288 AN AMERICAN HUNTER 



early eighties there were still large regions where every 

 species of game that had ever been known within historic 

 times on our continent was still to be found as plentifully 

 as ever. In the early nineties there were still big tracts 

 of wilderness in which this was true of all game except 

 the buffalo ; for instance, it was true of the elk in portions 

 of northwestern Wyoming, of the blacktail in northwest- 

 ern Colorado, of the whitetail here and there in the 

 Indian Territory, and of the antelope in parts of New 

 Mexico. Even at the present day there are smaller, but 

 still considerable, regions where these four animals are 

 yet found in abundance; and I have seen antlers of wapiti 

 shot since 1900 far surpassing any of which there is record 

 from Hungary. In New England and New York, as 

 well as New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, the whitetail 

 deer is more plentiful than it was thirty years ago, and 

 in Maine (and to an even greater extent in New Bruns- 

 wick) the moose, and here and there the caribou, have, on 

 the whole, increased during the same period. There is 

 yet ample opportunity for the big game hunter in the 

 United States, Canada and Alaska. 



While it is necessary to give this word of warning to 

 those who, in praising time past, always forget the oppor- 

 tunities of the present, it is a thousandfold more neces- 

 sary to remember that these opportunities are, neverthe- 

 less, vanishing; and if we are a sensible people, we will 

 make it our business to see that the process of extinction 

 is arrested. At the present moment the great herds of 

 caribou are being butchered, as in the past the great herds 

 of bison and wapiti have been butchered. Every be- 



