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.