BIG GAME OF THE CANADIAN ROCKIES 113 



to do so secretly and, except in the more remote portions of the moun- 

 tains and during the hunting season, they destroy all evidence of the 

 presence of game around their camps. 



Wild meat, however, with a little flour, sugar and tea, continues 

 to form the entire ration of the Stoney. To supply from 400 to 600 

 people with "a daily ration composed largely of meat requires the killing 

 of a large number of animals. The writer was fortunately able to get 

 a very fair check upon the meat consumption of the Stoneys a few 

 years ago, and found a large group had an average daily consumption 

 for a period of three months of 2j4 pounds per person. If this figure 

 is extended to the entire tribe, it is a simple matter to determine that 

 about 3,500 head of game per annum would be required. Probably 

 the annual slaughter is not less than 2,000 head, of which about one 

 third is sheep and the rest deer and moose. In the 1913 hunting 

 season the writer visited 8 Stoney hunting camps, and in these alone 

 found that nearly 100 head of sheep had been killed in addition to 

 numerous deer. During the same period our forest officers visited 

 6 or 8 additional camps and found about an equal number of sheep 

 with many deer, 5 elk, some moose and bear and, in One camp, we 

 afterwards ascertained that 25 sheep, all ewes and lambs, had been 

 surrounded in a blind valley and completely exterminated. 



It is not alone the large numbers of game killed annu- 

 tiveness ^^'y '^y ^^^ Stoneys that constitutes the menace to the 



of Stoney big game of the Rockies, but equally important is their 



^"* method of hunting. To the Stoney, there are two 



kinds of cattle, that with a brand on it, which belongs to the white 

 man, and that without a brand, the wild game of the mountains, which 

 belongs to the Stoney. The Stoney usually chooses the easiest method 

 of rounding up his wild cattle. This means the killing of game regard- 

 less of age or sex, the extermination of whole bands of sheep or elk 

 whenever possible, the killing of moose when yarded up in the winter, 

 the use of dogs and the making of drives in which the whole camp, 

 men, women and children participate, the slaughter of game at all 

 seasons of the year and its constant harrying and disturbance 

 regardless of season. 



What are the results of these conditions? There is a strong 

 probability that the five elk killed by the Wesley band of Stoneys in 

 1913 were the last remnant of the original countless elk herds of the 

 Alberta Rockies. Already the big-horn sheep is so reduced in numbers 

 that the date of its extermination also is within a measurable dis- 

 tance. Moose have been reduced to one third of their former 



