24 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[July 14, 1894. 
"Forest and Stream's" Yellowstone 
Park Game Exploration. 
No. 8. 
Still More Buffalo. 
Thursday morning, March 22, we left our camp for 
further efforts at locating the buffalo, no large band of 
which had yet been seen. The parties separated. Billy 
and I intended to cross the Divide after finishing our work 
in Hayden Valley. The Haynes party returned to the 
Canon, and we did not see them again until after our 
return to the Mammoth Hot Springs. Haynes took John 
Folsom along as a guide to find the buffalo. Billy said 
nothing much, but I think had an idea we would find the 
buffalo over on the Mary's Mountain hot country, which 
we would not reach until the following day. We intended 
to pass the night at the shack on Trout Creek, west of the 
valley proper. 
Our party had been on the trail for an hour or two that 
morning, when we sighted buffalo away 
off to the northeast, on top of a ridge 
near Alum Ci'eek. They were so far as 
to seem mere specks. We pushed on with- 
out leaving our course until we came to a 
little spit of timber running out into the 
open valley, and here made a temporary 
camp, taking off our packs and building 
a fire. Larsen and Holte had never seen 
a buffalo (they had not been with us the 
day before), and we concluded to let them 
go out with Billy while I kept camp and 
made tea against their return. It was 
decided that they should circle around 
the buffalo and turn them down toward 
the creek if possible, so' that they would 
pass Billy, who was to make off to the 
left and go down one of the draws which 
ran down to the creek in that direction. 
The buffalo were about 3% miles from us. 
Billy's experience taught him that when 
disturbed in that part of the valley they 
would usually run over to the Mary's 
Mountain country, which would accord 
well with our plans for the next day. 
Accordingly they three set out, going in 
divergent directions. 
Sign. 
I found the young trees in the timber 
point almost worn bare by the. elk, which 
had evidently made that a favorite scrap- 
ing spot for the hardening of their horns 
after the season of velvet. Still larger 
game, too, it seemed, had found this a cool and shady 
spot in summer, for on digging away the snow for a place 
to make a fire, I found quantities of buffalo chips. Of 
these I made my fire, and I imagine this was the last 
camp-fire in America ever built of the old-time bois des 
vaches. 
The Surround. 
From my place at the timber point I could see the buf- 
falo feeding along the ridge where we first sighted them. 
There were eleven of them. At length I saw two tiny 
figures appear away off to the right, unseen by the buffalo, 
and these I knew to be Larsen and Holte. Billy I could 
not see. Larsen and Holte went clear beyond a ridge and 
I could see them no more., but knew they were making 
their stalk close up to the herd . Larsen afterward told 
me that they got to the top of the ridge, within 40ft. of 
the buffalo, which were feeding just below the. crest on 
the other side. "They didn't like that deep snow," said 
Larsen, and they wouldn't run. They look at Pete and 
me, and shake their heads and say 'moo!' down deep. 
Pete and me thought they was going to run over us. That 
scared Pete and me. I think that was a good chance for 
one of them pictures." 
The Stampede. 
That was what Larsen and Holte saw. What I saw was 
a whole eruption of buflMo come boiling over the top 
of the hill back of my eleven buffalo, and go tearing 
down the hill toward the creek. Their speed appeared to 
be very great, and there was a great idea of power con- 
veyed by the way they plunged ahead through the deep 
snow. I counted them as well as I could, about thirty 
head, including the two bunches. The boys had found 
anothtr bunch beyond the hill on which I could see the 
eleven head. 
The Shot. 
What Billy saw was both these two bunches and also a 
third one of about forty head, which was invisible to all 
of U3 at first, but which was picked up by the stampede as 
it crossed their feeding ground lower down toward the 
creek. The whole outfit, about eighty-five head in all, 
passed close by Billy where he lay concealed with the big 
camera, and got several shots at them as they strung by. 
All this took five or six miles of ski work and two or 
three hours of time. The men were all tired when they 
got in, and we freshened up with lunch and tea. 
How the Buffalo Feed in Winter. 
Billy remarked on having seen a great many wolves 
while he bad been gone, on a piece of country back of 
where he photographed the buffalo, and not far from our 
line of march, and said he came near getting a photograph 
of some of them. We saw one or two coyotes at a dis- 
tance, over in that direction, soon after we took the trail 
after lunch. We now were on the natural winter feeding 
grounds of the buffalo. The snow here does not lie so 
deep as it does in the forests, because of the warmth of 
much of the ground, and because of the winds which in 
places strip the open ground nearly bare of snow. More- 
over, there is good grass over this valley country — or 
would be if the thrifty haymakers of the transportation 
country would let it alone as they should — and once in a 
while we saw thu tip of a shrub or two which may or may 
not afford the buffalo food. As we kept on our course, 
whioh now made a chord to the wide arc. of Alum Creek, 
which b»nt off to our right, we met abundant proof that 
the buffalo and elk were using on this part of the val- 
ley. We crossed several "yards," where the snow was 
torn up as if by tremendous plows. The snow was only 
about 3 or 4ft. deep here, and for a space of 200yds. or 
more square it had been worked over carefully as the dirt 
of a placer mine, (The elk paws the snow away in feed- 
ing. The buffalo thrusts or roots with its head, throwing 
it from side to side in working down through the snow.) 
Deep trails connected the different yards. The sign 
appeared to be rather old, but we saw a big fresh lynx 
track, which seemed to be lining out just about the way 
we were going, and we also saw a mountain lion track, 
which seemed headed in much the same direction. 
The Find of Butchered Buffalo. 
We pushed on in this direction for half a mile or so fur- 
ther, and as we topped a long ridge which bounded a wide 
valley making down into Alum Creek (I think it was near 
Trout Creek proper), we saw ahead of us about half a 
mile of country that was literally all tracked up with game. 
It was all sign of flesh-eating animals. Our lynx and 
lion had been here, and so had a wolverine, and appar- 
ently thousands of wolves, coyotes and foxes. We saw a 
coyote or two and two foxes go skurrying away across the 
open for the timber as we came in sight. Further on we 
struck the trail of a very large bear, which surprised us, 
as it was very early in the season for bear to be out. 
THE OLD BULL ASLEEP. 
Photo by Haynes. 
The trails seemed to converge toward certain little 
heaps of snow, and as we saw this we knew why the ani- 
mals had gathered here in such numbers, We ran down 
to the nearest snow heap and found beside it a deep pit 
dug 4ft. or more in the snow. At the bottom bones and 
torn flesh were visible. On the snow lay wisps and curls 
of buffalo hair. In all we saw eight heaps, and supposed 
that eight buffalo had been killed. 
This was where we made the discovery reported last 
April in Forest and Stream, one of the items of the 
Park news which attracted wide attention over the 
country. As was stated in a later issue, Capt. Anderson 
sent Burgess down on the strength of our story, and from 
our description of t'>e spot he was able to locate the kill- 
ing, as he thought Burgess made out only four dead 
LITTLE TROUT CRKffiK SHACK, 
Photo by E. Hofer In 189 
buffalo, and thought the other holes were to be accounted 
for by the fact that the wild animals had dragged off 
parts of the carcasses to a distance. The latter hardly 
tallies with my notion of the the diggings seemed 
to be so far apart that it was hardly likely large portions 
of a carcass would be dragged so far. Burgess may or 
may not have hit upon our find, but in any event the 
matter was bad enough, for some time after that John 
Folsom discovered ten head more of dead buffalo in that 
same part of the country. That a killing of considerable 
extent had been made does not admit of doubt. The 
strange thing about it was that none of the heads or hides 
had been taken. Here is a bit of unwritten history of the 
Park in this, and no doubt after a while the facts will 
come out. 
We had no means of digging in the hard, packed snow 
and so could not learn much about our discovery. More- 
over, it was now 4 o'clock in the afternoon and we had 
still a long march ahead of us and a camp to fit up for the 
night. We left the place feeling a new indignation 
against the contemptible butchers who had been violating 
every law, civil and. natural, in the destruction of these 
few remaining specimens of a nearly extinct race. Even 
Larsen and Holte were angry at it. Nothing would have 
pleased these sojer boys more than to arrest a poacher, 
but I am afraid the poacher would have been received at 
the Post in bad order had they run across him in the Hay- 
den Valley that day, 
Headed for Camp. 
The country we were now traversing must be in the 
summertime a very beautiful one, and even in winter it 
was not unpleasing. The open, rolling hills were crossed 
by occasional strips of timber which diversified a land- 
scape which at that point could hardly be called moun- 
tainous, though the hills were long and often steep. 
Finally the "Valley," as this large extent of open hills is 
called, began to dwindle down and thin out into long 
arms of open country, running far up into the timber. 
We followed up one of these long, narrow glades, having 
some amusement at a puzzled red fox which was studying 
us from the other side of the glade. We kept climbing a 
little bit, always remembering the sfci-traveler's maxim 
of getting elevation wherever possible, and never losing 
it unnecessarily, just as a civil engineer works when lay- 
ing out a railway line. One arm of the valley dwindled 
out into fingers, and one of the fingers became a gorge. We 
turned to the left, under a sharp run down, and were in 
the lovely canon known as "Trout Creek," wrongly so, as 
it is really Alum Creek, Billy says. Up this we traveled 
for half a mile, until finally we came to one of the littlest, 
tiniest, snow-coveredest and best hid little miniature log 
cabins in all the world — the "Trout Creek 
shack," built by the U. S. Army for the 
use of scouting parties and known only to 
a few of the patrol and to a guide or 
two like Billy. This small structure was 
set in against the rock wall of the canon, 
of which it seemed a portion. The sweep 
of the continuous drift of snow that lined 
the mountain side took in and enveloped 
the cabin as it went, leaving nothing visible 
except the end and door. Inside was a 
fine white drift of snow, and the chimney 
was full of Bnow. and the windows were 
blocked with snow, and the roof was 
loaded with snow, and the woodpile was 
many feet deep under the snow. Still, 
we didn't mind that, and to our eyes the 
little cabin seemed a most acceptable abode. 
Winter Lumbering Operations. 
A great trouble here was the getting of 
firewood, which we could only obtain at a 
distance of about 800 yds., and far up the 
steep snow-covered hillside. Billy and I 
spotted a dead tree away up the canon 
wall, and laboriously made our way up to 
it on the skis, but after we had it in lengths 
the worst of it was not over. The Bhort 
logs sunk in the soft snow, and would not 
roll down hill, I wallowed shoulder deep 
in the snow in getting the logs down, 
riding a pine branch part of the time to 
keep from sinking too deep. Then Billy 
started my skis down to me, and at last 
tried to slide my ski pole down. The latter took a 
dive into the snow, and cost us a half hour's hard work. 
We found it 6ft. under the snow and 80yds. from where we 
thought it was, it having slid under the snow like a snake 
in the grass. After finding this we called out Larsen and 
Holte, who were busy at the cabin, and we all got on the 
skis and packed logs in on our shoulders. It took us an 
hour to get in our wood, and the sun had long since gone 
behind the further canon wall. Water we got this time 
out of the creek, Billy locating an open hole by a deep 
dimple in the level expanse of snow which filled the little 
caflon. We dug down here and found a sweep of open 
water about 6ft. below, which we reached by buckling our 
belts together and letting down a tin. 
A Soldiers' Snugf Harbor. 
We fixed the chimney so it would not smoke by cutting 
a thick-foliaged young fir tree and standing it up along- 
side the chimney. This was a scheme of Billy's, who is a 
good deal of a schemer around a camp, and we found it 
worked all right. The little fireplace in the corner was 
not very big, but it was active, and it kept us warm all 
night. We had a good chance to dry out all our wet 
foot tvear and to put our skis in perfect order. Of course 
we had no bed clothing except the meager outfit earlier 
mentioned, but we passed a warm enough night, for the 
little cabin was so covered by the snow that it was nearly 
air-tight. We were all tired enough to sleep soundly, and 
we got a good night's rest. 
Off for the Divide. 
The next morning:, Friday, March 23, found us up and 
busy before the sun had begun to look over into our little 
canon. In summer I should like to follow up that cation, 
for I imagine it leads into rough ish country, but it seemed 
we were to go in the other direction, to find an easier 
approach to the great divide, on whose edge we now were. 
The maps show the main Continental Divide as south of 
where we were, and the mountains there are rougher, 
yet from Two Ocean Pass, below the south fine of the 
Park, it is practically all divide along the crooked range 
clear up to where we were and beyond. Alum Creek, on 
which we were camped, flows east into the Yellowstone, 
which empties into the Missouri. Nez Perce Creek, which 
flows west down the opposite side of the range, drains a 
watershed of great area into the Firehole and Madison, 
which in turn reaches the Missouri, it is true, though by 
way of a water system entirely different from that flow- 
ing to the east. The forks of the Snake, of course, lay to 
the south and west from us, across the Divide proper, 
whose further waters find their way to the Pacific. It 
was our intention to work up the east slope, across the 
hot country of Mary's Mountain, and then to make down 
the Nez Perce Creek and the Firehole to the Fountain or 
Lower Geyser Basin. This necessitated a journey of 
something over twenty miles, which had to be made all 
in one day. We burned our bridges behind us, taking 
only enough food for one meal, and storing away our 
single blanket and sleeping bag in the tin-covered box, 
which Uncle Sam leaves as a mess chest in every one of 
these patrol houses. This lightened up our loads consid- 
erably, and we were glad of it, for we knew we had hard 
enough work ahead. We intended, if we had any luck 
at meeting the buffalo on Mary's Mountain, not to return 
to the shack, but to keep right on. If we did not find 
the buffalo, we intended to hold a council, make medicine 
and form further plans later in the day. 
Billy and Larsen started on ahead, Billy telling Holte 
and myself not to start for half an hour or so, in order 
that the approach to the buffalo might be made more 
