350 
FOREST AND S T REAM 
June, 1918 
FOREST and STREAM 
FORTY-SEVENTH YEAR 
FOUNDERS OF THE AUDUBON SOCIETY 
GOVERNING BOARD: 
GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL, New York, N. Y. 
CARL E. AKELEY, American Museum of Natural History, New York 
FRANK S. DAGGETT, Museum of Science, Los Angeles, Cal. 
EDMUND HELLER, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C. 
<3. HART MERRIAM, Biological Survey, Washington, D. C. 
WILFRED H. OSGOOD, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, Ill. 
JOHN M. PHILLIPS, Pennsylvania Game Commission, Pittsburgh, Pa. 
CHARLES SHELDON, Washington, D. C. 
GEORGE SHIRAS, 3rd, Washington, D. C. 
WILLIAM BRUETTE, Editor 
TOM WOOD, Manager 
Nine East Fortieth Street, New York City 
THE OBJECT OF THIS JOURNAL WILL BE TO 
studiously promote a healthful interest in outdoor recrea¬ 
tion, and a refined taste for natural objects. Aug. 14, 1873 
BIG GAME MIGRATION 
Hr HE question of the elk of the Yellowstone Park 
-*• has excited widespread interest, and there is a 
general feeling that the whole subject deserves care¬ 
ful consideration. 
The remarks about the spring and autumn move¬ 
ments of the elk of the high mountains, printed on 
another page, describe conditions well known to men 
who were familiar with the west in early days, though 
perhaps new to many readers. The seasonal move¬ 
ments of our large herbivorous animals have received 
scant attention by naturalists and are scarcely men¬ 
tioned in the books, yet in past years Forest and 
Stream has printed much material on this subject. 
The only migration of this sort which is known by 
most readers is that of the barren ground caribou 
which pass north in spring and south in autumn in 
tremendous herds, called by the Hudson’s Bay men, 
la foule —the crowd. These have been written of— 
partly perhaps because the passing of these herds gave 
to Indians and others an opportunity to lay up a 
great store of food. Early writers refer to this move¬ 
ment, and Pike in that great book, The Barren Ground 
of Northern Canada, tells of la foule as it passed in 
late October, when for six days the caribou were on 
their way southward, making broad roads through the 
snow. On a smaller scale such migrations now take 
place in parts of Alaska and the Yukon territory, 
where herds of thousands of caribou are still seen. 
Of the shiftings of the buffalo at the approach of 
winter something has been written. It is now well 
understood that there was no regular migration from 
north to south, such as has been described by early 
writers, who sometimes let their imagination get away 
from their facts. There were movements of vast 
numbers of buffalo, brought about by various causes 
not always well understood, but there never was a 
time when all the buffalo in the north went south in 
winter and all the buffalo that wintered in the south 
went north in spring. 
Of the movements of the antelope from summer to 
winter range, more is known. Formerly there were 
regular crossing places on the Missouri River used by 
the antelope in autumn, and such places the Indians 
used to visit at the proper time for the purpose of 
getting supplies of antelope skins for clothing. Ante¬ 
lope from the Montana prairies went into the Yellow¬ 
stone Park in the spring to have their young, spent 
the summer there, and in autumn left the high country 
for the lower ground, where food was more easily 
obtained. In the same way the antelope of Saskatche¬ 
wan and Northern Montana formerly gathered in 
great numbers in the valley of Milk River, and in the 
early days of white settlement were slaughtered there 
by white men and Indians alike. 
Some of the older readers of Forest and Stream 
will remember an interesting book with photographs 
of wild game published a good many years ago by 
A. G. Wallihan. Mr. Wallihan—an old timer in Colo¬ 
rado—understood something about the movements of 
the muledeer during their migration from summer to 
winter range. He stationed himself on one of the 
migration routes of this species and, setting up his 
camera where the deer would pass along, took a won¬ 
derful series of pictures, which he afterwards made 
into one of the first books of wild life photography 
ever published. 
While the practical extermination of the big game 
of the west has made it impossible now to make 
original observations on this most interesting sub¬ 
ject, it will nevertheless be well worth the while of 
some naturalist to gather up and bring together the scat¬ 
tered allusions to it which have appeared. 
The elk in the Yellowstone Park are still making—; 
so far as the conditions of settlement will admit of it 
—efforts to continue their old migration movements, 
but, as has been pointed out on many occasions, this 
is prevented by the settlement of the country. 
The situation is not unlike that prevailing among 
the Indians, who, in primitive times, wandered at will 
over the country; people in the north making jour¬ 
neys to the south, and those in the south visiting their 
friends in the north. Settlement, improvement, civi¬ 
lization—economic conditions in fine—have brought 
to an end this old freedom for wild man and for wild 
beast. Only the air is free, and the wild birds still, 
though in diminishing numbers, pass north and south 
with the seasons. Even this may end. 
DANGERS TO BIRD LIFE 
HE destruction of birds by wholesale through 
certain operations of nature is familiar to all nat¬ 
uralists, but much less so to sportsmen generally. 
Nevertheless, many will remember the wiping out of 
the woodcock in portions of South Carolina by the 
great storm of February, 1899, as well as the whole¬ 
sale killing of flocks of swans carried over Niagara 
Falls about ten years ago. Often the cause of such 
destruction remains a mystery. Sixty years ago the 
Labrador duck disappeared from off the face of the 
earth—no one knows why. On the other hand, the 
causes of the extermination of the passenger pigeon 
and the buffalo are» no secrets. 
The spring of 1917 was exceedingly cold and rainy 
and all vegetation was retarded. In Massachusetts, 
on Memorial Day, no wild flowers were to be had to 
decorate the graves, and the apple trees were only 
beginning to come in bloom. In early June many of 
the hardwood trees were just beginning to put out 
their leaves, and the swamps seemed as bare as in 
winter. 
