CHAPTER IX 



WILDERNESS RESERVES; THE YELLOWSTONE PARK 



THE most striking and melancholy feature in connec- 

 tion with American big game is the rapidity with which 

 it has vanished. When, just before the outbreak of the 

 Revolutionary War, the rifle-bearing hunters of the back- 

 woods first penetrated the great forests west of the Alle- 

 ghanies, deer, elk, black bear, and even buffalo, swarmed 

 in what are now the States of Kentucky and Tennessee, 

 and the country north of the Ohio was a great and almost 

 virgin hunting-ground. From that day to this the shrink- 

 age has gone on, only partially checked here and there, 

 and never arrested as a whole. As a matter of historical 

 accuracy, however, it is well to bear in mind that many 

 writers, in lamenting this extinction of the game, have 

 from time to time anticipated or overstated the facts. 

 Thus as good an author as Colonel Richard Irving Dodge 

 spoke of the buffalo as practically extinct, while the great 

 Northern herd still existed in countless thousands. As 

 early as 1880 sporting authorities spoke not only of the 

 buffalo, but of the elk, deer, and antelope as no longer to 

 be found in plenty; and recently one of the greatest of 

 living hunters has stated that it is no longer possible to 

 find any American wapiti bearing heads comparable with 

 the red deer of Hungary. As a matter of fact, in the 



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