Wilderness Reserves 



On April 8, 1903, John Burroughs and I reached 

 the Yellowstone Park and were met by Major 

 John Pitcher of the Regular Army, the Superin- 

 tendent of the Park. The Major and I forthwith 

 took horses; he telling me that he could show me 

 a good deal of game while riding up to his house 

 at the Mammoth Hot Springs. Hardly had we left 

 the little town of Gardiner and gotten within the 

 limits of the Park before we saw prong-buck. 

 There was a band of at least a hundred feeding 

 some distance from the road. We rode leisurely 

 toward them. They were tame compared to their 

 kindred in unprotected places ; that is, it was easy 

 to ride within fair rifle range of them; but they 

 were not familiar in the sense that we afterwards 

 found the bighorn and the deer to be familiar. 

 During the two hours following my entry into the 

 Park we rode around the plains and lower slopes 

 of the foothills in the neighborhood of the mouth 

 of the Gardiner and we saw several hundred — 

 probably a thousand all told — of these antelope. 

 Major Pitcher informed me that all the prong- 

 horns in the Park wintered in this neighborhood. 

 Toward the end of April or the first of May they 

 migrate back to their summering homes in the open 

 valleys along the Yellowstone and in the plains 

 south of the Golden Gate. While migrating they 



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