wonderful 
from sure 
:! 
den whiff of us in their 
nostrils and it saved them 
death. 
It really requires a great amount of 
skill as a marksman and hunter to “get” 
these wild, wise and shifty animals and 
that is what makes it such good sport. 
P. M. Smoot, Hawaii 
i 
THE ELK SITUATION 
IN MONTANA 
Dear Forest and Stream : 
F ROM the door of my ranch house I 
can look out onto the winter range 
of the Gallitan elk herd now numbering 
about 2,000 head and ranging on the 
headwaters of .the West Gallitan river 
from the Yellowstone Park line down as 
far as the mouth of Porqupine Creek. 
While designated as a herd these elk are 
never bunched up in one herd except in 
very cold weather and are usually scat¬ 
tered in bands of from ten to one hun¬ 
dred animals. During the summer 
months they live among the high ranges 
within the Park where the timberline 
meadows and little grassy parks furnish 
excellent forage and where the cool 
mountain breezes keep the flies from 
bothering them, but with the first heavy 
.snows they commence to drift to the 
lower levels. 
The open season for elk in southern 
Montana extended to December 15th, and 
in two counties until December 25th un¬ 
til 1921. Thousands of elk have starved 
because they were kept back in the Park 
by hunters until they were too weak to 
battle their way through the deep snows 
to where there was feed. Thousands 
more have been slaughtered when ex¬ 
tremely severe snowstorms drove them 
out of the Park in great herds, as at 
Gardiner in 1919, and still other thou¬ 
sands have died when they got to their 
winter range and found it sheeped off 
so clean that there wasn’t enough feed 
left for a rabbit. It really is a wonder 
that there are any elk left, but there are 
still about 20,000 in and around Yellow¬ 
stone Park, and these would now have 
a fair chance for existence except for 
one thing: the Tooth Hunter. 
The hunting season now closes No¬ 
vember 15th, giving the elk a chance to 
get out before the snow gets too deep 
and there is a Game Commission that 
has the power to close the season before 
that date if conditions warrant it. The 
Forestry Department have thrown a 
good many sections of fine winter range 
into a Game Reserve, keeping the cattle 
and sheep off of it during the summer 
months so that when the elk come down 
there is something for them to eat. It 
has taken a long time to bring all of 
these changes and it looked as though 
they would come too late, but if we can 
put the tooth hunter out of business so 
that there will be enough bull elk to in¬ 
sure a good crop of calfs every year 
there is no reason why the elk should 
not hold their own or be on the increase. 
At the Ninth Annual Game Confer¬ 
ence of the American Game Protective 
Ass’n. on December 12th, Representative 
Johnson of Washington spoke on the 
evils of tooth hunting. He pointed out 
that if it were not stopped at once the 
elk in the Olympic Mountains in Wash¬ 
ington would be exterminated, and he 
urged the Elks Lodge to discourage the 
use of the elk tooth for an emblem or 
charm. We know that it is no longer 
an official emblem but those who pos¬ 
sess elk teeth continue to wear them, 
and those members who are not so for¬ 
tunate are often willing to pay a good 
big price for a pair. That is what makes 
business for the tooth hunter and as long 
as he can find a sale for teeth he will 
manage to get them. The situation that 
the elk are facing in the Olympic Moun¬ 
tains of Washington is equally true con¬ 
cerning the herds in and around Yellow¬ 
stone Park, for while tooth hunting has 
been stamped out within the boundaries 
of the Park by a large and efficient force 
of Rangers, the majority of the elk are 
outside of the Park boundaries at the 
most critical time of the year. It is 
when the snows are deep that the tooth 
hunters come in on skis. They are 
their killings they go out by the same 
route. Because of the killing of so many 
big breeding bulls there are not half 
enough for the number of cows and as a 
result the majority of these cows are 
barren every year. Such a condition 
cannot continue if we are to save the elk. 
The average number of elk killed dur¬ 
ing the last five hunting seasons on the 
West Gallitan is about seventy-five (75) 
per season. This is less than a 5 per 
cent, cut in the herd every year, and the 
number killed by legitimate hunting 
would never be very great because the 
main herds of elk leave their winter 
range on the Gallitan about tbe first of 
May and do not come out of the Park 
again until after the hunting season. 
The elk that we have a chance to hunt 
are the few locals that hang around all 
summer, and the few that drift out of 
the Park before the hunting season is 
over. This hunting will never hinder 
the growth of the Gallitan herd, and as 
they now have a fine winter range very 
Elk range at the head of the West Gallitan River, Montana 
» 
usually equipped with high power rifles 
and these are often fitted with Maxim 
Silencers. At this time of the year the 
full grown bulls herd together and I 
have seen as many as thirty-five or forty 
in one band. This makes it easy for 
the tooth hound to kill all he wants from 
one stand, pull the teeth and slide out of 
the country. 
It would be a hard matter to keep a 
force of rangers large enough to insure 
the elk protection against this bunch of 
killers, for they are dangerous custom¬ 
ers to handle and, furthermore, when 
they are caught, which is seldom, they 
get off with a small fine. They make 
this up by killing a few more elk at the 
first opportunity. 
During the average fall the elk do not 
come out of the Park and its neighbor¬ 
ing refuge, the Gallitan Game Preserve, 
lying just north of the Park on the cast 
side of the Gallitan river, until about the 
middle of December. This is a month 
after the close of the hunting season. 
As there are less than half a dozen 
ranches on the upper West Gallitan and 
they are small and widely scattered there 
is nothing to molest these animals except 
the tooth hunter. These hounds usually 
come in from the Yellowstone River, 
north of the Park, and after making 
few are dying from starvation. The 
thing that is cutting down the herds is 
the tooth hunter, and he has to be 
stopped. The only effective way to stop 
him is to make it a disgrace to be seen 
wearing an elk tooth. If this is done 
and the winter ranges kept free from 
sheep and cattle during the summer 
months there will be plenty of elk for 
our great-grandchildren to hunt and 
their great-grandchildren following 
them. Ernest Miller, Montana. 
THE BOSS BASS 
Dear Forest and Stream : 
A BOSS bass made his home in a pond 
in my neighborhood, under a small 
bridge that connected a beautiful island 
with the mainland. The waters of the 
pond are very clear, which made it easy 
to see the bass and study his habits. He 
was very large—quite the largest small- 
mouth bass that I have ever known in 
Bassdom. When I call him a “Boss” I 
speak advisedly, for it was very notice¬ 
able when he was absent and other fish 
were swimming in his home that just 
before he made his reappearance the 
other fish would disappear like magic. 
