FUR-SEAL - FISHERIES OF ALASKA, 1909. 
23 
The result of the creation of this reserve was to place the herd in a 
condition which represented more nearly what might be termed its 
normal status, and, secondly, it insured a certain stability of the next 
year’s catch of skins independently of that year’s increment of 
young killables. 
The normal status of the bachelor herd is reached when the greater 
portion of the take of skins consists of 3-year-olds. The reason for 
this lies in the fact that a 3-year-old has a prime skin that brings the 
highest price in the market. As the 3-year-old skin is more valuable 
than that of a 2-year-old, it follows that proper management should 
maintain such conditions as would result in the catch being secured 
mainly from the prime or 3-year-old skins, rather than from the less 
valuable 2-year-olds. This can be done only by the maintenance of a 
reserve of 2-year-olds which, being protected from slaughter at that 
age, would furnish the proper number of 3-year-old skins the following 
season. 
The immunizing from killing of this large number of 2-year-olds in 
1904 resulted in bringing nearly that number of prime 3-year-olds 
back to the islands in 1905. The effect was to permit the catch of 
1905 to be composed of 50 per cent of prime 3-year-old skins, whereas 
previously only a thousand or so of 3-year-olds were included. That 
the value of the company’s catch was enhanced by these methods of 
selection is shown by the fact that the average selling price of their 
skins in 1904 and 1905 was $37, while in 1903 it was only about $29.50. 
When the lessee, as in 1903, swept the hauling grounds of every 
bachelor appearing there, necessarily many small seals were killed 
whose skins would bring much less than those of the prime 3-year-olds. 
This, of course, was waste. Although deprived of some of these 
small seals in 1904 by the operation of the regulations, the lessee 
received back in 1905 such a number of prime 3-year-olds that the 
loss of one year was more than equaled by the gain of the next, 
with the added advantage of having, to kill fewer animals to secure 
the same profit. 
When such a reserve of young bachelors is created, thereby insuring 
in a degree the permanency of the next year’s catch, this reservation 
would have the effect of obscuring, to a degree at least, any decrease 
in the breeding herd that would cause fewer young males to appear 
upon the killing field. 
When, for example, as in 1903, the lessee depended for its catch 
mainly upon the influx of 2-year-olds that theretofore had been too 
small to kill, its catch had close relation to the number of breeding 
cows that, two seasons previously, had brought forth the 2-year-olds 
it expected to kill. It could look nowhere else for its catch. If the 
births two years previously were more numerous the catch would be 
larger; if less numerous the catch would be smaller. Under these 
