The first volume published by the Boone and Crockett Club, under the
title "American Big Game Hunting," confined itself, as its title
implied, to sport on this continent. In presenting the second volume, a
number of sketches are included written by members who have hunted big
game in other lands. The contributions of those whose names are so well
known in connection with explorations in China and Tibet, and in Africa,
have an exceptional interest for men whose use of the rifle has been
confined entirely to the North American continent.
During the two years that have elapsed since the appearance of its last
volume, the Boone and Crockett Club has not been idle. The activity of
its members was largely instrumental in securing at last the passage by
Congress of an act to protect the Yellowstone National Park, and to
punish crimes and offenses within its borders, though it may be
questioned whether even their efforts would have had any result had not
the public interest been aroused, and the Congressional conscience
pricked, by the wholesale slaughter of buffalo which took place in the
Park in March, 1894, as elsewhere detailed by Capt. Anderson and the
editors. Besides this, the Club has secured the passage, by the New York
Legislature, of an act incorporating the New York Zoological Society,
and a considerable representation of the Club is found in the list of
its officers and managers. Other efforts, made by Boone and Crockett
members in behalf of game and forest protection, have been less
successful, and there is still a wide field for the Club's activities.
Public sentiment should be aroused on the general question of forest
preservation, and especially in the matter of securing legislation which
will adequately protect the game and the forests of the various forest
reservations already established. Special attention was called to this
point in the earlier volume published by the Club, from which we quote:
If it was worth while to establish these reservations, it is worth
while to protect them. A general law, providing for the adequate
guarding of all such national possessions, should be enacted by
Congress, and wherever it may be necessary such Federal laws should
be supplemented by laws of the States in which the reservations
lie. The timber and the game ought to be made the absolute property
of the Government, and it should be constituted a punishable
offense to appropriate such property within the limits of the
reservation. The game and timber on a reservation should be
regarded as Government property, just as are the mules and the
cordwood at an army post. If it is a crime to take the latter, it
should be a crime to plunder a forest reservation.
In these reservations is to be found to-day every species of large
game known to the United States, and the proper protection of the
reservations means the perpetuating in full supply of all the
indigenous mammals. If this care is provided, no species of
American large game need ever become absolutely extinct; and
intelligent effort for game protection may well be directed toward
securing through national legislation the policing of forest
preserves by timber and game wardens.
A really remarkable phenomenon in American animal life, described in the
paper on the Yellowstone Park Protection Act, is the attitude now
assumed toward mankind by the bears, both grizzly and black, in the
Yellowstone National Park. The preservation of the game in the Park has
unexpectedly resulted in turning a great many of the bears into
scavengers for the hotels within the Park limits. Their tameness and
familiarity are astonishing; they act much more like hogs than beasts of
prey. Naturalists now have a chance of studying their character from an
entirely new standpoint, and under entirely new conditions. It would be
well worth the while of any student of nature to devote an entire
season in the Park simply to study of bear life; never before has such
an opportunity been afforded.
The incident mentioned on page 421 was witnessed by Mr. W. Hallett
Phillipps and Col. John Hay. Since this incident occurred, one bear has
made a practice of going into the kitchen of the Geyser Hotel, where he
is fed on pies. If given a chance, the bears will eat the pigs that are
kept in pens near the hotels; but they have not shown any tendency to
molest the horses, or to interfere in any way with the human beings
around the hotels.
These incidents, and the confidence which the elk, deer and other
animals in the Park have come to feel in man, are interesting, for they
show how readily wild creatures may be taught to look upon human beings
as friends.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT,
GEORGE BIRD GRINNELL.
NEW YORK, August 1, 1895.