286 



RECREATION 



had Winchesters, or even good revolvers in 

 those days. One thing sure, they never 

 wasted, but saved meat and even bones. 



It took such men as Bill Cody to show 

 them how slaughter was done. I read once 

 that the country should never forget 

 William Cody, as he had been "an important 

 factor in the westward march of civilization, 

 for he it was, with his fearless aides, who 

 furnished the buffalo meat that fed the men 

 who laid the Kansas-Pacific road." Why not 

 say "Bill was a good butcher" and be done 

 with it? He wasn't killing for fun, and 

 breathing the prairie air for the good of his 

 lungs, but he was simply killing the buffalo 

 that belonged to the nation because the rail- 

 road would rather have free meat for its men 

 than buy it in Chicago, St. Louis or Kansas 

 City. I never saw Bill at one of his big 

 shows without being disgusted. He was al- 

 ways saved for the last. The Indians, Mex- 

 icans and all the others would be formed in 

 line, and then at the sound of the bugle, .out 

 would dash the gaudy Bill on his prancing 

 charger, and he would stop directly in front 

 of the grand stand and take off his hat and 

 bow with that "Behold-the-only-one" smile. 

 If he was different from any other pot hunt- 

 er, will some reader please tell me in what 

 respect? And as for feeding the army, it's 

 dollars to cents that for every free buffalo 

 brought in, somebody charged the United 

 States Government for "one beef," and col- 

 lected money for it. 



I ask excuse for dwelling on the buffalo, 

 now virtually extinct, but the history of the 

 buffalo is the history of the first criminal 

 negligence of our servants (?), the officials 

 of the country, in the protection of game. 



Take the elk. It has been slaughtered in 

 the same way, and it will soon be extinct un- 

 less the most strenuous efforts are made to 

 protect it. Don't, however, believe all the 

 stories about the butchery of elks to get their 

 teeth to be worn as charms by that most 

 worthy organization, the Elks. 



I have twice been Exalted Ruler in the or- 

 der, and I can testify that the stories are 

 much overdrawn. I never had but one tooth 

 in all the time I have been in the order. It 

 was given me by an old hunter, whom I be- 

 friended. I had it mounted in gold, and lost 

 it two days afterwards — and it served me 

 right. But that elk was never slaughtered 

 for its teeth, for the old fellow killed it and 

 ate most of it, not knowing that there was 

 any such order in existence. 



Then came the slaughter of the wild pigeon. 

 I have seen them darken the sky. My home 

 is in Pigeon Township, on the banks of Pig- 

 eon Creek, so named for the thousands of 

 wild pigeons that once bred near here. It 

 was not the farmers who went to the roosts, 

 nor the few who shot them, who robbed this 



country of the pigeon. It was the St. Louis 

 and Chicago markets that got the last of 

 them. Oh, those two cities, where the butch- 

 ered bodies of untold millions of game ani- 

 mals and birds have gone. I say millions, 

 but I ought to say billions, and could do so, 

 and, I believe,, prove it. The great cold stor- 

 age houses in your section were not filled 

 with game birds killed near you, but the most 

 of them came from the West. 



What have we left to-day? Where are the 

 great hosts of prairie chickens, the wild tur- 

 keys, the deer? Gone to the markets, — not 

 shot by sportsmen, who get only a few days 

 in the year in which to go out and breathe 

 God's fresh air, and make a modest bag. 



Oh, no ; not by them, but by the merciless 

 market butchers, who kill to sell. They are 

 after the game day and night, rain or shine. 

 They live like hogs, pay no taxes,, and there- 

 fore have no right to the game. They are 

 aided and abetted by shrewd and unprinci- 

 palled shippers such as the fellow who fills 

 a box with prairie chickens and puts a little 

 butter on top and ships as "butter." Such as 

 the fellow who stuffed three quails into each 

 rabbit he sent to market and who stuffed the 

 inside of each dressed turkey with quail and 

 sent "turkeys" to Chicago. Happily we "got" 

 a lot of those fellows, but where we caught 

 one, a hundred escaped. 



And little Bob White, the last of our game 

 birds. How long can he stand it? He is 

 trapped and pot-shotted by farmer boys, who 

 bring him into town with a layer of eggs on 

 top of the basket. He is shot on rainy days 

 by the butchers. And the wild ducks. They 

 too are fast passing away. Followed by pro- 

 fessional market hunters, who keep after 

 them from the time they leave the north till 

 they reach Texas and the lower country, 

 what can be expected? At a little junction 

 on the Cotton Belt Road in Arkansas I saw 

 the work of two market hunters who had 

 been killing near New Madrid. Nineteen 

 barrels, twelve sacks and a big lot, tied six in 

 a bunch, of big fat mallards. All marked for 

 St. Louis. And the two men lived up in Min- 

 nesota. What right had they to those ducks? 



In my last twenty-five years as Game 

 Warden I have seen sights that nearly made 

 me sick, not only at my home, but all over 

 the Northwest, the West and the South. Go 

 to the pier at New Orleans and see the piles 

 of fish and game sent North each winter, and 

 half of it taken by illegal means. 



There is no living man who does not see 

 these things who can have any conception of 

 the way the game is going. Just one more 

 instance. For nine years I went each winter 

 to a little corner in Arkansas where there 

 was good deer and turkey shooting. The last 

 year my friend and I went down we hunted 

 ten long days without seeing even a buck- 



