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AMERICA'S GREATEST HL^YorSOUND 



55 



Bad Lands on the Old Missouri Near Judith 



deer and elk and other large game is appalling. It threatens the ex- 

 tinction of the noble animals that make Montana's forest attractive 

 for the sportsmen of the nation. Once, after the construction of the 

 Great Northern railway through Northern Montana, west of Kalispell 

 the business of killing deer and shipping the hides furnished profitable 

 employment for many hunters, and the records of the Great Northern 

 railway show that in one season there were shipped out of the little 

 village of Troy, on the western boundary line of Montana, more than 

 ten thousand deer hides. The old timers in that region of the state 

 refer to that period as "the deer skin age." It is said that deer hides 

 in those days passed as currency. The settled price of each hide was 

 twenty-five cents. They were accepted at the grocery store and the 

 cobbler's shop, or at the restaurant, or in the newspaper office as the 

 currency of the country. The editor of the little local paper at Libby 

 once said that the gallant young swain who took his best girl to a 

 dance in Libby paid the entrance fee in four deer skins. 



"The brutality of the slaughter, the uselessness and villainy of it 

 all, appalls one now to hear the story told. Men, without a drop of 

 red blood in their veins, have been known to sit on the banks of the 

 Kootenai river, with a high power rifle, and shoot a dozen deer on 

 the opposite side of the river as the gentle animals came to the water's 

 edge to drink. They were shot for the pleasure of seeing them fall. 

 The meat of the splendid creatures thus slaughtered, sufficient in quan- 

 tity to feed the starving armies of the kingdom of Greece, was left for 

 the buzzards and coyotes. The bones of thousands of deer whitened 

 in the forests of Northwestern Montana every spring, when the 'sports- 

 men' got through. 



"This year the hunting in that section of the country is not as good 

 as it was even a year ago. The remarkable severity of last winter 

 left a trail of death through Lincoln and Flathead county forests. The 

 deer starved in thousands, or were pulled down in the deep snow by 

 the lions and cougars, and other beasts of prey, and slaughtered in 

 myriads. The hunting in that part of the world is still good, and the 

 real sportsmen, with ideas of true sport, may still find pleasure and 

 profit in a brief period during the hunting season. But the time for 

 the slaughter of deer, under our law, is too long. The fifteen days 



