Excepting for the white-tailed deer and the elk, it is to-day a grave question whether there will be any big game hunting in the United States twenty years hence.
The Prong-Horned Antelope
It is now painfully certain that nevermore will there be any hunting of the prong-horned antelope in our country. There has been none for several years, but for all that the remaining bands are everywhere (save in two localities) reported as steadily diminishing. Even in the Yellowstone Park the antelope herds are now but little better than stationary. Excepting the goat and musk-ox, the prong-horn is North America’s most exclusively American species of big game. It is so very odd that it occupies a Family all alone. It is the only living hollow-horned ruminant that sheds its horns, every year.
But this nimble-footed rover is not fitted to withstand the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune A. D. 1916. It has no more staying power than a French poodle, and it wilts and dies literally at the first breath of adversity. It will not breed in captivity, nor does it live long in any kind of confinement. It is subject to an incurable mouth disease called lumpy-jaw, and will secretly and joyously carry the unseen germs of it for six months for the purpose of passing quarantine and inoculating an innocent herd in some unsuspecting Zoological Park.
PRONG-HORNED ANTELOPE
From a painting by Carl Rungius
Half a dozen Western States have little isolated bands of antelope that they are trying to preserve; but all save two are steadily diminishing. In the Montana and Wichita Bison Ranges, of 29 and 14 square miles, efforts are being made to establish herds. Canada is making two large prairie preserves, under fence, especially for the purpose of saving the antelope from extinction. Taking all these efforts together, there is a fighting chance that the species eventually will be saved from oblivion, but at present the odds are very much against it. As a sport with the rifle, however, legitimate prong-horned antelope hunting is already as extinct as mammoth-spearing on glacial ice.
Mountain Sheep
