INTRODUCTION xi 



so it will be until the State departments estab- 

 lished for the supervision of game are divorced 

 from politics, and commissioners and wardens 

 are appointed because special training, rather 

 than political preferment, qualifies them. 



Winter after winter, for many years, persis- 

 tent reports have come out of the Jackson's 

 Hole country in Wyoming of an appalling mor- 

 tality among the elk of that region, due to star- 

 vation, and by a visit to Jackson's Hole I hoped 

 to learn something of the true extent of the 

 mortality. 



In the spring of 1910 I received a personal 

 report that great numbers of elk had also 

 starved to death during the previous winter in 

 the National Forest Reserves in Montana, just 

 north of and adjoining the Yellowstone Na- 

 tional Park. These were animals, it was said, 

 belonging to herds reared in the Park in sum- 

 mer, but which naturally resort in winter to 

 the lower altitudes of the forest reserves, when 

 snow becomes too deep in the Park for them 

 to forage a living there. 



These reports, it seemed to me, should be 

 investigated, and I proposed to visit the region 

 in question with that in view. Every individual 

 in the United States has a personal interest in 

 the animals inhabiting our national parks, and 



