310 
FOREST AND STREAM 
JULY, 1917 
iODTOIRDAL, 
on happenings of note in the outdoor world 
ELK STARVATION 
RECENT article in an outdoor contemporary on 
the Jackson’s Hole elk, declared reliable by the 
editor who printed it, is unfortunate. It is a 
helpless wail over elk conditions, and abounds in slurs 
on the motives of certain people who are faithfully try¬ 
ing to do all they can to improve the Yellowstone Park 
elk situation. It is wholly misleading. 
The article finds fault with conditions and with cer¬ 
tain Government bureaus, but offers no suggestion what¬ 
ever by which the situation may be improved. It pre¬ 
sents nothing constructive. The writer forgets, or does 
not know, that for a dozen or fifteen years people of 
experience have been carefully considering this elk situ¬ 
ation, without being able to suggest a remedy by which 
the perishing elk shall be saved. 
The present article slurs officials of the Forest Ser¬ 
vice, the Biological Survey, and other people, and crit¬ 
icises Congress for not passing the Hay-Chamberlain 
bill. In its original form that bill should have been 
passed, and would have been but for the amendment 
requiring the consent of the state legislatures before the 
President could proclaim a game refuge in a forest re¬ 
serve in any state. If this amendment had become law, 
<t would have rendered the bill ineffe?ctive. Those best 
informed about the situation were not willing to pull off 
their coats and work in behalf of a measure which they 
-felt would do no good, and might do much harm by in¬ 
definitely putting off this needed establishment of game 
refuges in the forest reserves. 
Every hard winter some one learns of the death by 
starvation of elk in the Jackson’s Hole country, and over¬ 
flows in an article of this sort, abusing people and calling 
for various remedies. Then comes spring, and the elk 
go back to their summer range, to be forgotten until the 
next hard winter with its starvation. 
If a certain number of animals are confined in a given 
territory and permitted to breed indefinitely, it seems 
clear that at last they will increase to a point where there 
is not food enough for them all. When that point is 
reached some of them may starve in winter, but most 
of them will pull through, in poor condition. Later, 
after they have still further increased in numbers, many 
more of them will starve in a hard winter. This is the 
situation in the Yellowstone Park-Jackson Hole herd. 
Congress has appropriated money to buy hay, and the 
elk have been fed. This has saved some elk, but the 
herds increase and will continue to do so. Feeding of¬ 
fers no remedy, unless we are prepared to keep it up 
indefinitely and on an ever increasing scale. 
Some experienced people believe that the only way to 
handle the Yellowstone Park elk is to kill them off down 
to a point where the food supply will be sufficient for 
those remaining, and to keep them killed down to that 
point. This should be done by Government officers, and 
the meat and hides utilized. 
No executive department of the Government is to be 
blamed for the fact that the elk have been driven to the 
mountains and are there perishing. The people respon¬ 
sible for this are those who have settled up and developed 
the western country-—who are not to be blamed at all. 
The writer who criticises the conduct of a department 
or a bureau ought first to inform himself as to the law 
and facts. Neither fhe Forest Service nor the Biological 
Survey is an independent body. Each is under the orders 
of the Secretary of Agriculture. The money which they 
expend is appropriated for them by Congress, and must 
be spent as provided by law. The employees of both 
bureaus, from the top to the bottom of the lists, are sub¬ 
ject to the law, and must expend the funds entrusted to 
them according to law and according to regulation. 
People who indulge in wild criticism of officials usu¬ 
ally do it thoughtlessly and in entire ignorance of the 
limitations under which those officials work. If they 
considered a little before expressing their criticisms, per¬ 
haps their articles would be less violent and less unjust 
—and certainly they would be more intelligent. 
ONE PRACTICAL ECONOMY 
HE times are threatening and there is some danger 
of a food shortage before the next year rolls 
around. Many people are anxious about this; 
lawns and golflinks have been plowed up and planted to 
potatoes, and in some places backyard gardens are in 
vogue. We all agree that production should be increased 
and efforts made toward economy. Just how far our 
practice agrees with our preaching is not yet clear. 
For many years past certain duck shooting clubs have 
endeavored to hold the migrating ducks on their own 
waters by artificial feeding—baiting, it is called. This 
practice is confined to no one section of the country. 
Over the waters of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and 
of the middle west, grain for the ducks has been dis¬ 
tributed with a liberal hand and the wild fowl have had 
a fat and easy living—up to the time when the frosts 
shut up their resting places and they move on. 
In view of the threatened lack of food for human 
beings the practice of feeding corn, wheat, rice or bar¬ 
ley to the wild ducks, which we love to shoot, ought to 
cease. It is waste—something we can do without. 
To stop this practice of feeding the wild fowl on the 
shooting grounds, will not harm the ducks, though it 
may oblige them to work a little harder for their living. 
It may make the shooting poorer, but if it does so, this 
is a hardship of the war which we must accept. 
