The Slaughter of Big Game, &c. 41 



" I doubt if a single licence has ever been procured, yet there were 

 more than a dozen men in town this fall who ought to have paid for 

 one." 



For bighorn certain limited districts in the arid interior of 

 British Columbia were once somewhat frequently visited by sports- 

 men who had never shot that beast in Wyoming or Colorado. 

 But even there I have heard of only three moderately good bags 

 ever being made, the one by Admiral Sir Michael Culme-Seymour, 

 whose keenness and walking powers were altogether above the 

 ordinary. Along the main chain of the Rockies in East Kootenay, 

 in the extreme south-east corner of the province there was very 

 good ground (approachable from the Great Northern Railway), but 

 whether it is so still is a question I would not like to answer off- 

 hand, considering the actively carried on construction of the 

 Canadian Pacific Railway. A region where I think good sport 

 can still be obtained is in the Rockies, between the Crow's Nest 

 Pass in Kootenay and where the Great Northern crosses the 

 Rockies. 



For black bear British Columbia is a good country, but local 

 knowledge concerning the favourite feeding places at particular 

 periods of the year is absolutely necessary if success is to be 

 achieved. In all my roamings through British Columbia I have 

 only added two black bears to my fourteen or fifteen in the States, 

 but I had bad luck in both regions with them. Caribou are hard 

 to get, and at best do not offer anything like the attraction other 

 big game does. In two instances that I know of, the lazy man 

 who stayed in camp bagged fine specimens, while the keen and 

 tireless friend, roaming the woods all day, failed to obtain a 

 single shot. 



In conclusion, let me give a few practical hints concerning 

 the working of the game laws of the Western States. Considering 

 that of late years the various State legislatures are constantly 

 tinkering at their game laws always in the direction of greater 

 stringency it might be misleading to give definite details of 

 the regulations concerning the rights of aliens to shoot game 



