32 GAME REFUGES. 



and no elk remained there ; and then what happened ? They brought 

 in some elk from the Yellowstone National Park, and restocked it. 



Mr. Mondell. Not from the Yellowstone National Park, but from 

 Jacksons Hole. 



Dr. Hornaday. Well, it was from the Yellowstone herd. I am 

 glad you mentioned that. The Big Horn Mountains furnish one of my 

 object lessons. The State of Wyoming permitted the extermination 

 of the Big Horn elk, and there was nothing left there at all. That 

 shows how well the State of Wyoming has preserved its wild game. 



Mr. Mondell. Mr. Hornaday, will you allow me to interject into 

 your remarks a statement to the effect that I know as a matter of 

 personal knowledge that the elk never were entirely exterminated 

 from the Big Horn Mountains. 



Dr. Hornaday. Well, all I can say to that is that I was informed 

 for years that no elk remained in the Big Horn Mountains. I never 

 went there to see. I accepted the statements of men of Wyoming. 

 Now, that is what happened. I think that even Mr. Mondell will 

 admit that the elk of the Big Horn Mountains were reduced practi- 

 cally to the point of extermination. 



Mr. Mondell." The herd was very greatly reduced, as is usually 

 the case in the first years of settlement of country like that, when 

 everybody is carrying a rifle. It always happens that way. 



Dr. Hornaday. Now, that very same thing would have happened 

 to the elk of the Yellowstone National Park but for that national 

 breeding ground in which those elk could bear and rear their young 

 absolutely unmolested. What happens when those Yellowstone elk 

 go over into Idaho in the fall ? They are met with a fusilade of rifle 

 shots as they struggle through the snow. I know an instance of a 

 whole herd having been exterminated in two days. You have all 

 heard of those that recently went north into Montana, and what 

 happened when they got there. 



Now, that is the spirit of the West ; and that is what is making all 

 this trouble. The State legislatures alone can not cope with that 

 spirit. The State legislatures, throughout the entire West, are largely 

 under the influence of the men who hunt big game; and when it 

 comes to enacting legislation for the protection of big game, the 

 sportsmen go to the legislatures, in representative bodies, and say, 

 for example, "No; we do not want you to put a 10-year closed sea- 

 son on the big-horn sheep. We think there are enough big horn yet, 

 and we can continue to hunt them.' 7 Those legislatures are very 

 often afraid to act contrary to the suggestions of the sportsmen. 

 That is perfectly understandable. The men of the West have come 

 up with the feeling that the game will always last. For 40 years 

 that was the feeling there— that there was so much game that it 

 would always last. 



But let us come back to the State of Wyoming. I hunted sheep 

 and elk in the Shoshone Mountains in 1889, and if I went there now 

 I would not find elk or sheep within 50 miles of my old hunting- 

 ground — to put it at a low figure. The people of Cody are lying 

 awake nights, Mr. Mondell, trying to think of a way by which they 

 can get elk around through the Thoroughfare country into the Sho- 

 shone Mountains. I have had plenty of correspondence with the 

 men of Cody who are wrestling with that problem. The country 



