American Big Game in Its Haunts: The Book of the Boone and Crockett Club
History
American Big Game in Its Haunts: The Book of the Boone and Crockett Club
Big game hunting -- United States
This country, with its splendid glaciers and mountains covered with
snow, presents quite the most beautiful scenery to be found within the
limits of the United States, exclusive of Alaska, and, before many
years, is destined to become a place of general resort for
travelers. For this to be accomplished, all that is needed is greater
facility of travel. It would be a thousand pities if we should tolerate
the extermination of the elk, which would afford delight to every one
who visited the Olympics, if only the herd might be preserved. One can
hardly blame the hunters for taking advantage of the laxity of public
sentiment. The State has it within its power easily to protect these
animals by the employment of two or three game detectives of the right
sort--keen, energetic men. These would soon break up the illicit traffic
and bring the offenders to justice. The people of the whole Pacific
seaboard, who are justly proud of their region, and of every trait
peculiarly its own, would bitterly lament the final disappearance of elk
from this whole countryside, yet the fact remains that hardly a voice
there, outside of the organization of the "Elks," is raised to protest
against these flagrant acts of vandalism which are taking place beneath
their very eyes.
This visit to the northern forest was full of varied and commanding
interest, but the chief occupation of my summer, when all is said, was
with California.
Deer are practically the only game to be considered in these southern
California reserves. There are mountain sheep to the east, in the
mountains of the Mojave and Colorado deserts, but they are almost
unmolested by the hunters of the seaboard country, and, except in rare
instances, are no longer found in the reserves. Occasionally odd ones
are seen, venturesome, determined individuals, on their travels, in the
energy of youthful maturity, tempted by curiosity, but these soon
realize that they are not secure where so many humans abound, and scurry
back to their desert fastnesses. As refuges are created and breeding
grounds established, sheep will return, and, it is hoped, make their
permanent home in the reserves. There are still enough of them in
scattered places for this purpose. I was told of one method of hunting
in the desert hills, sometimes resorted to by Indians and white men of
the baser sort, that seems hateful and unsportsmanlike. The springs at
which they drink are long distances apart. In some instances the alleged
sportsmen camp by these and watch them without intermission for three
days and nights, at the end of which period, when the sheep are
exhausted by thirst, the hunter has them at his mercy. This has nearly
as much to commend it to the self-respecting sportsman as the practice
of imitating the cry of the female moose to lure the bull to mad
recklessness and his undoing, a challenge hard for a courageous animal
to resist, a treacherous snare set before his feet. It would seem as if
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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