206 THE PRESENT AND FUTURE 
there is an open season. And to many Americans no right 
is dearer than the right to kill the game which by even the 
commonest law of equity belongs, not to the shooter exclu- 
sively, but partly to a great many other persons who don’t 
shoot at all! 
Unless we come to an “‘ About, face!” in quick time, all our 
big game outside the preserves is doomed to sure and quick 
extermination. This is not an individual opinion, merely; it 
is a fact, and a hundred thousand men know it to be such. 
In the winter of 1911-12, because the deer of Montana 
were driven by cold and hunger out of the mountains and far 
down into the ranchmen’s valleys, eleven thousand of them 
were ruthlessly slaughtered. The state game warden sadly 
said that often heads of families took out as many licenses 
as there were persons in the family, and the whole quota 
was killed. Such people deserve to go deerless into the future; 
but we cannot allow them to rob innocent people. 
OUR SPECIES OF BIG GAME 
Tue Prona-Hornep ANTELOPE, unique and wonderful, 
will be one of the first species of North American big game to 
become totally extinct. We may see this come to pass within 
twenty years. They cannot be bred in protection, save in very 
large fenced ranges. They are delicate, capricious and easily 
upset. They die literally “at the drop of a hat.” In several 
widely separated localities they are known to be affected with 
actinomycosis (lumpy-jaw), which in wild animals is incurable. 
I fear that this disease will materially help to exterminate the 
species. 
