VALUABLE WILD LIFE 41 



sport ever should be permitted. Of course the 

 noxious wild animals must be killed; but that is 

 another story. 



Let me offer one painful illustration of the folly 

 of leaving to the states the preservation of their 

 game, as the sport of politics and favoritism, when 

 it is possible for the nation at large to preserve it. 

 At this moment the states of Wyoming, Montana 

 and Idaho actually permit by law the hunting and 

 killing of their pitiful remnants of mountain sheep. 

 Their laws provide for the killing of rams only, 

 and are supposed to protect the females for breed- 

 ing purposes. But do they really preserve the 

 breeding female sheep ? Emphatically they do not. 

 Wherever sheep or goats are killed, the females 

 disappear fully as rapidly as the males! Is it not 

 strange that none of those states have taken note 

 of this? The result is steady and sure extermina- 

 tion! Wyoming has to-day hardly more than one 

 hundred wild sheep on her hunting-grounds, and 

 the rapacity and determination with which those 

 sheep are hunted by gentlemen sportsmen and their 

 hired guides has an aspect that is positively fiendish. 



The moment the national forests become national 

 game-preserves, from that moment those mountain 

 sheep are assured of real protection. 



The laws of the western and Pacific coast states 

 have been dictated chiefly by the sportsmen the 

 men who kill. They insist upon open seasons, as 

 long as any killable game remains. The pressure 



