182 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



Forest Service Ranger Station. 



j. k. carper,' forest service hunter at billy meadow, wallowa national forest, oregon, with a few speci- 

 mens of the bear and other animals killed in and about the station. 



multiplication of game animals is re- 

 moved. If no other check is introduced, 

 the game will become so numerous that 

 eventually, no matter how large the 

 area of their feeding grounds, it will be 

 insufficient. Around the Yellowstone 

 Park many elk now die miserably in 

 hard winters, when they must seek feed 

 below the level of their summer range, 

 because the ranchman and the stock- 

 man have closed in about them. Ob- 

 viously feeding grounds for wild game 

 can not be provided indefinitely; some- 

 where the line must be drawn. Hunting 

 is one means of holding in check the 

 natural increase. It is clear that in 

 handling the game question there must 

 be applied the same conservation prin- 

 ciple which is involved in many other 

 matters. The natural balance of nature 

 must be replaced by an artificial 



balance, devised with a view to the 

 largest possible satisfaction of human 

 requirements. 



Man makes the earth over. He can 

 not do otherwise. He must enter the 

 struggle for existence, and interfere 

 with what is, in order to live. The only 

 question is whether he shall make it 

 over intelligently or blindly; by fore- 

 seeing consequences and bringing to 

 pass that which he has deliberately 

 chosen, or by running amuck. The 

 game question requires the exercise of 

 foresight and intelligent choice, to the 

 end that where the best interests of all 

 of us allow and call for the preservation 

 of this form of wild life it may be so 

 preserved as to afford the largest 

 measure of human satisfaction, with the 

 smallest measure of drawbacks includ- 

 ing the drawback of unnecessary suffer- 

 ing to the game animals themselves. 



