Terms, $3 a Year. 10 Cts. a Copy, i NEW YORK, SATURDAY, MARCH 19 , 1910 . 
Six Months, $1.50. ) , 
VOL. LXXIV.—No. 12. 
No. 127 Franklin St., New York. 
A WEEKLY JOURNAL. 
Copyright, 1909, by Forest and Stream Publishing Co. 
George Bird Grinnell, President, 
Charles B. Reynolds, Secretary, 
Louis Dean Speir, Treasurer, 
127 Franklin Street, New York. 
THE OBJECT OF THIS JOURNAL 
will be to studiously promote a healthful interest 
in outdoor recreation, and to cultivate a refined 
taste for natural objects. 
—Forest and Stream, Aug. 14, 1873. 
DOMESTICATE THE ELK. 
Of the eik which pa,ss the summer in the Yel¬ 
lowstone National Park, where they are thor¬ 
oughly protected, a large number are dying from 
starvation. A great part of the park is too high 
for the elk to winter in, and from this high 
country great numbers draw off south and leave 
the park, descending toward the lower ground 
along Snake River. In old times they used to 
go down to the Red Desert and winter, but 
now, since the country has been settled up and 
fenced, the elk can no longer get down there, 
and being cut off from that winter feeding 
ground they either starve to death or attack the 
haystacks of the farmers, who are obliged to de¬ 
fend their property with rifles. Another section 
of the elk living more to the northward come 
down in winter from the higher ground to the 
valley of the Lamar and Yellowstone rivers and 
the surrounding country, where usually there is 
abundant grazing for a considerable number, but 
as the elk have increased there is no longer 
food enough for all, and the weaker ones must 
starve. 
We have time and again urged on the Interior 
Department the importance of devoting a few 
thousand dollars to irrigating a portion of the 
Yellowstone bottom, which might be sowed to 
alfalfa—as was done for the antelope by Colonel 
Pitcher. If this were done, a few mild winters 
might permit the accumulation of enough hay 
to feed a great number of elk during severe sea¬ 
sons. This was recommended by Col. John 
Pitcher while superintendent of the park, but 
the department has never taken any action on 
it and the elk are now starving, not only with¬ 
in the park, but down the Yellowstone River 
where they have wandered in their search for 
food. 
It seems time that the States bordering the 
park should enact laws to permit and encourage 
the domestication of the elk and perhaps of the 
mule deer. It is well known that elk are hardy 
and easily reared, and that with protection they 
increase rapidly. They can be successfully reared 
and sold for beef, for the flesh is excellent food. 
At the present time, when there is so great an 
outcry about the price of meat, it would seem 
that many ranchers might be glad to add a small 
bunch of elk to their live stock. 
In all the States bordering the park it would 
be an easy matter to capture in winter a stock 
of eik which might be used for breeding pur¬ 
poses. Provision should be made that no one 
should be allowed to capture elk without a per¬ 
mit from the State authorities, nor to sell elk, 
living or dead, except under proper regulations, 
and with the different parts of the carcass prop¬ 
erly marked for identification. This is a matter 
which could be readily provided for and need 
not in any degree interfere with the proper pro¬ 
tection and preservation of the wild animals. 
Obviously it is a matter that must be worked 
out with care and thought, but it is well worthy 
the attention of the governors and the legisla¬ 
tors of Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. 
A MAINE FUR HUNT. 
We shall before long begin the publication of 
a series of interesting papers from the pen of 
Manly Hardy, of Brewer, Maine. They treat 
of a fur hunt in Maine—the trapping adven¬ 
tures of two young men who started out more 
than fifty years ago to gather fur, in what was 
then a real wilderness. 
Mr. Hardy, who has passed a long lifetime in, 
and on the borders of, the Maine woods, has 
been always a trapper and always an observer 
of nature. He is the best equipped field natu¬ 
ralist of Northeastern New England, and what 
he writes he is always sure of, and what he says 
he is ready to defend. There is no contributor 
to Forest and Stream whose articles are more 
eagerly looked for, or received with more un¬ 
questioning faith than his. 
These articles deal with travel in the woods, 
with the building of camps, with winter life in 
the forest, with the uses and setting of traps for 
the capture of different fur-bearing animals, as 
beaver, sable, bear and muskrat; with the treat¬ 
ment of their skins, and finally the bringing them 
to market. Incidentally much is told of the 
habits of wild animals, and the means by which 
the trapper circumvents them. 
The trapper, the woods traveler and liver and 
the naturalist, will all find in Mr. Hardy’s fasci¬ 
nating record of the past, interest and informa¬ 
tion. 
WATCH THE WOODCOCK. 
Some weeks ago our russet-coated friend the 
woodcock started from his Southern wintering 
ground and began slowly to travel northward. 
Now he is with us again—at least has reached 
New Jersey, Southern New York and Connecti¬ 
cut—and will soon be considering the question 
of choosing his mate and building his nest among 
the hills of Northern Vermont, New Hampshire 
and Canada. 
Most of us who are called abroad at night dur¬ 
ing early April have heard the love song of the 
woodcock on a moonlight night, but certainly he 
does not confine himself to that time, for he 
twitters and darts down to earth in the dark 
of the moon as‘faithfully as at its full. 
The woodcock is an early breeder, and it is 
probable that by this time many nests in South¬ 
ern New Jersey contain the full complement of 
eggs, on which the mother bird is brooding. Be¬ 
fore many weeks the earliest birds will be abroad 
tottering about after their mother on unsturdy 
legs, and on the approach of danger she may pick 
up and carry them off. We have never seen this 
done, yet it has often been reported from re¬ 
liable sources. 
For whatever reason it may be, the woodcock 
has always appealed strongly to the gunner. 
There is a mystery about his movements, a 
silence and a secrecy in his ways that puzzle 
us, and lead to speculations about him that never 
quite find an answer. We ought to know more 
about this bird of mystery. Let us watch him 
for the coming season. 
THE RAZORBACK HOG. 
A North Carolina correspondent says that, 
through the enforcing of the stock laws in the 
mountains of that State, the ravages of the razor- 
back hog are being curtailed. 
In a number of the Southern and Middle West¬ 
ern States hogs are permitted to roam at will 
through the woods and river bottoms of sparsely 
settled regions. An attempt is made to mark 
them by means of notching, slitting or clipping 
the ears, an unsatisfactory method at best, and 
one which has caused many a neighborhood feud 
and the spilling of some human blood. There is al¬ 
ways a certain percentage of these hogs that can¬ 
not be claimed or taken up by any person, be¬ 
cause proof of ownership is lacking, and as the 
practice has been in vogue for a great many 
years, there are plenty of genuine wild hogs. 
Whether or not the progenitors of the razor- 
back hog were fat, slow-going beasts such as 
prosperous farmers own we do not know. The 
fact is that the present woods rangers are long 
of leg, swift of foot, and so lean that the term 
“razorback” is fairly appropriate. Accustomed 
to encounters with other woods prowlers in de¬ 
fense of their young, they have developed cour¬ 
age of a sort, and while they will not attack men, 
they often set upon hunting dogs, invade camps 
and despoil everything within their reach. 
In the regions infested by these scavengers 
the loss in the eggs and young of game birds is 
very large. Where there are no fences the 
razorbacks scour the woods so carefully that 
nothing they will eat escapes. They travel fast 
and far and rake the country as with a fine- 
tooth comb; their sense of smell is highly de¬ 
veloped, and the eggs and young of ground-nest¬ 
ing birds are never safe when they are abroad. 
To curtail the range of these beasts wherever 
it may be possible is a line of work that should 
be taken up by sportsmen’s clubs and Audubon 
societies in every State affected. 
