136 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 



who kills female hoofed game for sport can prop- 

 erly be called a sportsman, nor can he be said to 

 have a code of ethics. But there is one exception 

 to this otherwise universal rule regarding female 

 hoofed game, and I mention it because of the very 

 great rarity of such cases. It relates to the elk of 

 the Yellowstone Park. 



For many years past, the finest and largest male 

 elk of the Yellowstone Park herds have been shot 

 to death outside the Park by sportsmen and 

 poachers, for their heads and "tusks." As a result 

 of this relentless culling-out process, it is now very 

 difficult to find in Wyoming or Montana a large 

 bull elk with a really heavy and imposing pair of 

 antlers. The twelve- point bulls are not only very 

 few in number, but their antlers are, as a rule, light 

 and mediocre. And yet, the actual number of elk 

 in the Yellowstone region is 47,000; and only 

 recently there was great elk starvation in the Jack- 

 son Valley, the winter home of the great park herds. 



As an actual fact, there is at present a great over- 

 supply of female elk and an alarming insufficiency 

 of winter grazing-grounds. In addition to these 

 evils, the sires of the great elk herds are immature 

 animals,, really unfit for breeding purposes; and 

 their calves, many of them, are too weak to survive 

 their first winter. 



This situation is beset with problems and diffi- 

 culties. Our own answer to the puzzle is that the 

 stock of breeding females must resolutely be 



