men decided to investigate the cause of 
the death and they accordingly deter- 
mined upon an autopsy. When this had 
been performed a strange and remark- 
able revelation was presented. 
In the heart of the doe was found a 
needle-pointed spear of wood which had 
been once charred, leaving its inner 
substance of a metallic firmness. This 
wood spear had pierced the doe’s heart 
as neatly as a rifle bullet, but it had 
remained in that vital organ without 
emerging on the opposite side. No 
other disfiguring mark was to be found 
on the body of the dead doe. It was 
naturally surmised that the doe in her 
swift flight had collided with a hard- 
wood spear so forcibly as to drive it 
into her body and in breaking off from 
the main stem its point was left em- 
bedded in the heart as a mute evidence 
of her singularly tragic death. As in- 
dicating the doe’s extreme age, the fur- 
ther interesting disclosure was made 
that all her teeth had disappeared. 
But the sad sequel of the tragedy, 
however, is yet to be revealed, and in 
this is to be found its poignantly pa- 
thetic feature. On a further examina- 
tion it was discovered that the dead 
mother deer had shortly before renewed 
her motherhood and that an unpro- 
tected and helpless fawn was some- 
where awaiting her return for its need- 
ful nourishment. 
A diligent search through the wild 
expanse of territory failed to disclose 
the whereabouts of the fawn, and it is 
almost a certainty that its tender life 
was subsequently sacrificed through the 
horrors of slow starvation or by attacks 
from predatory animals. 
Wo. M. GRAFFIUS, 
Huntingdon, Pa. 
An Appeal for the Elk 
by Joseph W. Stray 
DEAR ForEST & STREAM: 
HIS letter is written because I have 
read, with much interest, the let- 
ters on the elk published in recent num- 
bers of FoREST AND STREAM, and be- 
cause of the letter from P. V. Sommers 
of Pocatello, Idaho, published in the 
March, 1925, issue. 
Twenty-five years ago the herd of 
elk about Jackson’s Hole, Wyoming, 
was believed to number, approximately, 
100,000 head. Last autumn the num- 
ber there was estimated at about 4,000 
head. 
As recently as 1919 the Montana 
herd of elk was estimated to number 
25,000 head. In December, 1922, that 
herd had been reduced by starvation, 
and by hunting slaughter, to less than 
5,000 head. 
In a statement issued by the Forest 
Bureau in April, 1917, it was stated 
that the deaths from _ starvation 
amongst the Jackson’s Hole herd of 
elk during the winter of 1916-1917 num- 
bered 7,000 head. 
A natural resource is in process of 
elimination. 
When winter comes the temperature 
in the mountains of Wyoming, and of 
Montana, falls sometimes to minus 40 
degrees F. The snow lies deep, usually 
10 feet or even more, over the summer 
range of the elk, and these animals mi- 
grate to the plains where the wind 
sweeps bare the ground on the ridges 
and exposes the dried grass upon which 
the elk must subsist during the winter. 
Should the snow on the plains be deep 
the elk paw through it to the ground. 
When cattle, or sheep, have been per- 
mitted to graze over this ground during 
the summer no grass is there for the 
elk during the winter, and the elk that 
cannot find dried grass to eat during 
the winter cannot live, for the elk does 
not browse successfully. 
The hoofs of the elk are not splayed; 
when the snow is deep, or crusted, the 
elk becomes bogged in it and the bogged 
elk dies. 
The settlers in Wyoming, and in 
Montana also, regard the elk as their 
natural perquisite and kill the cow elk 
for meat; every unweaned elk calf, 
that loses its mother, dies. 
At Gardiner Flats, in 1919, there was 
a slaughter of elk that disgusted decent 
men throughout the country; the esti- 
mates of the number of elk killed there 
then run up to 10,000 head; 3,500 car- 
casses were shipped by express from 
Gardiner station, more than that num- 
ber were hauled away in wagons and 
in automobiles and many bulls were 
killed for the canine teeth alone. 
Every head of cattle grazed on Na- 
tional Park land consumes during the 
summer in grass the equivalent of three 
tons of hay. The government receives 
from the cattlemen a few cents for each 
head grazed in national forest or park, 
then turns around and pays from $10 
to $60 a ton for hay to feed a remnant 
of starving elk that would have fat- 
tened on grass cattle or sheep had eaten 
during the summer. 
Cattle, or sheep, may be raised in al- 
most every section of this country, but 
the elk can exist, in a wild state, in a 
natural habitat only. 
The members of the Congress of the 
United States refuse to appropriate 
money to provide for the future of the 
American elk, yet as this is written, 
an effort to force a salary grab, that 
would increase the salaries paid mem- 
bers of Congress from $7,500 to $10,000 
a year, is being made; this salary grab 
will, if successfull, cost the people of 
this nation more than 1,300,000 dollars 
a year; the expenditure of $200,000 to 
$300,000 to provide a proper winter 
feeding ground for the surviving ani- 
mals of a great species of native mam- 
mals will not be authorized. 
The cattlemen and the sheepmen re- 
gard the use of national forest land as 
their natural right and, to them, the 
only good elk is a dead elk. 
Because the elk has no vote, the elk 
receives no consideration whatsoever 
and, it is believed, less than thirty per 
cent. of the elk calf crop reaches ma- 
turity. 
The holdings of about thirty settlers 
should be purchased, for elk and settlers 
cannot live in amity. When an elk is 
starving, property rights are not recog- 
nized. Starving elk obey the first law 
of nature and the settlers suffer, suffer 
severly financially, in consequence. 
Seven investigations have been held 
by government bureaus to inquire into 
conditions under which the elk exist 
and to recommend a practical method 
to conserve elk life. The net result of 
these investigations has been the estab- 
lishment of feed yards so placed that 
seventy per cent of the elk herd cannot 
reach them. 

. re, “~ 
Astory Without Wardg | - 
Photo sent in by W. O. Geisenheyner, Frazee, Minn. 
229 
