Wilderness Reserves 



black-tail in the valley, which were tame and un- 

 suspicious, although not nearly as much so as those 

 in the immediate neighborhood of the Mammoth 

 Hot Springs. One mid-afternoon three of them 

 swam across the river a hundred yards above our 

 camp. But the characteristic animals of the region 

 were the elk — the wapiti. They were certainly 

 more numerous than when I was last through the 

 Park twelve years before. 



In the summer the elk spread all over the in- 

 terior of the Park. As winter approaches they 

 divide, some going north and others south. The 

 southern bands, which, at a guess, may possibly in- 

 clude ten thousand individuals, winter out of the 

 Park, for the most part in Jackson's Hole — 

 though of course here and there within the limits 

 of the Park a few elk may spend both winter and 

 summer in an unusually favorable location. It was 

 the members of the northern band that I met. 

 During the winter time they are very stationary, 

 each band staying within a very few miles of the 

 same place, and from their size and the open 

 nature of their habitat it is almost as easy to count 

 them as if they were cattle. From a spur of Bison 

 Peak one day, Major Pitcher, the guide Elwood 

 Hofer, John Burroughs and I spent about four 

 hours with the glasses counting and estimating the 



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