there are a half dozen men in the party, 
the chances are that not all of them will 
bag their game, unless the snow is so 
deep that all of the elk have been driven 
out of the Park by the storms; in that 
case, of course, it is a simple matter 
to kill them, but that is not hunting, it 
is plain every-day butchery, however, 
even under these conditions, it takes 
time, horses, food, horse feed and equip- 
ment. 
COW elk will dress from 300 to 
375 lbs. in meat after the skin is 
removed and a calf will weigh from 175 
up to 225 lbs. Bulls are not killed for 
meat. So when wages for the men and 
horses are taken into consideration (for 
they would be working and earning 
that amount otherwise) and cost of the 
trip is figured up, it will be found that 
Jack Jones or Bill Smith could have 
stepped out into his corral, butchered 
a prime steer, and would have come out 
away ahead of the game. It is per- 
fectly evident, therefore, that Jack 
Jones and Bill Smith were not out after 
meat alone, they were out to have a 
good time, to get together and talk over 
other days and other hunts, to sit 
around the camp fire or on a bed roll 
in the tent beside a comfortable fire in 
the sheet iron stove, play a little penny 
anty, and thank God, even if they say 
so, most of the Jack Jones’ and Bill 
Smith’s that I know of are not out 
after meat alone when they hit a game 
trail. 
A nice fat elk steak is a real delicacy 
to get, but if in getting that steak we 
have to sell our birth right as poor old 
Esau did to get his mess of potage, we 
had better satisfy ourselves with beef- 
steak, instead; if in order to satisfy 
someone’s appetite for elk steak, laws 
(!!!) are made that will allow such 
a slaughter of elk as took place around 
Gardiner, Mont., in 1919, we should be 
ashamed, and this year it looks as 
though we are going to be a pretty 
poor bunch of sportsmen. Any fool can 
go out and kill an elk under those 
conditions. 
T is a fact that many so-called men 
even go out without a gun when these 
herds of elk are driven out of the Park 
in front of a big storm, there is a bom- 
bardment that would make the second 
battle of the Marne or the St. Mihiel 
drive sound like a peace conference in 
comparison; one had best get behind a 
rock and stay there. Sometimes there 
are hundreds, even more than a thou- 
sand elk on the open hillsides at the 
mercy of the barrage. Everyone wants 
to beat every one else, most everyone is 
shooting. They get excited and keep 
on shooting. Elk fall but someone else 
gets to the elk that George Brown 
158 
knocked down before he gets there and 
has the animal’s throat cut, it is his 
elk and so it goes. Hundreds of elk 
are mortally wounded that go off to 
die alone and are left to lay unclaimed, 
and yet we make sarcastic remarks 
about Spanish bull fights. 
After the terrible slaughter of elk 
in 1919 near Gardiner the hunting 
season in Park County, Montana, which 
lasted until December 25th, was short- 
ened to Nov. 15th to conform with the 
open season in Gallatin and Madison 
Counties immediately to the West and 
where conditions are practically the 
same. After two years, however, in 
which the “hunting business” did not 
prosper around Gardiner the season 
was again thrown open to last until De- 
cember 20. 
This year the snows started coming 
in September and the snowfall has been 
very heavy throughout the West, natur- 
ally the elk were simply forced out of 
the Park both to the North and South 
long before the season closed and of 
course this meant that the pot hunters 
army was on hand. Over a thousand 
elk were killed this year around Gard- 
iner and of course that means that 
under the conditions I have mentioned 
before, over two thousand elk were 
wounded and with a hard winter like 
the present one, this means that they 
that did not die soon after being 
wounded will die in their weakened con- 
dition before spring comes.. 
HE situation in the Jacksons Hole 
country was much the same and 
even more elk were killed there, be- 
cause the Southern herd is the largest 
herd of the elk around the Park. It 
has been estimated by one of the best 
informed guides in that country that 
over two thousand elk were killed down 
there to say nothing about those that 
were wounded. 
We simply cannot keep on at this 
rate and have any game left. We can- 
not go on ignoring this thing out here 
in the West. We must have hunting 
seasons that will make it impossible to 
take advantage of game in this way. It 
is this thing that brings so many unin- 
formed people to the opinion that all 
hunters are butchers. It is this that 
makes decent people want to close the 
open season on game permanently and 
they cannot be blamed for it. However, 
we do not want to come to that, for a 
permanent closed season would only 
make a repetition of what happened to 
the buffalo in Wainright Park in Can- 
ada, where they overstocked the area 
and the Kaibab Plateau, where the 
blacktailed mule deer are numbered be- 
tween 20,000 and 40,000 and they are 
starving to death because there is not 
sufficient feed in that small area to sup- 
port such a large number of deer. 
ETWEEN these two extremes there 
lies a sensible medium. Let us take 
it. Our hunting seasons need not be 
shortened but they must close earlier 
than they do. Very few elk would be 
killed if the open season lasted from 
September 1st to November ist, or in 
ordinary years to November 20th, but 
when the season is kept open as it is 
in Park County, Montana, until De- 
cember 15th and 20th, the game simply 
does not have a chance. 
Then there is the matter of game 
wardens. We do not have enough of 
them. The Forestry Departmnet has 
been doing some very effective work 
along this line, especially on the Gal- 
litan and it has not cost the State a 
cent for this service. However, it is 
about time that we had a better State 
organization of game wardens, and in 
order to do that we have to make some 
provisions to pay them. All of us would 
much rather pay a nominal sum for a 
big game license and see it used in en- 
forcing the laws and improving condi- 
tions. 
The present license fee of only two 
dollars allows a person who has half 
a dozen boys to take out a license and 
kill an elk for each one of them, as the 
children themselves seldom do the kill- 
ing. Our game should not be slaugh- 
tered in this way and if a big game lic- 
ense within the State would cost ten 
dollars, it would put a stop to this 
wholesale buying of licenses by irres- 
ponsible people and having them 
slaughter game in the years like 1919 
and the present one when the elk come 
out of the Park in herds during the 
open season. 
We still have quite a number of elk 
and other big game in the country sur- 
rounding the Park in Wyoming, Idaho 
and Montana. Why not keep them in 
their present number and just use the, 
surplus for hunting? 
If a cattleman or stock grower were 
to kill off a certain number of his 
animals each year regardless of the 
fact that he was making deep inroads 
on his breeding stock, he would be con- 
sidered a fit candidate for the nut col- 
lege. Yet we are doing worse than this 
with our big game. 
Wee kill as many as we possibly can 
every year and keep the season open 
in some sections until so late that it is 
just plain murder. It looks as though 
the stock interests in certain sections 
were combined for just that purpose— 
to kill off all the game so that they 
could also use even the very limited 
range that has been set aside as game 
(Continued on page 168) 
