Ado. 25, 1894.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
187 
" Forest and Stream's " Yellowstone 
Park Game Exploration. 
No. 13. 
THE END AND SOME CONCLUSIONS. 
A Hard Task In Protection. 
As I write the concluding paper of a series perhaps too 
long, it is August and not March, and the sweltering heat 
of the lowlands has taken the place of the cool breath of 
the mountains. There have been important changes in 
the situation since the time the material for this story was 
gathered, but the change has been all for 
the better and all in the way of benefit 
to the public and to the sportsman; 
There seems to be no reason now to 
change the belief that the Forest and 
Stream Expedition was "lucky" in every 
way, unless in the story the writer has 
failed altogether to give any true notion 
of the Park in winter and" of the situa- 
tion there as to the protection of the 
game. One might easily fail in this, for 
the subject is a large one and all its de- 
tails are large. One deals here in im- 
mensities, and to write of immensities 
conveys no impression whatever unless 
the reader has some yardstick of im- 
mensity by which to measure. 
On one point I am especially anxious 
to be clear, and that is the extreme 
difficulty of protecting the Park with 
the means provided by the Government. 
The task set by the authorities at Wash- 
ington is altogether too large. Two 
troops of horse and one scout cannot 
protect the Park at any season. In the 
winter these two troeps are not two 
troops. They are only so many men as 
can travel on skis. The army regula- 
tions do not exact a knowledge of ski 
work. For $13 a month you can get 
many men who will act together, who 
will drill well, shoot well, fight well, be 
good soldiers under the regulations, but out of them all 
not all will be good mountaineers, adventurous ski run- 
ners, tireless climbers, fearless woodsmen and educated 
scouts. Some of the troopers will be near enough to all 
this to do work in the winter. The great ma jority will 
not. The authorities at Washington do not know this. 
Regular, formal — blind, that is almost to say in some re- 
spects — to them two troops of horse are two troops of 
horse, and should be sufficient. It is supposed that a 
trooper can ride fifty or sixty miles a day if necessary. 
In the Sioux campaign troopers often rode that far. Ergo, 
the authorities perhaps reason, troop- 
ers should ride that far in the Park on 
any day when necessary, and should 
be able to pick up a poacher in any 
corner of the Park. 
Perhaps the great American public, 
which has long been robbed of the 
Park buffalo, of many of the treasures 
which it owned there, may unite in 
the above cheerful belief. Especially 
those who have ridden through the 
Park in comfortable stages may unite 
in the question, Why can not the 
Park be protected perfectly? 
The authorities at Washington, the 
public at large, know not whereof 
they speak, or such questions would 
not be asked, and things would not be 
as they are. The authorities and the 
public do not know that there are two 
Parks to protect, and not one, and 
that the winter Park is fifty times as 
large as the summer Park, so that no 
trooper can cross it in a day nor in a 
month, nor in the entire winter. The 
authorities and the public should 
know, and I hope that even by the 
mite of these small writings they 
might be encouraged to begin to try 
to know, that the Park is not the 
Park, and that the two troops of 
cavalry are not two troops, for the 
greater part of the year and at the 
very time when protection is most 
imperative, as the news discovered by 
our party has conclusively shown. 
Now all this time we read of the 
corruption of American politics, of 
the waste of public money, of the 
gigantic frauds by which this foolish 
and patient nation is successfully and 
successively robbed. We throw open 
the gates of our beautiful country and 
welcome in the outcasts of the Old 
World, creatures whom the Old World 
does not want and who cannot earn a 
living in that country. We welcome this low rabble, and 
make it equal to ourselves in the making and the enforcing 
of the laws of this land. We allow this rabble to lower the 
national American tone of respect for restraint and for 
law and order. We permit the growth of a carelessness 
for the public heritage of great game— even a carelessness 
and an ignorance as to so magnificent a possession as this 
great Park, which is to-day better understood and better 
valued by better class Europeans than by better class 
Americans. We permit the imported rabble to embroil 
us in riotous labor troubles — these men who could not 
earn a living in the Old World— and we are forced to 
spend millions of dollars to put down the troubles, even 
then in a deprecating way. But meantime America has 
no money to spend for the America of the past and of the 
possible. There must be no • 'waste of the public funds" 
by which a half dozen, or two, or one additional scout 
shall be given the public to help guard one of the public's 
most priceless possessions. The public shall not even 
have its two troops of the guard made actually two troops, 
or one-tenth of that, during the most important part of 
the year. No. We must not do that. We must go on 
in the good old way. Meantime America is not America. 
America is no more. We have opened the gates and we 
have been flooded by a debasing tide. We have bartered 
America, the once unrivalled and even now the land of 
wonders, and have sold her for the humiliating price of 
a few political votes. Under these broad truths, for 
which these columns are hardly the proper place, lie none 
the less the difficulties of game protection in this country, 
and many of the difficulties in properly protecting the 
Park and its remaining specimens of some of our vanish- 
ing game. Congress has made a great step for the safety 
of the Park, but it has not yet done all that is needful. 
It needs to realize the value of this great region and its 
game as any other country would realize. 
Congress needs to set the mark for a change in senti- 
ment, and to invite a sentiment American at heart, which 
F. JAY HAYNES. 
shall keep America, or at least the rarer portions of 
America, free from further spoliation. No railroads in 
the Park, no more game killed in the Park — this is what 
an honest American Congressman should say. Saying 
that, he may vote to save a little money out of some well- 
known scheme, and devote it to the placing of six, or two, 
or even one additional mountain scout on the Park guard, 
which now has only one scout. 
Congress has not 200 men on guard at the Park in 
winter. It has just one man. His name is Burgess, Park 
scout. This is the only man of whom Congress can offi- 
HOWELL AND THE PARTY THAT BROUGHT HIM IN. 
cially ask duty such as the necessities of the service exact. 
This U. S. Army, of one man — one man upholding the 
safety and dignity of this wh ole great country in one of 
its richest treasure vaults — must cover a territory larger 
than the State of Connecticut, rougher than the White 
Mountains, deeper under snow than Labrador, colder in 
climate than Manitoba. If we are to have success, even 
under the efficient new law, the U. S. working army 
must be made larger than one man. 
Thanks to Both. 
Fresh from the wild country up the Park, and fully 
impressed with the immense extent of it, its impenetra- 
bility, its savage inhcspitality to the winter traveler, I 
could only say to Capt. Anderson that it seemed to me a 
wonder that the poacher Howell had been caught, and yet 
more a wonder that the guards of the Park, from com- 
manding officer to private, were not discouraged at the 
task set before them— a task which by reason of funda- 
mental Jack in its conditions, could never be more than 
half done, since (at that time) the detection of crime, diffi- 
cult as it was, could never be followed by proper punish- 
ment. 
Up to that time, in common with the general public, I 
had been absolutely ignorant of the way the Park was 
protected or what its protection meant. If this story of 
the Park in winter has made some few others acquainted 
with these facts, then a great purpose of the Forest and 
Stream enterprise has been gained. 
Meantime, thanks, let me say, to Capt. Anderson and 
the Forest and Stream, Congress has given the public 
since that time (in the month of May) a law which in one 
sense revolutionizes the whole situation at the Park, and 
makes the once impossible task now in a way fairly prac- 
tical and certain. With the killing of a buffalo made a 
penitentiary offense, the attached penalty running as 
high as $1,000 or years in the penitentiary, or both, Capt. 
Anderson has something to stand upon. When the re- 
port of the next arrest of the Howell 
kind comes in he can feel unqualifiedly 
exultant and can know that the arrest 
means something. 
Summing up on the facts, it is not 
likely that another poacher will soon go 
into the Park. Should he do so, and 
should he not resist arrest and so be 
brought in for trial, he will be retired 
from active public life for a while. The 
average had man of the mountains, 
however, while he may have a disregard 
for local or State laws administered by 
his friends, has a superstitious fear of 
any United States law. He doesn't 
want to run against Uncle Sam, for he 
knows Uncle Sam's arms are long and 
his heart hard when it comes to going 
after a criminal. In March it was not 
impossible to go into the Park and kill 
some buffalo heads for sale without 
serious risk, and every hunter in Mon- 
tana, Idaho and Wyoming knew it. To- 
day, since the little Forest and Stream 
expedition went in— whether or not be- 
cause of it — it is a crime to do that same 
act, and every one of those hunters 
knows this, too, for news of this sort 
flies fast in the mountains in its own 
mysterious way. One or two of the 
more daring may go into the great 
winter country after some of the few 
remaining great animals which still remain there, but 
the pitchers of these will go too often to the well. 
The day of poaching in the Park approaches its 
waning. The American public, let us hope, has begun in 
some measure to see to what great extent and of what 
priceless possessions it has in the pa'.t been robbed. Agi- 
tation has had its result. The change since the snows of 
winter were deepest in the Park has been a great one. 
Every lover of nature, of fair play, of decency, can only 
congratulate himself when he gazes on that picture and 
then on this. I imagine that Capt. Anderson has entered 
on this season's campaign with greater 
zest than ever before. The public has 
only to wish that he may enter on 
many and many another, for his equal 
in' that post will not be found. For- 
est and Stream, which hopes that it 
has been useful in securing a better 
law for him to work under, will hope 
also to see him some day given more 
men of the necessary sort to help him 
in the still exacting and difficult task 
of enforcing the law. Let us all hope 
that the Attorney-General will not de- 
lay the appointment of deputy mar- 
shals who shall also be competent 
scouts until the stock of buffalo is 
cut down still more or perhaps placed 
beyond the possibility of a survival. 
The Park law is excellent, and it may 
of itself deter poaching, but no law is 
altogether good which is not sustained 
by proper machinery of enforcement. 
Troops of cavalry do not constitute 
such machinery when they cease to 
be cavalry, but are dismounted for 
eight months of the year by snow. 
The primary object of the Forest 
and Stream expedition was to learn 
about the existing numbers of the big 
game in the Park. The conclusions 
as to that have been given from time 
to time earlier in these articles. I give 
them with all diffidence on my own 
part, but with confidence after all in 
their general accuracy, since they are 
in the main founded on the good judg- 
ment of experienced men such as 
Hofer and Woody, who were on the 
ground with me. Beyond this, we 
base the accuracy of our report on 
careful and conscientious work in the 
region covered, leaving nothing to 
guesswork when possible to do other- 
wise. 
As by our earlier record of the ante- 
lope, I can summarize by saying that 
we think there were about 400 antelope alive in the 
Park last winter, all on or near the Gardiner Flats. 
Twenty-five Thousand Elk. 
Judging by what we saw at Yancey's and near there, I 
should not think an estimate of 525 000 elk would be ex- 
treme, allowing that not all the elk have drifted to the 
northeast corner of the Park where we saw so many. If 
the elk are as scarce in the Pelican country as they are in 
Hayden Valley, and if the Ea«t Fork country really has 
most of them, then 25,000 would be a liberal estimate. 
Not Over Two Hundred Buffalo. 
I do not personally believe there are over 150 buffalo 
left alive in the Park. I will say 200, more out of defer- 
ence to those who say, "There certainly must be more 
buffalo than you think," rather than for any reason I can 
see for such belief. I know the popular estimate was 500 
head, but while that may be right, we oould discover no 
reason for thinking it was right. We discovered many 
reasons for thiRkjng it quit© wrong. The Park was never 
