138 
FOREST AND STREAM 
March, 1918 
forests, stripped the hill sides so that 
floods have ripped them to bits, cut out 
all the roots so long proclaimed to be the 
natural restraining influences of the down- 
bound floods gathered on the mountains. 
Of these fac.t c 
the Forestry 
Service has for 
the most part 
remained bliss¬ 
fully ignorant, or 
at least tena¬ 
ciously silent. 
Take, for in¬ 
stance, a forest 
reserve close to 
the Yellowstone 
Park, w h i c h 
Uncle Sam, good 
kindly soul, has 
thrown open to 
the sheep men. 
They range 
there, not 
through the en¬ 
tire spring and 
summer, but on 
an average only 
a couple of 
m o n t h s. They 
are obliged to be 
taken out of the 
mountain region 
in the winter time and fed somewhere 
to the south in Idaho or Utah, often 
under fence. 
That might be all very well if the rang¬ 
ing of sheep on the forest reserves really 
settled the problem of the sheep man. In 
fact it does nothing of the kind. The 
use of the forest reserves only postpones 
the evil day. The wise sheep man is not 
the one who hangs on to this postponing 
policy, but the man who goes out and gets 
some range of his own where he can run 
sheep without asking consent of any one. 
The forest reserve proposition is simply 
temporary. It is not decisive. Hence it 
cannot be desirable. 
If we keep sheep close in around the 
Yellowstone Park we might as well say 
goodbye to the great elk herd of that Park. 
That is why I write this story, and why 
I wish every citizen of America might 
read it. 
Though there are other places where 
sheep can go and soon must go, there is 
no other sanctuary excepting the Yellow¬ 
stone Park where the elk possibly can go. 
Under the conditions obtaining in the last 
few years the great Park herd is without 
doubt being cut in two. There are not 
one-half the elk in the Yellowstone Park 
which you thought or think there are. 
There are not one-half so many as there 
were four or five years ago. In three 
years more there will not be a third as 
many as there are now. In five years more 
there very likely will be none at all. 
These statements, as I am very well 
aware, are apt to invoke a series of shrieks 
of agony from divers directions. Very 
well, we will discount all that and see 
about some of these things. 
Some wild-eyed individual a couple of 
years ago started the insane notion that 
there were over forty thousand elk in the 
Yellowstone Park, and that unless five 
thousand of the cows were killed by the 
government they would die of starvation— 
a half-wit notion that would have discred¬ 
ited a cross-eyed moron. It was next sug¬ 
gested that it might be well to count the 
elk before killing five thousand cows. That 
count was made by the Biological Survey. 
It did not in the least run true to form. 
Immense, congested herds of elk do not mean plenty—they mean extinction 
The Survey report, if ever it had been pub¬ 
lished, would have shown that inside of the 
Yellowstone Park and on much of the win¬ 
ter range of the reserves North and North¬ 
west of the Park, there could be found 
only a little over fourteen thousand elk. 
Something of a discrepancy! 
Now comes the last chapter of all this 
counting talk. The Interior Department 
and the Agricultural Department together 
made a count last winter. It has been 
stated they agreed on 30,000! Marvelous 
accuracy! But within a month I have 
learned from the Biological Survey that 
they “could not make it over 17,000.’’ I 
would wager my fortune that half that 
number would be far nearer right. At 
the time the famous “joint count” was 
proposed I wrote: 
“It is proposed to send the counters out 
in pairs, one from the Forestry Service and 
one from the Interior Department. These 
gentlemen are blithely to mount their little 
snowshoes, place on their backs the mere 
trifle of fifty pounds or so, and tripping 
lightly across the mountain peaks, are to 
run every individual elk to his lair and ask 
him to hold still while he is being counted. 
It is an even bet now whether they will 
bring in fifty thousand elk or five thou¬ 
sand. I will back my own estimate, of less 
than six thousand elk now inside the actual 
lines of the Yellowstone Park, at any sea¬ 
son of the year. I will stand by the West¬ 
ern ranchers who live near the Park and 
against all the learned gentlemen of the 
East and Northeast and East East by 
South East.” 
The first Biological Survey investigation 
brought out some distressing truths. More 
is the pity that the report which that Sur¬ 
vey made has not been printed and scat¬ 
tered broadcast over the land. Depart¬ 
mental Washington killed it—the bureau 
discrepancies were getting to be too 
great! Bureau “courtesy” suppressed the 
report. I am not privileged to give 
the details, but I know that some of their 
investigators found north of the Park over 
four hundred elk that had been killed for 
their tusks alone two years ago. Seventeen 
splendid bull elk were found in one spot, 
and not a knife had been put in the car¬ 
cass of one of 
them, not a 
pound had been 
used for food. 
They had been 
killed in sheer 
cold - blooded 
devilishness, for 
the sake of the 
ten or twenty- 
five dollars the 
pair of tusks 
would bring. It 
is entirely wrong 
to believe that 
since the Order 
of Elks has dis¬ 
credited the 
wearing of elk 
teeth the slaugh¬ 
ter of elk for 
the teeth has 
ceased. Nothing 
of the sort is 
true. A good 
pair of elk tusks, 
well marked, is 
the same as from 
ten to thirty dollars anywhere around the 
Park today. 
Now, if you have ever seen the network 
of game trails on the snow leading to the 
torn carcasses of elk which were shot 
down for the teeth—if you will count four 
hundred such blots on the landscape—and 
four hundred blots on our national honor 
—you may begin to feel more serious about 
these things. But that is not a fraction. • 
Last winter I had a telegram from a 
department in Washington asking me to go 
out to Yellowstone Park to have a look at 
the tremendous herds of elk which had 
come down around the mammoth Hot 
Springs. I did not need to go out. I knew 
very well what that elk herd meant. It 
meant that the elk had been driven out on 
new migration lines. It means the present 
destruction of the Park herd. 
That was two years ago, in 1915. In 
the month of December, 1916, when heavy 
snows had again driven the great herd out 
to the north on its new migration lines, 
there were over four hundred elk killed 
just north of the Park line. Most of them 
were killed for their teeth, some of them 
for meat. This is the third great killing 
in that part of the country in the winter 
season of which there is record within the 
last three years. It would be moderate to 
state that over two thousand elk have been 
killed just north of the Park in that time. 
The bands which come down north of the 
Yellowstone River between Hell Roaring 
Creek and the mouth of the Gardiner 
River, supply most of the animals for 
what might be called the Gardiner butch¬ 
eries. I don’t suppose that the official 
counters, however good they were, ever 
counted half the elk that were killed. That 
is a large country, and in the winter it is 
very difficult, as any ski runner who has 
ever tried it can tell. As I have been over 
it on ski myself I know something of what 
the counting of elk really means. And 
the winter of 1916-1917 was yet worse— 
all the Government authorities admitted 
