1 6 Deer and Antelope of North America 



sary to point out that the wilderness is not a 

 place for those who are dependent upon luxuries, 

 and above all for those who make a camping trip 

 an excuse for debauchery. Neither the man who 

 wants to take a French cook and champagne 

 on a hunting trip, nor his equally objectionable 

 though less wealthy brother who is chiefly con- 

 cerned with filling and emptying a large whiskey 

 jug, has any place whatever in the real life of the 

 wilderness. 



The most striking and melancholy feature in 

 connection 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 backwoods first penetrated 

 the great forests west of the Alleghanies, 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 shrinkage has gone on, only partially 

 checked here and there, and never arrested as a 

 whole. As a matter of historical accuracy, how- 

 ever, it is well to bear in mind that a great 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 Rich- 

 ard Irving Dodge spoke of the buffalo as practi- 

 cally extinct, while the great northern herd still 



