Hunting in Many Lands: The Book of the Boone and Crockett Club

by Unknown

A great work was accomplished when Congress was persuaded to forever dedicate this marvelous region as a National Park, for the benefit of the entire country; and it was hoped and expected that Congress would, in time, supplement the organizing Act by the needful additional legislation. But this was not to be had for many years to come. For some time after the year 1872, the reservation was occasionally visited by a few adventurous spirits or Government parties on exploring expeditions. During that period it became the refuge of the large game which had gradually receded from the lower country before the advance of settlement and railroads. The abundance of game astonished all who beheld it. Bears, deer, elk, sheep, moose, antelope, buffalo, wolverines and many other kinds of wild beasts were collected within an area which afforded peculiar advantages to each and all. Nowhere else could such a gathering of game be found in one locality. It should be remembered that those who visited the Park in the early days we have mentioned confined their investigations to a limited portion of it. The great winter ranges and breeding grounds were almost unknown. During this period, game killing was so slight and the supply so great that restrictions, by those exercising a very uncertain authority in the reservation, were hardly pretended to be enforced.

But from about the year 1878 the depredations on the game of the Park attained alarming proportions. The number of visitors had largely increased. The skin hunter and the record hunter—twin brothers in iniquity—appeared on the scene, and their number grew from year to year. It was then that regulations and prohibitions were promulgated from the Department of the Interior, but they were known to contain only vain threats, which could be defied with impunity. And so the slaughter continued, and likewise other depredations. Learned associations, sportsmen's associations, visitors of all lands, showered petitions upon Congress to pass some protective law. All that Congress did, however, was in 1883 to confer authority for the use of troops in the Park. This was something, and the effect of their presence was very beneficial, and insured the only protection the Park had until the present time. Congress seemed affected with an apathy which no appeals could change. The result was non-action.

Some Congressmen thought they were justified in declining to take any interest in the matter, because few, if any, of their constituents had ever visited the Park. Others thought that it should be a Wyoming or Montana affair, and should be turned over to one or the other of those then territories. A few seemed to labor under the impression that the Park was nothing but a private pleasure ground, resorted to by the wealthy class, and that it was no part of the Constitutional functions of a Republican Government to afford security to wild animals, or to incur any expense therefor. These narrow views were not shared by most of the principal men in Congress; among these we had many staunch friends, including especially several who held seats in the Senate. Chief among them was Senator Vest, of Missouri, who at all times was found ready to do everything in his power to promote the welfare of the Park. Senator Manderson, of Nebraska, and many others were quite as willing. It was largely due to the gentlemen we have named that the Senate, as a body, was imbued with their views, and on all occasions recognized the important national objects to be attained by the Park, not only as a great game preserve, but also as a great forest reservation of the highest economic importance.

With the assistance of some of the present members of the Boone and Crockett Club, a bill was framed which afforded in its provisions ample protection to the Park, while it added largely to its area on the south and on the east, embracing the great breeding grounds of the elk. This bill was introduced by Senator Vest. But new difficulties now arose, more serious than any hitherto encountered. By the completion of the Northern Pacific Railroad a large influx of travel set in toward the Park. It was now thought money was to be made there. Railroads through it were talked about. Mines, situated near its northern border, were said to contain untold wealth, needing only a railroad for their development. A mining camp, called Cooke City, was started, and it was urged that a railroad could reach it only by going through the Park. Corporate influences made themselves felt. The bill introduced by Senator Vest again and again, in session after session, passed the Senate. The promoters of a railroad through the Park thought they saw their opportunity. Afraid to launch their scheme of spoliation before Congress as an independent measure, they sought to attach it as a rider to the Park bill. They reasoned that those who desired the passage of that bill regarded it as so important that they would be willing to consent to its carrying a railroad rather than see all legislation on the subject dropped or defeated. The plan was well conceived, but failed of execution. The friends of the bill recognized that it was wiser to leave the Park unprotected than to consent to what would be its destruction. They recognized that, once railroads were allowed within the Park, it would be a reservation only in name, and that before long the forests and the game would both disappear. They therefore refused the bait held out to them by the railroad promoters, who thereafter always blocked the passage of the Park bill. In return they were always defeated in their own scheme. The House Committee having the protection bill in charge never failed to burden it with the railroad right of way whenever it came to them, blandly ignoring the evident fact that a railroad was not an appropriate nor a relevant feature to a law for the protection of the Park. And so it happened that the bill which had been the child of affection became an object of dread, and was denounced as bitterly as it had before been advocated by its original friends. It was thought better to have it die on the calendar than to take the risk of its adoption by the House of Representatives with the obnoxious amendment incorporated by the committee.

Apart from that amendment, it was feared the bill would not only encounter an opposition instigated by pecuniary interests, but might itself fail to call to its support any counteracting influence. Those who opposed the railroad, and notably the members of the Boone and Crockett Club, who invariably appeared before the Public Lands Committee to argue against it, were at the very least stigmatized as "sentimentalists," who impeded material progress—as busybodies, who, needing nothing themselves, interfered to prevent other people from obtaining what was necessary and beneficial to commerce. With practical legislators such animadversions are frequently not lacking in force, for nothing more incurs their contempt than a measure which has not what they call a practical object, by which they mean a moneyed object. While throughout the country there was considerable general interest taken in the preservation of the Park, such influence was not sufficiently concentrated to make itself felt by Congress. The Park was everybody's affair, and in the House of Representatives no one could be found to take any special interest in it. And so the fight went on from year to year. In Congress after Congress the bill was passed in the Senate, and emerged from the House Committee on Public Lands weighted down by the burden of the railroad. Secretary after Secretary of the Interior protested against this feature of the bill, and so did every officer of the Government who had any part in the administration or exploration of the Park. But their protests were without effect on the committee, which in those days seemed to regard the railroad as the most important feature of the bill.

It was clearly shown that the railroad would not only be most harmful to the Park, but could serve no useful purpose; for it was quite possible for a railroad to reach the mines without touching the Park, whereas the projected route cut through the Park for a distance of some fifty miles. The public press throughout the country was almost unanimous in denouncing the threatened invasion of the reservation. But the railroad in interest had a strong lobby at work, and many of the inhabitants in the territories and States nearest the Park showed the most selfish indifference to its preservation, and a greedy desire to plunder it. The railroad lobbyists were very active. They saw the necessity of trying to avoid openly outraging public opinion. Accordingly they changed the bill, so that, instead of conferring a right of way through the Park, it segregated and threw out of the reservation that portion through which the railroad was to go. This was supposed to be a concession to public sentiment; but it must have been thought that the public were very easily deceived, for there was really no concession at all, save to the railroad interests. Instead of a right of way through a portion of the Park, they now asked, and were offered by the committee, the land itself. The Committee of the House proposed that this land should be thrown out of the Park, and any and all railroads be allowed to scramble for it. The area thus doomed is situated north of the Yellowstone River, and constitutes one of the most attractive portions of the Park. It includes the only great winter range of the elk. In the winter there can be seen there some 5,000 animals, and no one who has traveled over this region in summer has failed to observe the enormous number of shed horns, showing how extensively the range is resorted to by this noble animal. Here too can be found a large band of antelope at all times, numbering about 500, and a smaller, but considerable, band of mountain sheep.

The friends of the Park succeeded in stopping the proposed railroad legislation, but they could accomplish nothing else in Congress. They had more success with another branch of the Government. There was a statute authorizing the President to set apart any part of the public domain as a forest reservation. Taking advantage of this, certain members of the Boone and Crockett Club saw an opportunity of substantially obtaining the enlargement of the Park which they had been vainly endeavoring to obtain from Congress. They laid the matter before General Noble, then Secretary of the Interior. He recommended to President Harrison that the tract in question should be constituted a forest reserve. This was done. In 1891 the President issued a proclamation, establishing the Yellowstone Park Forest Reserve. It embraced some 1,800 square miles, abutting on the east and south boundaries of the Park. The Secretary afterward had the same regulations extended to the Reserve as had been put in operation in the Park. This important action was followed by further proclamations, instituting other forest reservations in different sections of the country. The Executive and its representative, the Department of the Interior, have at all times been most sympathetic and helpful in the movement for forest and game preservation. They have sternly resisted all assaults upon the Park.

The organization of the Boone and Crockett Club had been a great step toward Park protection. Its membership included those who had shown most interest in obtaining legislation. One of the main objects of the society was the preservation of the game and the forests. It brought together a body of men whose motives were entirely disinterested, and who were able to make their influence felt. To their efforts must be largely attributed the success which was ultimately attained. But that success might have been indefinitely deferred had not Congress been awakened to its duty by an event as shocking as it was unlooked for.

For years one of the cherished objects of the Park had been the preservation of perhaps the only surviving band of buffalo. It had sought refuge in the mountains. It was known to be on the increase and it was supposed that it would remain unmolested. Its number had been estimated as high as 500. Its habitat was a wild and rugged country, affording a seemingly secure asylum. For a long time these buffalo remained comparatively safe. In the summer it would have been of no use to slaughter them for their heads and hides. In the winter the snow was so deep and their haunts so remote as to render it well nigh impossible to pack heads or hides out to a market. But a desperate man was found to take desperate chances. The trouble came to the Park from the mining camp of Cooke. A notorious poacher named Howell made it his headquarters. Its proximity to the northeast boundary of the Park made it a convenient point from which to conduct his raids and to which he might convey his booty. If he killed even a single buffalo, and safely packed out of the Park its head or hide, he was sure of realizing a large sum. If he was captured while making the attempt, he knew he was safe from punishment, and that there was no penalty, even if there was an offense. A less lawless man might have indulged a flexible conscience with the idea that, as there was no punishment, there was no crime. A similar view of ethics had been indulged in by a prominent member of the gospel, who had killed game in the Park, and sought extenuation on the ground that he had not violated any law. But Howell was not a man who sought to justify his actions; it was sufficient for him that he incurred no risk. The time he selected for his deed of destruction he thought the most propitious for covering up his tracks. His operations were conducted in the most tempestuous weather in that most tempestuous month, March, in the year 1894. The snow then was deepest, and Howell felt there would be little chance of interference by scouting or other parties. Eluding the guard stationed in the northern portion of the Park, on stormy nights, he stole into the Park and built a lodge in the locality where the buffalo wintered. In it he stored his supplies, which he had conveyed on a toboggan. He traveled on skis, the Norwegian snowshoes, ten feet long, which are generally used in the Northwestern country. This enabled him to traverse the roughest mountain range with ease and great rapidity, even in the deepest snow. Once established, the killing was an easy matter. He had only to find the buffalo where the snow was deep. The ponderous, unwieldy animals had small chance of escape from his pursuit. His quarry was soon located, and he needed no assistance to make a surround; for, while the frightened, confused beasts were plunging in the snow, in a vain attempt to extricate themselves, the butcher glided swiftly around them on his snowshoes, approaching as close as he chose. With his rapid-firing gun he slaughtered them as easily as if they had been cattle in a corral. How many he killed will never be known. The remains of many of his victims will never be found.