1904 



FORESTRY AND IRRIGATION 



me a good deal of game while riding 

 up to his house at the Mammoth Hot 

 Springs. Hardly had we left the little 

 town of Gardiner and gotten within the 

 limits of the park before we saw prong- 

 buck. There was a band of at least a 

 hundred feeding some distance from the 

 road. We rode leisurely toward them. 

 They were tame compared to their kin- 

 dred in the unprotected places ; that is, 

 it was easy to ride within fair rifle range 

 of them; but they were not familiar in 

 the sense that we afterwards found the 



stone and in the plains south of the 

 Golden Gate. While migrating the}- go 

 over the mountains and through forests 

 if the occasion demands. Although there 

 are plenty of coyotes in the park, there 

 are no big wolves, and, save for very in- 

 frequent poachers, the only enemy of the 

 antelope, as indeed the only enemy of 

 all the game, is the cougar. 



Cougars, known in the park as else- 

 where through the West as ' ' moun- 

 tain lions," are plentiful, having in- 

 creased in numbers in recent years. 



PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT AND MAJOR PITCHER. 



bighorn and the deer to be familiar. 

 During the two hours following my en- 

 try into the park we rode around the 

 plains and lower slopes of the foothills 

 in the neighborhood of the mouth of the 

 Gardiner, and we saw several hundred 

 probably a thousand all told of these 

 antelope. Major Pitcher informed me 

 that all the prong-horns in the park win- 

 tered in this neighborhood. Toward the 

 end of April or the first of May they 

 migrate back to their summering homes 

 in the open valleys along the Yellow- 



Except in the neighborhood of the Gar- 

 diner River that is, within a few miles 

 of Mammoth Hot Springs I found them 

 feeding on elk, which in the park far 

 outnumber all the other game put to- 

 gether, being so numerous that the rav- 

 ages of the cougars are of no real damage 

 to the herds. But in the neighborhood 

 of the Mammoth Hot Springs the cou- 

 gars are noxious because of the ante- 

 lope, mountain sheep, and deer which 

 they kill, and the superintendent has 

 imported some hounds with which to 



