June 17, 1911.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
935 
How Wild Things Die. 
Among vvi d creatures, unless the balance of 
nature is so seriously disturbed as to threaten 
extermination, deaths occur with about the same 
frequency as births. This sounds trite, but the 
average observer probably seldom realizes, when 
he sees every spring, many young among his 
furred or tinned or feathered friends, that those 
of their kind which have fa.len out of the race 
during the year were just as numerous. 
In the case of the protected birds and mam¬ 
mals, which rarely fall to the hunter's gun, dis¬ 
solution must come from accident, or from 
natural causes, or from the activities of preda¬ 
tory enemies. All are important factors, and it 
is impossible to estimate which is the chief. 
In Jackson Hole, Wycming, where the e k con¬ 
gregate every winter at the very doors and about 
the haystacks of the ranchmen, it has been ob¬ 
served that the bulls which have failed to re¬ 
cuperate quickly after the rutting season, or the 
cows with a limp, or feeble calves, are down and 
out before the advent of spring, and that owing 
merely to the stress of short feed and cold 
weather. And it is well agreed that the slightest 
falling in strength or vigor in bird or beast 
signs its death warrant. 
The powers that prey are ever on the alert. 
They follow the line of least resistance, nearly 
always attacking those individuals which bid fair 
to become the easiest victims. The wolf, a dar¬ 
ing killer, prefers cattle to elk, and calves or 
young stock to three-year-old steers. Even in 
salt water, while the onslaught of such destroyers 
as bluefish or albacore upon an unresisting mass 
of menhaden or mackerel or sardines is sheer 
butchery, it is always the cripple that goes first 
to his doom. It is probable that throughout 
nature, except where the advent of man or 
some other cause has stamped out the special 
enemies of birds or beasts, deaths from sheer 
old age among the non-predaceous are compara¬ 
tively rare. Yet they do undoubtedly occur 
even where such enemies still exist. 
A large irrigation company in Northern Colo¬ 
rado has extensive works near the very top of 
the Continental Divide, about Mount Richtofen, 
between the headwaters of the Platte and those 
of the Grand. It is almost a virgin country, but 
for the company’s ditches and the cabin for its 
men. The snowfall is often so heavy that the 
cabin itself completely disappears, and it would 
seem as if no living thing larger than a squirrel 
or marten could survive. But such is not the 
case. This section is rather noteworthy for the 
number of its mountain sheep. They brave out 
the winters in spite of the snow, subsisting upon 
the scanty herbage found in sheltered nooks 
among the rocks or on ridges swept bare by the 
wind. 
One recent winter, when the snowfall had been 
rather heavy, two of the company’s men, sta¬ 
tioned at the cabin, heard a furious barking from 
their dog. He had found in the snow and 
brought to bay near the cabin a fine old ram. 
The poor creature was nearly dead from lack 
of food. The storms had evidently covered up 
his range, and being old and feeble, he had been 
unable to follow the more vigorous members of 
his flock to pastures new. The old monarch was 
rescued from the dog, tied up and offered hay 
in plenty. But his teeth were nearly gone and 
the diet was unaccustomed, so he could do little 
with it, succumbing after a few days from sheer 
inanition. As that region has many mountain 
lions, it is quite remarkable that death came to 
him from the disabilities of old age and not 
by violence. He was indeed a handsome o’d 
fellow as the accompanying pictures show. 
THE RAM FOUND BY THE DOG. 
Everyone who spends much time in a game 
country sees evidence of these tragedies in 
plenty, and sight of them and of the sufferings, 
which wild animals undergo in hard winters, 
coupled with the knowledge that extermination 
waits on all Rocky Mountain game, has led me 
for one to be extremely chary of taking the 
life of the poor beasts. W. B. S. 
North Park, Colo., Then and Now. 
A generation ago there were great areas of the 
Rocky Mountains of which very little was known. 
One such area was Northwestern Colorado, a 
country then abounding in game. 
In the year 1879, there was published in 
Forest and Stream a series of letters describ¬ 
ing a trip to North Park, then absolutely with¬ 
out settlers, though a man named Pinkham had 
a cabin in the “neck” of the park—on the road 
which led to it, south through the mountains 
from Laramie, Wyoming—and two or three 
men had already gone into the park and had 
done a little placer mining on Owl Creek. In 
those days thousands and thousands of antelope 
fed on the sage brush plain and rounded hog¬ 
backs of North Park, elk and blacktail deer 
were abundant in the mountains, sheep were 
plenty on the peaks and signs of bear were to 
be seen everywhere in the timber. 
Shortly after the writer of the series referred 
to left the park, came an outbreak of the Utes, 
in which a number of people were killed. 
A letter recently received from a resident of 
North Park speaks of present conditions there 
and tells of some changes which thirty years 
have wrought. The letter says: 
“There are very few elk. Blacktail deer are 
getting very scarce. Hunting has almost be¬ 
come a thing of the past, but there are still 
quite a number of mountain sheep high up in 
the mountains. All game is protected. There 
are plenty of fine trout in the streams—rainbow 
and salmon trout. 
“The country is greatly changed. There are 
many ranches, and most of the land is taken up 
and the country fenced. It is only a stock, 
cattle and hay country, but a good one. Farm¬ 
ing has been tried here with very little success 
as yet. As you know, the valley of the park is 
from 8,000 to 9,000 feet above the sea level. 
The very hardy vegetables do quite well and 
ranchers are trying the hardier grains, and I 
think will ultimately succeed, for it is being 
tried year after year, and some years beardless 
barley heads out very heavily. A railroad is 
coming through the park, the Laramie and 
Hahn’s Peak Railroad. They are heading to¬ 
ward a coal bank, where the vein is said to be 
sixty-five feet up and down and nobody knows 
how long it is. There is plenty of coal here— 
all of it bituminous coal. 
“Antelope used to go down the Platte by the 
thousand, and thousands of them used to stay 
in the park in winter. To-day I do not think 
there is a single antelope left. There was one 
man who at one time averaged eight per day, 
killing them for their hides. It makes one 
ashamed to look at the wanton slaughter of 
game. I feel that every ranchman should have 
what game he requires for his own use, both 
summer and winter, but no more than just what 
he needs. He is settling up the country and 
putting up with all the many hardships of a new 
region. If we had protected the game in the 
early days we might now have what we really 
need for our own use. The Indian always had 
what he wanted for his use, for he never 
slaughtered for hides, until the white man gave 
him the idea. Then I suppose he wanted his 
equal rights, too. 
“The horse is stolen, and we have locked the 
stable door too late but it seems to me that if 
the Government would allow the farmers and 
ranchmen to try to raise deer, elk and ante¬ 
lope it would be a good thing. The two last, 
I think, would do the best; for I have seen some 
very tame antelope. 
“There was one that we called Billy. He was 
the best hunting dog that I ever saw. As soon 
as he saw you take up your rifle, he would come 
with you, whether you wanted him or not. 
