Of course it is impossible for wild animals of great size to exist in countries that are covered with farms, villages and people. Under such conditions the wild and the tame cannot harmonize. It is a fact, however, that elk could exist and thrive in every national forest and national park in our country, and also on uncountable hundreds of thousands of rough, wild, timbered hills and mountains such as exist in probably twenty-five different states. There is no reason, except man's short-sighted greed and foolishness, why there are not to-day one hundred thousand elk living in the Allegheny Mountains, furnishing each year fifty thousand three-year-old males as free food for the people. The trouble is,--the greedy habitants _could not_ be induced to kill only the three-year-old-males, in the fall, and let the cows, calves and breeding bulls alone! By sensible management the Rocky Mountains, the Sierra Nevadas and the Coast Range would support enough wild elk to feed a million people. But we Americans seem utterly incapable of maintaining anywhere from decade to decade a large and really valuable supply of wild game. Outside the Yellowstone Park and northwestern Wyoming, the American elk exists only in small bands--mere remnants and samples of the millions we could and should have. _If_ they could be protected, and the surplus presently killed according to some rational, working system, then _every national forest in the United States should be stocked with elk_! In view of the awful cost of beef (to-day 10-1/2 cents per pound in Chicago _on the hoof_!), it is high time that we should consider the raising of game on the public domain on such lines that it would form a valuable food supply without diminishing the value of the forests. Just now (1912) the American people are sorely puzzled by a remarkable elk problem that each winter is presented for solution in the Jackson Hole country, Wyoming. Driven southward by the deep snows of winter, the elk thousands that in summer graze and grow fat in the Yellowstone Park march down into Jackson Hole, to find in those valleys less snow and more food. Now, it happens that the best and most of the former winter grazing grounds of the elk are covered by fenced ranches! As a result, the elk that strive to winter there, about fifteen thousand head, are each winter threatened with starvation; and during three or four winters of recent date, an aggregate of several thousand calves, weak yearlings and weakened cows perished of hunger. The winters of 1908, 1909 and 1910 were progressively more and more severe; and 1911 saw about 2500 deaths, (S.N. Leek).