36 Sport and Life. 



section, " it is the possession with intent to export in their raw 

 state which is prohibited, and there is no evidence here of any 

 such intention." Probably he was legally quite right, and that the 

 fault lies at the door of the legislature, through whose act these 

 21,000 deer skins were driven on a triumphal car. 



Probably all these deer were killed the previous winter by 

 Indian and white skin-hunters on the numerous densely timbered 

 islands that dot the channel between the mainland and Vancouver 

 Island, and slaughtered in most cases simply for the sake of their 

 skins, worth a few shillings each, for it appears from the local press 

 that " hundreds of carcasses of deer may be found rotting on the 

 mountain sides and in the woods." 



Other writers as well as myself have been accused in some 

 quarters of crabbing the game resources of British Columbia, and 

 as many a sportsman's as well as goldseeker's eye is turned towards 

 the North Pacific coast just now, a word of explanation will be not 

 out of place here. What constitutes "GOOD" big game shooting 

 must ever remain a matter of individual opinion. Be that opinion 

 whatever it may, it should, to give it value, spring from bond fide 

 motives that have no connection with any desire to benefit other 

 than the sportsman. When I say that I do not by any means con- 

 sider British Columbia the big game hunter's paradise which it has 

 been made out to be, it is only fair to premise that my judgment 

 may possibly be more or less warped by the exceptionally good 

 sport I had previously enjoyed in American territory Wyoming, 

 Montana, and Idaho. For big game shooting I consider the two 

 countries could simply not be compared, for in the latter the quan- 

 tity and diversity of big game was as far beyond one's most sanguine 

 expectations, as it was below pessimistic anticipations in British 

 Columbia. When I turned for the first time towards British 

 Columbia, entering the Kootenay District from Idaho, I very 

 speedily discovered that the dense forests, even if an equal quantity 

 of game were there, reduced the sportsman's chances to a minimum, 

 save in the case of mountain "goat," for which British Columbia 

 is by far the best field that I know, for in their case dense woods, 



