304 
FOREST AND STREAM 
JULY, 1917 
THE ELK IN JACKSON’S HOLE 
Editor Forest and Stream: 
Recreation for June contains an article 
devoted to the starvation of the elk in 
Jackson’s Hole last winter, which, though 
vouched for by Mr. Cave as reliable, does 
not greatly impress me. 
I rather fancy my own experience and 
knowledge of the elk, for I have seen a 
great deal of them. They were still found 
in Michigan and Iowa, and were abundant 
in Nebraska when I was a young man. I 
have killed them within one hundred miles 
of the city of Omaha. 
The elk is a fine animal, good to look 
at and good to eat, but his pursuit does not 
call out very much skill from the sports¬ 
man. In this respect he is distinctly dis¬ 
appointing, for he is as little wary as a 
buffalo, and cannot run nearly so fast. If 
the natural history of the article for which 
Mr. Cave vouches as being reliable is so, 
the habits of various western animals have 
undergone extraordinary changes within 
the last few years—since I gave up big 
game hunting. 
According to the writer of this story, 
the natural enemies of the elk are wolves, 
coyotes and bears. A wolf or a coyote, or 
even a pack of these animals, would cer¬ 
tainly have a bad time if attacking any elk, 
except a very small calf that had been 
separated from its mother. I have watched 
a bear following along on the trail of a 
band of elk, smelling at their tracks in the 
snow, but this appeared to be mere curi¬ 
osity, and to judge from his actions, he 
felt little interest in the animals them¬ 
selves. He certainly was not following 
them with a view to securing food. If a 
bear finds himself in a place where he can 
do so, he will of course catch and kill an 
elk; but an elk is in about as much danger 
of being struck by lightning as it is of 
being killed by a bear. 
If the coyotes are a danger to elk “not 
only in winter, but most of all during the 
calving season,” the habits of coyotes and 
elk must have undergone a remarkable 
change within the past few years. 
If at the close of the rut, bull elk are 
emaciated to an incredible degree and 
winter comes too soon to permit recupera¬ 
tion, elk habits have altered greatly since 
I saw much of them in the region re¬ 
ferred to. Many years ago I often trav¬ 
eled through that country after the rut 
was over, and met many migrating elk, all 
of them in excellent condition. 
Adult cow elk that would dress out 500 
pounds and more I have never seen, and 
I fancy that they are very few in number. 
To be sure, I have never carried scales 
about with me, but I have weighed many 
and many cattle and horses. It was in 
those times that the elk which fed on bare 
ridges, where the wind never ceased, and 
the thermometer was 10 degrees to 40 de¬ 
grees below zero, were living just as their 
ancestors had lived, for no one knows how 
many thousands of years, and did well in 
such situations. The coat of the winter 
elk, of course, is underlaid by a-very heavy 
covering of wool, forming a warm over¬ 
coat. So long as food is abundant, the 
animals can endure almost any degree of 
cold. 
The author of the article vouched for as 
reliable does not seem to realize that this 
question of elk starvation in the Jackson’s 
Hole country has existed ever since the 
settlers closed up the migration route of 
the elk, which used to run from the high 
mountains down to the open sagebrush 
country and low hills lying north of the 
Union Pacific railroad, in what used to be 
called the Red Desert, a tract extending 
in a general way from Medicine Bow sta¬ 
tion west nearly to Rawlings. This was 
formerly the wintering grounds for vast 
herds of elk, but of course there are none 
there now. 
I wish some wise man would devise 
some scheme by which a winter home 
might be found for the elk—a range which 
would not interfere with the ranchmen. 
But I do not know how it is possible to 
discover a method of life by which a per¬ 
son can eat his cake and have it too. 
Old Timer. 
New York. 
Written and Illustrated bv F. V. WILLIAMS 
D O you know how to build a camp¬ 
fire? Of course you can get a blaze 
if you have plenty of dry kindling 
and matches—and even without either if 
you are a good woodsman. But there’s a 
lot of comfort derived from a good camp¬ 
fire, and a lot of something that’s a long 
way from comfort in one that smokes or 
throws sparks or just generally misbe¬ 
haves. A glowing blaze that will warm 
you outside and cook to a turn those flap- 
jacks that you depend on to warm you 
under the belt, is what you want. With a 
little bit of horse sense and a little bit of 
practice almost anyone can build a real 
campfire; but let not your deceit lead you 
into the belief that there is no skill re¬ 
quired. 
Forest and Stream is not setting up just 
now to condense into five all the good 
kinds of campfires, not even all the best 
ways of building them. But here are a 
few that are known to be good and prac¬ 
tical. 
Say you are out for a day’s tramp with 
the ol’ dog, looking for rabbits or some 
local “big game.” You’ve got your snack 
along in your coat pocket and are ready to 
sit down and enjoy it in cymfort. Per¬ 
haps you are lucky enough to have a new¬ 
fangled stew-pan that fits in a pocket of 
your hunting coat. Look around you and 
select an old windfall—Figure 1—with 
a fairly comfortable log for a seat. With 
a few dry boughs you can make a very 
practical little fire that will boil your coffee 
and perhaps toast a bit of that sandwich. 
Place a large branch or small log against 
your fallen tree at an angle, with the large 
opening or wide end of the angle to wind¬ 
ward, where of course your seat would be. 
Lay some small sticks criss-cross inside 
the angle and with a few dry splinters, or 
birch bark if you have it, you’ll soon have 
sufficient heat for your noonday lunch. 
Even the dog—if it’s been a cold wet day 
or a long hike—will enjoy it. 
Then there is the old style campfire 
crane. It’s built as you see it in Figure 2, 
and is all right'for almost any camp. The 
upright notched stick has a branch left on 
it for a fork, and the smaller branches you 
can trim into pegs to hold your cups and 
Figure 1. Simple Wind Guard 
