CONDITION OF WILD LIFE WEST OF THE 

 GREAT PLAINS 



No one can visit the states west of the great plains, and 

 come in touch with twelve state game commissioners and 

 other friends of wild life, without acquiring some very 

 definite impressions regarding the present status of wild 

 life in those states. From facts and figures thus obtained 

 on the spot, there is small chance to appeal. 



Summed up in a few words, I have returned from my 

 tour of the far-western states with a feeling of profound 

 depression, and the conviction that outside of the actual 

 game sanctuaries the wild game of the West now is being 

 swept away, by guns and automobiles, so fast that in a few 

 brief years those plains, mountains and forests will be swept 

 as clear of killable game as the Desert of Sahara. 



Nowhere, outside of the game preserves, is there the 

 slightest indication that any game which can legally be 

 hunted is breeding as rapidly as it is being killed. For every 

 man who will say that "the game is holding its own," there 

 are at least ten who will say: "The game is going, fast!" 



In Colorado, as late as 1900 teeming with what seemed 

 to be an inexhaustable supply of deer, all deer shooting is 

 now prohibited. The people of Colorado have been forced 

 to give their remnant of deer a long close season, to ward 

 off their complete extermination ! 



Everywhere, save in two localities that we will not name, 

 the small remnant herds of prong-horned antelope are re- 

 ported to be "decreasing all the time ;" and this in spite of 

 the fact that no antelope hunting is permitted anywhere 

 in the United States. The decrease is due to illegal killing, 

 and to the wolves and coyotes. 



Although the sage grouse now exists only in pitiful rem- 

 nants (in all save three or four spots), no state has yet 

 given that fast-vanishing species a long close season. In 

 each one of the states that still contains a few of these 



