272 AN AMERICAN HUNTER 



killed, and no cow or calf should under any circumstances 

 be touched. Formerly, when wapiti were plentiful, it 

 would have been folly for hunters and settlers in the 

 unexplored wilderness not to kill wild game for their 

 meat, and occasionally a cow or a calf had to be thus 

 slain; but there is no excuse nowadays for a hunting party 

 killing anything but a full-grown bull. 



In a civilized and cultivated country wild animals 

 only continue to exist at all when preserved by sports- 

 men. The excellent people who protest against all hunt- 

 ing, and consider sportsmen as enemies of wild life, are 

 ignorant of the fact that in reality the genuine sports- 

 man is by all odds the most important factor in keeping 

 the larger and more valuable wild creatures from total 

 extermination. Of course, if wild animals were allowed 

 to breed unchecked, they would, in an incredibly short 

 space of time, render any country uninhabitable by man 

 a fact which ought to be a matter of elementary knowl- 

 edge in any community where the average intelligence 

 is above that of certain portions of Hindoostan. Equally, 

 of course, in a purely utilitarian community all wild ani- 

 mals are exterminated out of hand. In order to preserve 

 the wild life of the wilderness at all, some middle ground 

 must be found between brutal and senseless slaughter and 

 the unhealthy sentimentalism which would just as surely 

 defeat its own end by bringing about the eventual total 

 extinction of the game. It is impossible to preserve the 

 larger wild animals in regions thoroughly fit for agri- 

 culture; and it is perhaps too much to hope that the 

 larger carnivores can be preserved for merely aesthetic 



