A Platform Plank, 
.^ir^' — = 
From '* Forest and Stream,'* Feb, 3, J894. 
We have just been celebrating the four-hundredth an- 
niversary of the coming to this continent of men equip- 
ped with firearms. For four centuries, from the time 
of Christopher Columbus to that of Charles Delmonico, 
we have been killing and marketing game, destroying 
it as rapidly and as thoroughly as we knew how, and 
making no provision toward replacing the supply. The 
result of such a course is that for the most part the 
game has been blotted out from wide a-eas, and to- 
day, after four hundred years of wanton wastefulness, we 
are just beginning to ask one another how we may 
preserve the little that remains for ourselves and our 
children. 
With all the discussion of the subject in the columns 
of the Forest and Stream from 1873 to 1894, there has 
been and is a general consensus of opinion that the 
markets are answerable for a larger proportion of game 
destruction than any other agency or all other agencies 
combined. The practical annihilation of one species of 
large game from the continent, and the sweeping off of 
other species from vast regions formerly populated by 
them, have not been brought about by the settlement of 
the country, but by unrelenting pursuit for commercial 
purposes. The work of the sportsman, who hunts for 
the sake of hunting, has had an effect so trivial that in 
comparison with that of the market hunter it need not 
be taken into consideration. The game oaucity of to- 
day is due to the skin hunter, the meat killer, the mar- 
ket shooter. 
From the beginning wild game has played an important 
part in the development of the country. It has sup- 
plied subsistence when there was no other food for the 
pioneer and the settler. Buffalo and elk and deer and 
grouse and quail and wild goose and wild duck have 
sustained the men who first cut into the edge of the 
unbroken forests of the continent, who blazed the trails 
westward, and, directed as mariners at sea by note of 
sun and stars, pushed their way across the billowing 
prairies. Many a halt would have been made by these 
advancing hosts had they been compelled to depend 
upon sutler trains, instead of foraging on the abundant 
game resources of the country as they took possession 
of it. For generations, then, it was right and proper 
and wise and profitable that game should be kille'd for 
food; that every edible creature clothed in feathers or in 
fur should be regarded as so much meat to be spitted 
or potted or panned. 
But times have changed. Conditions are not what 
they were. Game still affords food for the dweller in 
the wilderness, for those who live on the outskirts; and 
for people in such situations venison is a cheaper com- 
modity than beef. But for the vast and overwhelming 
multitude of the people of the continent game is no 
longer in any sense an essential factor of the food sup- 
ply. It has become a luxury, it is so regarded, and it is 
sold at prices which make it such. With the exception 
perhaps of rabbits or hares, the supply of wild game as 
marketed is not such as to reduce the cost of living to 
persons of moderate means. The day of wild game as 
an economic factor in the food supply of the country 
has gone by. In these four hundred years we have so 
reduced the game and so improved and developed the 
other resources of the country that we can now supply 
food with the plow and reaper . and the cattle ranges 
cheaper than it can be furnished with the rifle and the 
shotgun. In short, as a civilized people we are no 
longer in any degree dependent for bur sustenance upon 
the resources and the methods of primitive man. No 
plea of necessity, of economy, of value as food, demands 
the marketing of game. If every market stall were to 
be swept of its game to-day, there would be no ap- 
preciable effect upon the food supply of the country. 
Well, then, why not recognize this, and direct our 
efforts, in line with such a recognition, toward the ut- 
ter abolition of the sale of game? Why should we 
not adopt as a, plank in the sportsman's platform a decla- 
ration to this end — That the sale of game should be 
forbidden at all seasons? To share and express the sen- 
timent is one thing" to put it into execution is quite 
another. Perhaps the time is not ripe for such stringent 
measures. Yet this very rule of no game traffic holds 
in certain county laws in this State; and one of these 
days it will hold in every State, East and West, North 
and South. It may not be brought about in our day, 
but the present moment is none too soon to adopt the 
plank as a working principle and to work for it. 
That which stands in the way of the present prohi- 
bition of the sale of game in the larger cities is the 
magnitude of the commercial interests involved. The 
traffic is one of large proportions, much capital is in- 
vested, and the business is not one which would readily 
be sacrificed. No one of these considerations, however, 
^an ■)yithstgn4 ^ campaign of education and the creation 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
of a public sentiment which will surely follow when that 
education shall have taught the community the true 
place of wild game in the economy of the civilization of 
the present. 
Absolute Prohibition of Game 
Traffic. 
From Forest and Stream/* Feb. 10, 1894. 
In Great Britain and various other countries artifi- 
cial game destruction is offset by artificial game pro- 
duction. Birds are bred by the million, to be killed by 
the million, marketed by the million, and replaced by 
the million. The system is that of a gigantic poultry 
farm. The supply is inexhaustible. Game in market is 
thus a legitimate article of traffic. 
In America conditions are different. Here we are 
wholly dependent upon the natural increase, unaided by 
human agency, for the maintenance of the game supply. 
And the natural increase is by no manner of means ade- 
quate to withstand the augmented destruction. While 
the game stock has been growing less and less, the drain 
upon it has been growing greater and greater. Shoot- 
ers who pursue it for sport have multiplied a thousand- 
fold; consumers ten thousand-fold. There is not to-day 
enough game for the two classes. One or the other 
must surrender its. claim in favor of the other. The 
sportsman must yield to the game dealer or the game 
dealer must give way to the sportsman. Which shall it 
be? 
Selfish and personal considerations aside, the answer 
is readily found. That interest must give way which is 
of least advantage to the community, and that one must 
be preserved which is of paramount public importance. 
This is to say that the game must be saved for the en- 
joyment and benefit of those who pursue it for the sake 
of the pursuit. A grouse which gives a man a holiday 
afield is worth more to the community than a grouse 
snared or shot for the market stalls. The game supply 
which makes possible the general indulgence in field 
sports is of incalculable advantage to individuals and the 
State; but a game supply which makes possible the 
traffic in game as a luxury has no such importance. 
If this be granted, public policy demands that the 
traffic in game should be abolished. And if public 
policy demands this, the commercial interests involved, 
although of magnitude, are not to be considered. 
This is advanced doctrine; it is radical; it goes to the 
root of the thing. But, as we have said, the time has 
come to take an advanced position. When a political 
party formulates its platform, it does not confine its 
declaration of principle to the advocacy of such meas- 
ures alone as are susceptible of immediate attainment; 
but going further than this, it commits every man who 
marches under the party banner to the support of cer- 
tain other principles, the struggle for the supre- 
macy of which must be arduous and protracted, and 
the triumph in them long deferred. The planks of the 
party platform stand for the articles of party faith; they 
embody a declaration of "the things hoped for," and 
which may not be the achievement of one administra- 
tion nor of a succession of administrations. 
In like manner, when we suggest this declaration. 
The; sale of game should be forbidden at all seasons 
as a plank in the platform of that vast party of men 
scattered in hosts over this country, interested in pre- 
serving the game of the continent, the suggestion is 
made without any optimistic delusion that such a sys- 
tem could be effected at once. But we do hold that 
the principle of the absolute prohibition of traffic in 
wild game is the true one, that it is the only one which 
is adequate, and that it is the one to which sportsmen 
as a class should be committed, heartily, unreservedly, 
with determination, courage, steadfastness, patience and 
persistency. The campaign must be a long one; but will 
it not be a campaign for that which is wise, just, and of 
public advantage? 
An appeal which every member of the Order of Elks 
ought to hear and heed has just been sent out by the 
Colorado Springs Lodge. Members of this lodge who 
have recently returned from a trip through the north- 
western part of Colorado, the region recognized as the 
rendezvous and feeding ground of probably the greater 
part of all the elks still left in the United States, reported 
that these splendid animals are now the objects of the 
relentless pursuit of men who hunt, not for sport or for 
meat to eat or sell, but for teeth out of which to make 
the ornaments worn by this widely extended society. In 
one case they heard of nineteen elk slain for their teeth 
alone, the best of which, even in the hunting country, are 
valued at $25 a pair. The members of the Colorado 
Springs Lodge have therefore not only resolved to ab- 
stain hereafter from wearing or trafficking in the teeth of 
elk, but they have earnestly requested all other lodges to 
take the same action. "It is the sense of this lodge," they 
say, "that loyal Elks everywhere should and will co- 
operate iri this movement, so that it shall be quickly 
known to those unprin&ipled and unsportsmanlike in- 
dividuals, who, for a paltry consideration and in defiance 
of the law, are hastening the destruction of this noble 
species, that no further profit will inure to them from so 
blameworthy a prsctip?/'— New York Tirnes, 
tjAN. 5, 1901. 
In Frontier Days* 
L — The Eagle Creek "Wolfers. 
Years ago, in the buffalo days, three wolfers looking 
about for a likely place to pass the coming* winter and 
ply their vocation, decided to locate near the mouth of 
Eagle Creek. This streamlet, as old-timers know, enters 
the Missouri River front the north about fifty miles below 
Fort Benton, Mont. It was then, and for that matter 
is to-day, one of the wildest and most picturesque places 
in the Northwest. Loading a Mackinaw boat- with -suffi- 
cient supplies for the winter, the three left Fort Benton 
one day early in September, and in due time, without 
much effort on their part, the swift current carried them 
to their destination. Just below the mouth of Eagle 
Creek, and on the south side of the river, was a narrow 
stretch of bottom land, and there they built a cabin of 
green cottonwood logs, roofing it with poles and a layer 
of dirt several feet thick. In one corner they constructed 
a broad fireplace of stones and clay, the chimney being 
built of the same material, and extending far enough 
above the roof to -insure a good draft. All in all, it was 
a very comfortable shack. 
Dil-ectly in front of the cabin was a narrow but dense 
growth of cottonwood and willow, which sheltered it 
from the north wind, and incidentally hid it from the 
sharp eyes of any prowling war party of Indians who 
might be passing up or down the valley. At least, that 
was what the wolfers hoped. Immediately behind it, the 
sage brush hills slanted upward at an acute angle to the 
foot of the frowning sandstone cliffs where ends the 
great plain lying between the Yellowstone and the Mis- 
souri. For many miles along this part of the river na- 
ture seems to have done her best to give us some idea 
of the mighty convulsions which ages ago shook this 
old world of ours. Here are the bad lands, red, yellow, 
black and ashy gray, silt of that ancient lake which was 
before the mountains rose; and, shot up through it, are 
thin volcanic dykes, which cooling, broke into immense 
rectangular blocks. One could imagine that some fabled 
giant piled them there; layer after layer they rest one 
above the other with the precision and definiteness of 
walls built by human hands, in places towering for hun- 
dreds of feet above the water's edge. Many of them 
stand at right angles to the course of the valley, where 
they catch the full force of the Avind, and are so thin that 
one wonders they have not long since been blown down. 
Here and there the river has exposed old flows of lava, 
bent, doubled and twisted into all sorts of shapes. 
But most picturesque, most fascinating of all, are the 
glittering white sandstone cliffs which wind and weather 
have carved and cut into a thousand fantastic forms — 
castle and turret, Grecian columns and Turkish mmaref, 
all are there, and often, in the distance, looms a white 
city of them of surpassing beauty. It is a strange, weird 
place. 
After building the cabin, there was absolutely nothing 
for the wolfers to d« but loaf around and wait for cold 
weather, when they could begin operations against the 
wolves. Of the three men, crusty Ben Underwood and 
careles.s, happy Jack Fenn were old-timers who had 
passed their lives on the plains. The third was the writer, 
then very much of a youth and tenderfoot, whom the 
others called_ the "Scribbler," because "he was always 
wastin' his time writing things that no Eastern news- 
paper fish would ever believe or print." They were good, 
faithful friends. Jack and Ben, and very kind to the Scrib- 
bler, albeit they loved to joke him. Peace to their 
shades: they have long since returned to Mother Earth. 
For a long distance above and below the mouth of 
Eagle Creek there were but few places where the' game 
could get down from the plains to the river, both rims 
of the valley being walled by cliffs. Here and there these 
had broken down, or terminated in a steep bare hill, and 
at intervals they were pierced by long deep canons. At 
such places the buffalo, the antelope and deer had for 
centuries traveled up and down on their way to and from 
the river, and had worn trails many feet in depth, even 
in the comparatively hard sandstone. Of course, where 
the game traveled the wolves were also continually pass- 
ing, and that was why the wolfers had located there. 
They felt that one or two poisoned baits on each thoro'- 
fare would be worth many times that number promiscu- 
ously scattered about on the plains. 
The Scribbler never tired of gazing at the immense 
herds of buffalo and other game which were continually 
passing in and out of the valley. Of course, there were 
many bands in sight at all times, but every morning a 
solid stream of buffalo could be seen pouring down over 
the rim of the valley by some narrow trail, and then 
spreading out like a fan as they hurried to the shore of 
the river. With them came band after band of antelope 
from the plains, and mule deer from the pine-clad slopes 
and buttes. where they made their homes; and often a 
bunch of bighorn, led by some wary old ram, plunged 
down the steep hills into the bottom. But the latter 
never tarried long; their thirst assuaged, they lost no 
time in returning to the cliffs and buttes near by. Then 
there were bears, numbers of them, especially the light 
colored grizzly, which Lewis and Clarke called the "white 
bear," and which they dreaded to encounter. Elk and 
whitetail deer were also abundant, especially further down 
the river, where they frequented the large timbered hot-, 
toms. And then the wolves! There seemed to be thou- 
sands and thousands of the great shaggy fellows. By. 
day and by night their long-drawn, melancholy howls 
echoed and re-echoed through the valley and along the 
beetling cliffs. There was something indescribably sad 
in the cry of the wolf, something that made even the 
most lighthearted and careless of men pause and listen^ 
Many persons could not bear the sound; yet to the true 
lover of nature it had a peculiar — if perhaps undefina- 
ble — charni. How the deep, clear, plaintive, minor 
strains of their voice.= used to grow and swell down in 
that lonely valley, as the shades of night drew on. Often 
a single old male, sitting on a commanding ridge or 
barren butte, would start it. Throwing back his head. 
until the long, ke^n, mt?zzle pointed straight up to the 
