298 SADDLE AND CAMP 



might be argued that the sheep are of greater 

 value to the country than wild animals. But 

 this is not the case. There are thousands of 

 square miles of unoccupied public ranges else- 

 where where the sheep barons might take their 

 flocks and leave these ranges to the animals to 

 which they belong, and this without the slight- 

 est loss to the country at large. But it would 

 inconvenience the sheep barons to do this, and 

 the Federal authorities with the utmost docil- 

 ity appear to have surrendered everything to the 

 sheep men. 



In the spring of 191 1 the carcasses of more 

 than one thousand elk that had starved to death 

 during the previous winter lay along the Yel- 

 lowstone River within a distance of twenty-one 

 miles north of Gardiner. I have been unable 

 to get even an approximate estimate of the large 

 number of animals that perished during the 

 winter east of the Yellowstone and north of 

 the park, but the starvation rate was horrible. 

 Reports from the western part of Gallatin 

 County and in Madison County, west to the 

 Madison River, including the territory north 

 of Henry Lake in Idaho, west and northwest of 

 the park, show that immense numbers of ani- 

 mals starved to death throughout this whole 

 region between January, 191 1, and the opening 



