American Big-Game Hunting: the Book of the Boone and Crockett Club

Part 1

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American Big-Game Hunting

The Book of the Boone and Crockett Club

EDITORS THEODORE ROOSEVELT GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL

NEW-YORK FOREST AND STREAM PUBLISHING CO. 1901

Copyright, 1893, by the Forest and Stream Publishing Co.

Contents

Page

The Boone and Crockett Club 9 The Editors.

A Buffalo Story 19 George S. Anderson.

The White Goat and his Country 26 Owen Wister.

A Day with the Elk 61 Winthrop Chanler.

Old Times in the Black Hills 73 Roger D. Williams.

Big Game in the Rockies 90 Archibald Rogers.

Coursing the Prongbuck 129 Theodore Roosevelt.

After Wapiti in Wyoming 140 F. C. Crocker.

In Buffalo Days 155 George Bird Grinnell.

Nights with the Grizzlies 212 W. D. Pickett.

The Yellowstone Park as a Game Reservation 240 Arnold Hague.

A Mountain Fraud 271 Dean Sage.

Blacktails in the Bad Lands 287 Bronson Rumsey.

Photographing Wild Game 299 W. B. Devereux.

Literature of American Big-Game Hunting 319

Our Forest Reservations 326

The Club Exhibit at the World's Fair 334

Constitution and By-Laws of the Club 337

List of Members 340

The sketches entitled Big Game in the Rockies, and In Buffalo Days, have already appeared in Scribner's Magazine, and are here reprinted by kind permission of Charles Scribner's Sons. Nights with the Grizzlies has appeared in the Forest and Stream, and is reprinted by permission of the Forest and Stream Publishing Co.

Part 2

List of Illustrations

Going to Water Frontispiece From Scribner's Magazine.

Facing page

The Master of the Herd 19 From Scribner's Magazine.

On the Slide Rock 46 Photographed from nature in the Chief Mountain country, Montana, by William H. Seward, Jr. From the Forest and Stream.

On the Heights 91 From Scribner's Magazine.

Stalking the Stalker 99 From Scribner's Magazine.

Studying the Strangers 105 From Scribner's Magazine.

Crossing a Drift 115 From Scribner's Magazine.

Two Pairs 117 From Scribner's Magazine.

At Mid-day 160 From Scribner's Magazine.

Blackfoot Indian Piskun 184 From Scribner's Magazine.

Through the Mist 197 From Scribner's Magazine.

Prospecting for Grub 214 From Scribner's Magazine.

The Buffalo of the Timber 240 Photographed from life in the Yellowstone National Park by John Fossam. From the Forest and Stream.

A Mountain Pasture 254 Photographed from life in the Yellowstone National Park by W. H. Weed.

Buffalo Cows and Calves 264 Photographed from life in the Yellowstone National Park by John Fossam. From the Forest and Stream.

Resting 294 Photographed from life by T. G. Ingersoll. From the Forest and Stream.

The illustrations from Scribner's Magazine are reproduced by kind permission of Charles Scribner's Sons; those from the Forest and Stream by permission of the Forest and Stream Publishing Company.

The Boone and Crockett Club

The aims of The Boone and Crockett Club are sufficiently set forth in Article II of its Constitution, which reads as follows:

The objects of the Club shall be:

1. To promote manly sport with the rifle.

2. To promote travel and exploration in the wild and unknown, or but partially known, portions of the country.

3. To work for the preservation of the large game of this country, and, so far as possible, to further legislation for that purpose, and to assist in enforcing the existing laws.

4. To promote inquiry into and to record observations on the habits and natural history of the various wild animals.

5. To bring about among the members the interchange of opinions and ideas on hunting, travel, exploration, on the various kinds of hunting-rifles, on the haunts of game animals, etc.

The Club is organized primarily to promote manly sport with the rifle among the large game of the wilderness, to encourage travel and exploration in little-known regions of our country, and to work for game and forest preservation by the State. Attention has been paid to all three points by the Club, but especially to sport and protection. Nevertheless exploration has not been neglected. In a trip after wilderness game the hunter is perforce obliged to traverse and explore little-known regions, at least when he is in search of the rarer animals, or is desirous of reaching the best hunting-grounds; and in addition to such exploration, which is merely incidental to the ordinary hunting trip, members of the Club have done not a little original exploration for its own sake, including surveying, and geographical and geological map-making. The results of these explorations, when sufficiently noteworthy, have appeared in periodicals devoted to such subjects, or in Government reports. The present volume is devoted to big-game hunting and to questions of game preservation.

Part 3

In behalf of game protection the Club works through the State for the procuring and setting apart of reservations where forests and game alike shall be protected at all seasons by the law. These great forest reservations thus become the nurseries and breeding-grounds of game and of the large wild animals which are elsewhere inevitably exterminated by the march of settlement. Already several such reservations have been established in different States, both by National and by State action--for instance, the Adirondack Reserve in New York, the Colorado Canyon Reserve in Arizona, the big timber reserves in Colorado and Washington, the island set apart in Alaska as an undisturbed breeding-ground for salmon and sea-fowl, the Yosemite Valley and the Sequoia Parks in California. The most important reservation, however, is the Yellowstone Park, which is owned by the National Government, and is the last refuge of the buffalo in this country, besides being the chief home of the elk and of many other wild beasts. This is the most striking and typical of all these reserves, and has been thought well worth special description in the present volume, with reference to its effects upon the preservation of game.

The enactment of laws prohibiting the killing of game anywhere, save at certain seasons and under certain conditions, must be left largely to the States themselves; and among the States there is the widest possible difference both as to the laws and as to the way they are enforced. It is enforcement which needs most attention. Very many of the States have good game laws, but in very few are they rigidly enforced. Maine offers a striking instance of how well they work when properly framed and administered with honesty and efficiency. There are undoubtedly many more moose, caribou, and deer in Maine now than there were twenty-five years ago; and if the Maine Legislature will see that the good work is continued, these noble beasts of the chase will continue to increase, to the delight, not only of the hunter, but of every lover of nature and of the hardy life of the wilderness, and to the very great pecuniary profit of the people of the State. In other States--Colorado, for instance--good has come from the enactment and enforcement of game laws; but in no other State have the governmental authorities acted with the wisdom displayed by those of Maine, and in no other State have the results been so noteworthy. It is greatly to be wished that such States as Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming, which inclose the best hunting-grounds now existing in the United States, would follow Maine's lead.

Another means by which the Club hopes to bring about a proper spirit for the preservation of our big game is by frowning on and discouraging among sportsmen themselves all unsportsmanlike proceedings and all needless slaughter. The Club has persistently discouraged anything tending to glorify the making of big bags of game, and it strives to discourage the killing of the females of any game species save under rigid limitations. No harm comes to any species from the destruction of a moderate number of bulls, bucks, or rams, and these are the legitimate objects for the hunter's skill. Only legitimate methods of sport should be followed; torch hunting and the slaughter of game in deep snow or in the water are held to be unsportsmanlike.

Hunting big game in the wilderness is, above all things, a sport for a vigorous and masterful people. The rifle-bearing hunter, whether he goes on foot or on horseback, whether he voyages in a canoe or travels with a dog-sled, must be sound of body and firm of mind, and must possess energy, resolution, manliness, self-reliance, and capacity for hardy self-help. In short, the big-game hunter must possess qualities without which no race can do its life-work well; and these are the very qualities which it is the purpose of this Club, so far as may be, to develop and foster.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT. GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL.

American Big-Game Hunting

Photographed from life. From Forest and Stream.]

A Buffalo Story

On the last day of September, 1871, I joined my regiment, then in camp near Fort Hays, Kansas. At that time the different troops of the regiment had not been assigned to their winter quarters. My own was on its way north from Texas, where it had been stationed since the close of the war. I was extremely anxious to learn what its destination was, for I had never killed any of the large game of the country; in fact, had never fired a rifle except at a target. Should my troop be ordered to Fort Riley, or Fort Harker, east of Fort Hays, or to Fort Dodge, south of Hays, I feared that my chance of meeting with large game would be doubtful. To my great delight, however, I found that my assignment was to Fort Lyon, situated on the northern bank of the Arkansas River in eastern Colorado.

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