22 ECONOMIC MAMMALOGY 



milk, of which considerable is consumed in some localities. Some 

 other countries also engage extensively in the dairying industry. In 

 addition to the milk of cows and goats, that of reindeer, camels and 

 llamas is used as food by their owners. 



Turning now to wild mammals, it is, of course, much more diffi- 

 cult to make even a satisfactory guess at the number available for 

 food or the amount of meat therefrom actually consumed annually. 

 We shall see in another chapter how very important they were as 

 food for the early explorers and settlers in the United States and 

 British America. In North America at the present time the members 

 of the deer family are far the most important large game mammals. 

 Since the elk has been so restricted in its range and reduced in num- 

 bers in the United States, the only really important one now is the 

 deer. The bison is no longer available in a wild state, bears, mountain 

 sheep and mountain goats are not sufficiently abundant or easy to ob- 

 tain, and moose and elk are not only confined to few localities, but 

 the total number in the country is small. The prong-horned antelope, 

 once more abundant than bison over an immense area extending from 

 Mexico northward far into British America, is no longer common 

 in most regions, and hunting them is entirely forbidden in nearly all 

 states where they were once abundant. 



Deer have been exterminated or are so scarce in about one-third 

 of the states that there is now no open season for them and in some 

 other states the open season is very short, with a limit usually of 

 but one animal to each hunter during the season. In many localities 

 where game laws have been wisely devised and well enforced the deer 

 have increased, and in places are as abundant as they ever were. It is 

 estimated that there are about 600,000 deer in the national forests 

 alone. An average of about 75,000 are killed in the states annually, 

 which yield about 11,250,000 pounds of meat, according to Palmer, 4 

 worth, at twenty cents a pound, $2,250,000. 



In British America the wild caribou, closely related to the domesti- 

 cated reindeer, is still found in great herds, which occur also in Alaska. 

 One herd in migration, estimated at from 100,000 to 200,000, is said 

 to have been fourteen days in passing Fort Rae, in such an unbroken 

 mass that "daylight could not be seen" through the column, 5 and an- 

 other herd was estimated at 25,000,000 animals. 6 This animal is a 



4 Palmer, Game as a national resource, U. S. Dept. Agrlc. Bull, No. 1049, 1922. 

 6 Preble, North American Fauna, No. 27, p. 141, 1908. 



6 Seton, The Arctic prairies, p. 259, New York, 1917, cited in Adams, Roosevelt 

 Wild Life Bulletin, in, 575-576, 1926. 



