300 SADDLE AND CAMP 



the Gallatin and Absaroka National Forest Re- 

 serves are or are not more valuable than the elk 

 does not enter into the question. If we are to 

 keep these elk which we have reared in Yellow- 

 stone National Park, we must feed them. I do 

 not believe the people of the United States want 

 the animals killed. 



Hague and others have been working for sev- 

 eral years to have the government take steps to 

 exclude sheep from an ample range contiguous 

 to the park. On the fourth of March of the 

 present year Governor Norris of Montana 

 signed a bill creating what is to be known as 

 the Gallatin County Game Preserve, its special 

 object being to provide a range for the Yellow- 

 stone National Park elk moving northward 

 from the park. The Federal government will 

 of course exclude sheep from this preserve in 

 which Montana prohibits hunting. But it is a 

 vastly insufficient area, extending but four miles 

 northward from the park boundary and but 

 twenty miles in length. It is, however, a step 

 in the right direction, but it must be extended 

 considerably to be of any great value in pre- 

 venting wholesale starvation. 



My horseback journey, begun on the Arizona 

 desert under the scorching sun of June, ended 

 at Emigrant, Montana. It was winter now, and 



