Sept. 9, 1911.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
437 
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THE HUNTER ARMS CO 
90 Hubbard Street Fulton, N. Y. 
THE ELK PROBLEM. 
At least 30,000 elk must be moved from the 
Jackson Hole country of Wyoming this summer 
or they will die of starvation. The last session 
of Congress appropriated $20,000 for this pur¬ 
pose and some time this month there will take 
place the most gigantic roundup of wild game 
ever attempted in any country. The animals 
wi.l be driven several hundred miles to better 
feeding grounds. When the range cattle busi¬ 
ness was in its prime in the P'ar West, the round¬ 
ing up of half wild cattle, often numbering as 
many as 10,000 head, and driving them a hun¬ 
dred miles or so to the nearest railroad, was not 
an uncommon occurrence. But nothing like herd¬ 
ing 30,000 wild, fleet eik over a rough forest 
country for a similar distance was ever before 
attempted. Even the wildest conception of the 
most enthusiastic cattlemen is not sufficient to 
grasp the immensity of this problem. 
For the last few years the State of Wyoming 
has been appropriating large sums for hay to 
keep these animals from starving, and each win¬ 
ter finds conditions worse. The only solution 
of the trouble, therefore, was to take some of 
the elk away, leaving more food for those that 
remained. It is estimated that fully 30,000 elk 
winter in the Jackson Hole country, a large area 
south of the Yellowstone National Park. The 
eik scatter during the summer months, many 
of them grazing in the park, but as winter ap¬ 
proaches, they converge toward their old winter 
quarters. These quarters were ample before the 
homesteader came to fence the lands. The elk 
would feed on the rich grass of the valleys in 
the fall, work up on the sheltered hillsides in 
the winter, and when necessity urged descend 
to the creeks and browse among the young wil¬ 
lows and other foliage until the spring grass 
came. 
The homesteader’s fence has made this im¬ 
possible now, and each year lessens the amount 
of open range. The result is that despite the 
large amount of feed furnished them by the 
State, each winter sees an enormous death loss 
of this fast disappearing game animal. Driven 
to desperation from hunger, the elk will break 
down the strongest barbed wire fence surround¬ 
ing a haystack, and during a portion of the win¬ 
ter settlers must guard their hay night and day. 
The elk have been known to mount upon the 
fallen bodies of their companions and thus climb 
to the top of a thatched roof shed where they 
would voraciously devour the rotten hay or straw 
used as a roof covering. 
To attempt to drive them anywhere and in a 
band numbering tens of thousands seems an im¬ 
possible task, yet the Government appropriation 
is sufficient evidence that the feat will be un¬ 
dertaken. The head game warden of Wyoming 
says it can be done, but that a detachment of 
cavalrymen from the United States Army will 
be necessary to help herd the elk. The vast 
herd will first be surrounded by a cordon of 
troopers on all sides, save the one in the direc¬ 
tion it is desired to drive the elk, with two addi¬ 
tional lines of cavalrymen strung out along the 
course. A closing in of this circle must start 
the elk on the course, and the unique race will 
be on. 
At a given signal the outriders along the 
course will also move forward, keeping well in 
advance of the fleeing herd. Detachments to 
serve as relays for these riders will be stationed 
at intervals along the proposed route, and the 
surging, struggling mass kept moving until the 
goal is reached. Picture 30,000 wild elk in full 
flight, pursued by mounted cavalrymen firing 
their revolvers into the air to further terrify 
the fleeing animals, and a score or more of 
riderless mounts, for many a bold horseman will 
be thrown in the wild flight with broken bones, 
if not loss of life. 
It is well known that the elk can outrun a 
horse and that under normal conditions it has 
greater endurance and is sure footed, traveling 
swiftly and easily over precipitous trails over 
which the most venturesome horseman would 
hesitate to follow. The only thing that makes 
this plan of driving the elk seem feasible is the 
fact that the great majority of them are still 
weak from lack of food during the past winter 
and that they will not regain their full strength 
and agility until late in the summer. But even 
under these conditions it will be a difficult mat¬ 
ter for the swiftest and hardiest horse, burdened 
with the weight of a rider, to keep within sight 
of the flying animals. The conditions which 
have led up to the proposed driving of the elk 
have existed for more than ten years, but the 
State of Wyoming seemed unable single-handed 
to cope with the situation. The tender-hearted 
ranchmen of the Jackson Hole country have 
helped to the full extent of their ability, feed¬ 
ing to the starving elk as much as they could 
spare from their private stores of hay and 
fodder without putting their own stock on ex¬ 
tremely short allowance. But with all this it 
is estimated that fully 5,000 elk died of starva¬ 
tion each year. 
According to S. N. Leek, a prominent ranch¬ 
man of the Jackson Hole district and former 
State Senator, who has made a special study 
of the conditions surrounding the elk in that 
part of the country, since 1903 about 75 per 
cent, of the adult elk have perished of starvation 
each winter. He states that he has counted as 
many as a thousand dead elk within a radius 
of a half mile, and that on several occasions 
when driving through the country he has been 
forced to turn out of his way because of the 
bodies of dead elk obstructing the roads. 
The elk would first eat the range clear of all 
food, then turn to the coarse sticks and barks, 
and in many places they would actually gnaw 
the bark from the fence rails. When ail these 
sources of food—if such it may be called— 
were exhausted, they would gradually begin to 
lose their vitality, spirit and endurance; then 
reduced by hunger until too weak to follow the 
herd, they would drop down by some rock or 
bush to either become a prey to carifivorous ani¬ 
mals or die a miserable death by starvation. The 
total number of elk killed annually in Wyoming 
averages 1,000. The State has for many years 
derived a considerable income from licenses is¬ 
sued to non-resident hunters, the cost of such 
licenses being $50, privileging the hunter to kill 
one elk,, and then on payment of an additional 
$30 a second as a limit. Laws were passed pro¬ 
viding severe punishment for head and tusk hun¬ 
ters, the latter at one time invading the game 
fields and killing great numbers of bulls for 
the tusks alone and in no way utilizing the flesh. 
It has been the contention of all ranchmen in 
the Jackson Hole country, however, that what 
the elk needed most was not protection by game 
wardens, but food to keep them from starving. 
And in the proposed removal of the animals 
to better feeding grounds they see their salva¬ 
tion.—Leslie’s Weekly. 
A LADY’S BIG SALMON. 
We arrived one August evening in 1885 at 
Torresdal, our fishing quarters (lent to us by a 
friend) on the famous Namsen River. We had 
come, says Hannah Covington in the Field, in 
carrioles from Namsos, on the coast, a distance 
of forty-five miles. The road was good, and 
the brisk little Norwegian ponies did their work 
well. Toward the end of our drive we were told 
to leave the road and turn down a steep, grass- 
grown woodland track. After a few minutes’ 
rough driving we came to a clearing in the 
forest, and found three little wooden houses 
perched on the high banks of the river. We 
left our carrioles and stood shivering in the 
pouring rain till the arrival of our fisherman 
with the keys. We had brought a cook with 11s 
from Trondhjem with provisions for four weeks. 
We hoped for a plentiful supply of fish, and we 
expected to get milk and butter from a farm. 
For fruits, the forest gave us an abundance of 
wild strawberries and raspberries and the de¬ 
licious yellow molteberry. 
Our fishing ran close up to the Fiskum Foss, 
beyond which the salmon cannot get. Near the 
foss the Namsen banks are high, the river deep, 
swift, and full of whirlpools; lower down the 
river the rapids and shallows have a pebbly, 
gravelly bottom. The fishing at Torresdal is 
done from a boat, mostly by trolling. Our fish¬ 
erman, Iver Ursted, was a fair-haired Norwegian 
giant, quick of eye, slow of speech, full of a 
natural, simple dignity. He was always ready to 
take the boat out, except on Sundays; we spent 
these days on the banks of the river watching 
for salmon to jump. Sometimes we counted six 
or seven big fish jumping straight up as if for a 
fly. For one brief moment we could see the 
whole fish from nose to tail, his silver sides 
flashing in the sun. Our four weeks’ fishing on 
the whole gave us a fair total and keen sport. 
One cloudy morning I got my rod, a light 
one, made for a woman, and perfect in every 
way, and went in the salmon boat alone with 
Iver. We kept in mid-stream in the swift, broad 
part of the river. Eventually we rowed right 
under the foss. I did not like it much. The 
