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FOREST AND STREAM 
FOREST£®STREAM 
FORTY-EIGHTH YEAR 
FOUNDERS OF THE AUDUBON SOCIETY 
ADVISORY BOARD 
GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL, New York, N. Y. 
CARL E. AKELEY, American Museum of Natural History, New York. 
FRANK S. DAGGETT, Museum of Science, Los Angeles, Cal. 
EDMUND HELLER, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C. 
C, HART MERRIAM, Biological Survey, Washington, D. C. 
WILFRED H. OSGOOD, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, 111. 
JOHN M. PHILLIPS, Pennsylvania Game Commission, Pittsburgh, Pa. 
CHARLES SHELDON, Washington, D. C. 
GEORGE SHIRAS, 3rd, Washington, D. C. 
WILLIAM BRUETTE, Editor 
JOHN P. HOLMAN, Associate Editor 
TOM WOOD, Manager 
Nine East Fortieth Street, New York City 
THE OBJECT OF THIS JOURNAL WILL BE TO 
studiously promote a healthful interest in outdoor rec- 
reation, and a refined taste for natural objects. 
August 14, 1873. 
GUNNING FROM A CAR 
T T is population — the economic development of the 
country — that has reduced our game supply from 
what it was to what it is. We attribute this reduc- 
tion to many causes, but at the foundation of them 
all lies civilization. 
A recent development — today enormously destruc- 
tive — is the automobile as used by gunners and 
anglers. Those who recall how twenty years ago 
they set out in the early morning and tramped all 
day long, through cover or along brookside, and 
withal perhaps covered no more than five or six 
miles of territory, can hardly realize some present 
practices. Nowadays, a man who knows the grounds 
can start in his car with dogs and gun and rushing 
swiftly from one cover to another can get a bird or 
two, or a rise or two from each. This plan — if a 
man devotes time to it — can hardly fail to give him 
shots at many of the birds living in — or migrating 
through — a territory with an area of many square 
miles. 
In some places of the West, where the prairies are 
fairly open and smooth, automobiles are used to run 
down jack rabbits, coyotes, and even to worry to 
death the few lingering antelope that still survive. 
Not so many years ago sportsmen cherished a 
prejudice against the market hunter because he sold 
his birds and so, they felt, did not play quite fair. 
Selling his game, he could devote all his time to his 
shooting, which most men could not do because 
obliged to earn their living in other ways. Thus it 
seemed that the market gunner had an undue ad- 
vantage over other men and secured more than a 
fair share of game. 
But the territory covered by the most energetic 
market shooter, on his own legs or with his own 
team, was as nothing compared with that run over 
today by the man who guns with an automobile. 
Such a man may go over the covers along fifty or 
sixty miles of distance and may repeat this every 
day through the shooting season. If the market 
shooter was thought to secure more than his share 
March, 1920 
of the game, what shall be said of the automobile 
shooter ? 
This use of the car in gunning is condemned by 
many gunners and many land owners, but what are 
sportsmen and farmers going to do about it? It is 
destroying the upland game birds probably faster 
than any other agency. WTrnt can be done to stop 
it? Perhaps nothing can put an end to it save public 
opinion, and this is always slow to manifest itself. 
Apparently no statute has yet been devised to rem- 
edy the abuse. The matter deserves careful thought 
and full discussion by all sportsmen and all land 
owners. Sportsmen will suffer more and more from 
the progressively increasing destruction of game — 
the continuing reduction of the breeding stock — 
while land owners are likely to be injured by the 
carelessness or lawlessness of ill-regulated gunners. 
If some method cannot be found of checking the 
destruction caused by this method of ground cover- 
ing, it would seem that the times or the ways of kill- 
ing must be altered. Shall we shorten shooting sea- 
sons, legislate for a single barrel gun, or establish 
many refuges? 
GOVERNMENT SAVING ELK HERDS 
ID ECENT statements that the elk herds are now 
starving in the Jackson Hole section of Wyoming 
are not in accordance with the facts and are resented 
by the residents of that section, who offer to cooper- 
ate with the State and Federal Government in any 
way requested to help carry the elk through the 
winter. 
About 8,000 elk came to the elk refuge in Jackson 
Hole to be fed in December, says the United States 
Department of Agriculture, but conditions have im- 
proved since then so that on January 15, only about 
one-half that number remained about the feeding 
grounds, the others having gone back to the hills. 
The severe drought throughout Wyoming and 
Montana during the summer of 1919, so reduced 
the growth of forage on the range and the produc- 
tion of hay on the ranches that the outlook for the 
great elk herds in and about the Yellowstone Park, 
and the live stock in that region was serious for the 
coming winter. The situation affecting the elk be- 
came still more critical when severe snow storms 
and low temperature began the last of October, 
nearly two months in advance of the usual time. It 
was evident that the 850 tons of hay available for 
feeding the elk on the winter elk refuge in Jackson 
Hole, and the small supply in the possession of the 
State Game Commission at that point would be 
wholly inadequate to meet the situation and save the 
appalling loss which might reach as high as eight or 
ten thousand animals. To meet this emergency the 
State Game Warden of Wyoming accumulated about 
500 tons of hay and the Secretary of Agriculture 
authorized the Biological Survey to use part of its 
general appropriation to meet the emergency by pur- 
chasing 573 tons of hay in addition to the 850 tons 
which it had on hand. There is now available for 
use in the Jackson Hole section nearly 2,000 tons of 
hay, which Reservation Warden Nowlin of the 
Biological Survey, in charge of the Winter Elk 
Refuge, considers will be sufficient to carry most of 
the elk of that section through the winter. 
As still further assurance, the people of the Jack- 
son Hole section have informed a representative of 
the Biological Survey that should more hay be re- 
quired later in the season they will see that it is pro- 
