt to follow the fleeing herd, but started off again on his own line.
I was sure the herd would not stop for some miles, and accordingly I resumed my chase of the single bull. He walked for certainly three miles before he again halted, and I was then half a mile behind him. On this occasion he struck a small belt of woodland and began to travel to and fro through it, probably with an idea of lying down. I was able to get up fairly close by crawling on all-fours through the snow for part of the distance; but just as I was about to fire he moved slightly, and though my shot hit him, it went a little too far back. He plunged over the hill-crest and was off at a gallop, and after running forward and failing to overtake him in the first rush, I sat down to consider matters. The snow had begun to melt under the sun, and my knees and the lower parts of my sleeves were wet from my crawl, and I was tired and hungry and very angry at having failed to kill the wapiti. It was, however, early in the afternoon, and I thought that if I let the wapiti alone for an hour, he would lie down, and then grow stiff and reluctant to get up; while in the snow I was sure I could easily follow his tracks. Therefore I ate my lunch, and then swallowed some mouthfuls of snow in lieu of drinking.
TROPHIES IN THE WHITE HOUSE DINING-ROOM
An hour afterward I took the trail. It was evident the bull was hard hit, but even after he had changed his plunging gallop for a trot he showed no signs of stopping; fortunately his trail did not cross any other. The blood signs grew infrequent, and two or three times he went up places which made it difficult for me to believe he was much hurt. At last, however, I came to where he had lain down; but he had risen again and gone forward. For a moment I feared that my approach had alarmed him, but this was evidently not the case, for he was now walking. I left the trail, and turning to one side below the wind I took a long circle and again struck back to the bottom of the valley down which the wapiti had been travelling. The timber here was quite thick, and I moved very cautiously, continually halting and listening for five or ten minutes. Not a sound did I hear, and I crossed the valley bottom and began to ascend the other side without finding the trail. Unless he had turned off up the mountains I knew that this meant he must have lain down; so I retraced my steps and with extreme caution began to make my way up the valley. Finally I came to a little opening, and after peering about for five minutes I stepped forward, and instantly heard a struggling and crashing in a clump of young spruce on the other side. It was the wapiti trying to get on his feet. I ran forward at my best pace, and as he was stiff and slow in his movements I was within seventy yards before he got fairly under way. Dropping on one knee, I fired and hit him in the flank. At the moment I could not tell whether or not I had missed him, for he gave no sign; but, running forward very fast, I speedily saw him standing with his head down. He heard me and again started, but at the third bullet down he went in his tracks, the antlers clattering loudly on the branches of a dead tree.
The snow was melting fast, and for fear it might go off entirely, so that I could not follow my back track, I went up the hillside upon which the wapiti lay, and taking a dead tree dragged it down to the bottom, leaving a long furrow. I then repeated the operation on the opposite hillside, thus making a trace which it was impossible for any one coming up or down the valley to overlook; and having conned certain landmarks by which the valley itself could be identified, I struck toward camp at a round trot; for I knew that if I did not get into the valley where the tent lay before dark, I should have to pass the night out. However, the last uncertain light of dusk just enabled me to get over a spur from which I could catch a glimpse of the camp-fire, and as I stumbled toward it through the forest I heard a couple of shots, which showed that the cook and packer were getting anxious as to my whereabouts.
CHAPTER IX
WILDERNESS RESERVES; THE YELLOWSTONE PARK
The most striking and melancholy feature in connection with American big game is the rapidity with which it has vanished. When, just before the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, the rifle-bearing hunters of the backwoods first penetrated the great forests west of the Alleghanies, deer, elk, black bear, and even buffalo, swarmed in what are now the States of Kentucky and Tennessee, and the country north of the Ohio was a great and almost virgin hunting-ground. From that day to this the shrinkage has gone on, only partially checked here and there, and never arrested as a whole. As a matter of historical accuracy, however, it is well to bear in mind that many writers, in lamenting this extinction of the game, have from time to time anticipated or overstated the facts. Thus as good an author as Colonel Richard Irving Dodge spoke of the buffalo as practically extinct, while the great Northern herd still existed in countless thousands. As early as 1880 sporting authorities spoke not only of the buffalo, but of the elk, deer, and antelope as no longer to be found in plenty; and recently one of the greatest of living hunters has stated that it is no longer possible to find any American wapiti bearing heads comparable with the red deer of Hungary. As a matter of fact, in the early eighties there were still large regions where every species of game that had ever been known within historic times on our continent was still to be found as plentifully as ever. In the early nineties there were still big tracts of wilderness in which this was true of all game except the buffalo; for instance, it was true of the elk in portions of northwestern Wyoming, of the blacktail in northwestern Colorado, of the whitetail here and there in the Indian Territory, and of the antelope in parts of New Mexico. Even at the present day there are smaller, but still considerable, regions where these four animals are yet found in abundance; and I have seen antlers of wapiti shot since 1900 far surpassing any of which there is record from Hungary. In New England and New York, as well as New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, the whitetail deer is more plentiful than it was thirty years ago, and in Maine (and to an even greater extent in New Brunswick) the moose, and here and there the caribou, have, on the whole, increased during the same period. There is yet ample opportunity for the big game hunter in the United States, Canada and Alaska.
While it is necessary to give this word of warning to those who, in praising time past, always forget the opportunities of the present, it is a thousandfold more necessary to remember that these opportunities are, nevertheless, vanishing; and if we are a sensible people, we will make it our business to see that the process of extinction is arrested. At the present moment the great herds of caribou are being butchered, as in the past the great herds of bison and wapiti have been butchered. Every believer in manliness, and therefore in manly sport, and every lover of nature, every man who appreciates the majesty and beauty of the wilderness and of wild life, should strike hands with the far-sighted men who wish to preserve our material resources, in the effort to keep our forests and our game beasts, game birds, and game fish—indeed, all the living creatures of prairie, and woodland, and seashore—from wanton destruction.
Above all, we should realize that the effort toward this end is essentially a democratic movement. It is entirely in our power as a nation to preserve large tracts of wilderness, which are valueless for agricultural purposes and unfit for settlement, as playgrounds for rich and poor alike, and to preserve the game so that it shall continue to exist for the benefit of all lovers of nature, and to give reasonable opportunities for the exercise of the skill of the hunter, whether he is or is not a man of means. But this end can only be achieved by wise laws and by a resolute enforcement of the laws. Lack of such legislation and administration will result in harm to all of us, but most of all in harm to the nature lover who does not possess vast wealth. Already there have sprung up here and there through the country, as in New Hampshire and the Adirondacks, large private preserves. These preserves often serve a useful purpose, and should be encouraged within reasonable limits; but it would be a misfortune if they increased beyond a certain extent or if they took the place of great tracts of wild land, which continue as such either because of their very nature, or because of the protection of the State exerted in the form of making them State or national parks or reserves. It is foolish to regard proper game laws as undemocratic, unrepublican. On the contrary, they are essentially in the interests of the people as a whole, because it is only through their enactment and enforcement that the people as a whole can preserve the game and can prevent its becoming purely the property of the rich, who are able to create and maintain extensive private preserves. The wealthy man can get hunting anyhow, but the man of small means is dependent solely upon wise and well-executed game laws for his enjoyment of the sturdy pleasure of the chase. In Maine, in Vermont, in the Adirondacks, even in parts of Massachusetts and on Long Island, people have waked up to this fact, particularly so far as the common whitetail deer is concerned, and in Maine also as regards the moose and caribou. The effect is shown in the increase in these animals. Such game protection results, in the first place, in securing to the people who live in the neighborhood permanent opportunities for hunting; and in the next place, it provides no small source of wealth to the locality because of the visitors which it attracts. A deer wild in the woods is worth to the people of the neighborhood many times the value of its carcass, because of the way it attracts sportsmen, who give employment and leave money behind them.