304 OUR FEDERAL LANDS 



ance of game. The point I make is that custom, 

 meaning the average point of view toward wild ani- 

 mal life, constitutes the difference between the phi- 

 losophy of those days when hunting was a necessary 

 part of the business of life, and of these when the 

 urge of need has departed and shooting is frankly 

 for sport's sake. 



One of the more apparent differences is that the 

 grosser man, unfortunately numerous in all nations 

 and times, in those days possessed, naturally, both 

 gun and opportunity. It was he who boasted day's 

 records in pigeons and killed buffalo from car win- 

 dows for the sake of the shot. Skin hunting, sister 

 enterprise with fur trapping, was also a large ele- 

 ment in the Great Slaughter which followed the 

 opening of the West. The unusual vogue of the 

 "buffalo-robe" is not so long passed but that many 

 of us recall it. There was a time when skin wraps 

 were too cheap and common all over the country to 

 be fashionable. The business was well organized, it 

 covered all North America in time, and while it lasted 

 was highly profitable. 



"The mighty herd of buffalo ranging the 

 plains," wrote Grinnell, "the undisturbed existence 

 of countless elk, deer, and antelope, the invasion of 

 the country by the railroads, the slaughter of the 

 skin hunters, the rapid killing off of the game and its 

 practical extermination, the conversion of the game 

 ranges into cattle ranges and of the cattle ranges 

 into ranch lands, our tardy awakening to the waste 



