WILD ANIMALS THAT TOOK THEIR OWN PICTURES 



833 



dolent at the garbage piles behind the 

 park hotels, and it has been estimated 

 that each season more than 5,000 pic- 

 tures are taken at distances varying from 

 5 to 100 feet. Ordinarily so wary and 

 secretive are these animals that photo- 

 graphing them is a difficult task, and I 

 can only recall two good pictures of 

 bears taken in the wilderness. Thus no 

 more striking reason can te given for the 

 camera hunters passing by such animals 

 when they have become tamer than many 

 kinds of domestic stock. If pictures are 

 taken in game reservations the conditions 

 under which they are obtained should be 

 clearly indicated. 



At the urgent request of the former 

 superintendent, General Young, and re- 

 peated by his successor, Major Benson, 

 I consented on my next trip up the river 

 to Bridger Lake to take a series of pic- 

 tures of park moose, because, as they 

 said, upon such tangible evidence the ex- 

 istence and abundance of these animals 

 would be more readily established in the 

 minds of those not familiar with my in- 

 vestigations or the verbal report made 

 thereon. So far as known, not one of the 

 200,000 tourists in the previous 15 years 

 had seen a moose within the boundaries 

 of the park, and this, it was contended, 

 warranted the waiver of my rule. 



In the accompanying pages are a few 

 of the moose the camera saw, and they 

 represent a still smaller fraction of those 

 seen at a distance or when the failing 

 light made the camera useless. On this 

 trip I counted some 300 moose, allowing 

 when possible for duplication on succes- 

 sive days. During one afternoon, from 

 an outlook on the mountain side, I saw 

 19 feeding at one time and all within a 

 radius of a mile. 



On the way up the river I looked par- 

 ticularly for shed antlers, finding a num- 

 ber along the banks and many more in 

 the willow thickets, where the moose 

 browsed in winter time. Selecting a 

 dozen of the best, they were brought out, 

 the residents at Gardner expressing as- 

 tonishment at an antler they had never 

 seen in Montana before yet the ani- 

 mals that once bore them lived hardly 50 

 miles away. This collection, now in the 



possession of the Biological Survey, rep- 

 resents three distinct types, with sev- 

 eral intermediate forms — variations due, 

 doubtless, to the high altitude of the val- 

 ley ?nd the inbreeding of the original 

 stock. In the southeast arm and up the 

 valley to Bridger Lake I saw compara- 

 tively few cows with calves early in the 

 season. 



On the third trip, made during Sep- 

 tember and October, 1910, we camped 

 two weeks in the long south arm of the 

 lake and found this locality to be as little 

 frequented by man as that on the other 

 side of the dividing promontory, al- 

 though a beautiful island in the center of 

 the bay affords a splendid camping place, 

 and from it we watched the moose and 

 elk day after day. Here we found the 

 nursery of the cow moose, and fully 80 

 per cent of the 400 seen were cows and 

 calves. 



On the second afternoon 21 moose, in- 

 cluding two bulls, were seen at one time 

 in the shallow water of the bay — a sight 

 rarely witnessed in the districts where 

 this animal is deemed most abundant. It 

 was now the mating season of the elk, 

 and no more exciting scene can be imag- 

 ined than the great bulls fighting for su- 

 premacy, while the cows and calves 

 looked on with awe. As late as October i 

 not half the bull moose had their antlers 

 free of velvet, and consequently were in 

 a less combative mood than the elk. 



I think it can be safely said that there 

 are 1,500 moose living throughout the 

 year in the valley of the Upper Yellow- 

 stone, an area 2 to 5 miles wide and 20 

 long. Until a visit is made in midwinter 

 on snow-shoes, when the animals have 

 yarded, it will be impossible to estimate 

 the number accurately. On the accom- 

 panying map, page 818, an x has been 

 used to designate where moose were seen 

 during the three seasons of investigation. 

 On the shores of either arm of the lake 

 the X mark shows the farthest the ani- 

 mal was seen to the north, while at inter- 

 mediate points they were more or less 

 abundant. Since my original trip many 

 of these animals or their offspring have 

 taken possession of smaller valleys in the 

 park, and many others have reached 



