From the supply which Yellowstone Park affords, state and city parks
and various game-preserves are being stocked. Experienced men round up
the yearling elk into corrals near the railway sidings, and there load
them into freight-cars, with plenty of alfalfa hay, and then they are
forwarded to their destination. Many carloads are shipped each winter.
The writer recently visited the park in winter to see the game animals.
Heavy snows covering their pastures drive them down from their high
ranges to the lower hills, cañons, and draws about Gardiner and Mammoth
Hot Springs, and here the Government, during times of storm and stress,
feeds them alfalfa hay and thus saves them from starvation. Elk by
hundreds, or even thousands, dot the hillsides,--there are from 30,000
to 40,000 of them by actual count,--while antelope in goodly numbers
range on the open and lower hill-slopes. In Gardiner Cañon beside the
road the beautiful mule-deer and the white-tailed deer, touchingly
innocent and trustful, and the mountain-sheep--the big-horn
fellows--stand or lie, eating alfalfa, and enjoying the protecting care
of a beneficent, animal-loving government. They become almost as
domesticated as barn-yard animals. Indeed, at Mammoth Hot Springs, the
deer actually haunt the kitchen doors and rear themselves on their hind
legs against the porch railings, or even climb the steps and peer into
the doors and windows, mutely begging for food, which they often take
from one's hand. At night they lie on the snow under the large trees,
or, in some cases, even sleep in the large cavalry-barns, which have
been vacant since the soldiers were removed from the park in the fall
of 1916.
Over at the bison range and corral on Lamar River, in the northeastern
corner of the park, one sees an interesting sight. Here the mountain
scenery of the park reaches its finest development. In summer or winter
the ride to the corral from Mammoth Hot Springs is a treat. In summer
the bison herd of about three hundred--there is a so-called wild herd
of about a hundred some miles farther south--ranges in a beautiful
valley and on the adjoining hills and mountain-slopes near the
Petrified Forest and Death Gulch. It is under the care of a keeper who
lives here with his family, in a comfortable home provided by the
Government. The bison are rounded up at intervals during the summer so
that their condition and whereabouts shall be always known. The herd
originally consisted of only twenty-one animals, purchased by the
Government in 1902 at a cost of $15,000.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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