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
If this bill were to become law in its present form, the object for
which it was created would be largely defeated. One may easily overlook
the fact that an area corresponding to that of California would, on the
Atlantic Coast, extend from Newport, R. I., to Charleston, S. C. It
embraces communities and interests in many respects as widely separated
as those of New England and the Atlantic Southern States. Were one Game
Refuge only to be created in the State of California, unless it included
practically the whole of the reserves south of Tehachapi, protection
would not be afforded to the different species of large a constantly
increasing population, and an ever-increasing interest in big-game
hunting. The designation of one Game Refuge in the Sierra Reserve would
practically not reduce the slaughter of deer in this whole vast region
of southern California. Were the single Game Refuge, which might under
the law be designated, to be placed in southern California, even
although it embraced the entire area of the seven southern reserves, it
would not aid to any great extent in preventing the extinction of game
in the region of the Sierra Reserve, of the Stanislaus Reserve, or of
the great reserves which are doubtless soon to be created in the
northern half of the State. A bill so conceived would not fulfill the
purpose of its creation.
[Illustration: TEMISKAMING MOOSE.]
There are just as cogent reasons of a positive nature why many small
refuges are preferable to a few large ones. It is said that in the
vicinity of George Vanderbilt's game preserves at Biltmore, North
Carolina, deer, when started by dogs even fifteen or twenty miles away,
will seek shelter within the limits of that protected forest, knowing
perfectly well that once within its bounds they will not be
disturbed. The same may be observed in the vicinity of the Yellowstone
National Park; the bears, for instance, a canny folk, and shrewd to read
the signs of the times, seem to be well aware that they are not to be
disturbed near the hotels, and they show themselves at such places
without fear; at the same time that outside the Park (and when the early
snow is on the ground their tracks are often observed going both out and
in) these same beasts are very shy indeed. The hunter soon discovers
that it is with the greatest difficulty that one ever sees them at all
outside of the bounds of the Park. Bears, as well as deer, adapt
themselves to the exigencies of the situation; the grizzly, since the
white man stole from him and the Indian the whole face of the earth, has
become a night-ranging instead of a diurnal creature. The deer, we may
safely rest assured, makes quite as close a study of humans as man does
of the deer. It is a question of life and death with them that they
should understand him and his methods. Both the deer and the hunters
would profit by the widest possible distribution of these protected
areas. Each section of the State is entitled to the benefit to be
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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