American Big Game in Its Haunts - Various
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In the San Gabriel and San Bernardino Reserves one finds himself at last
in a forest country, with mountains which command respect, a section
full of superb feed for the deer, feed of many sorts, for the deer have
an attractive and varied bill of fare. Whole hillsides are found of
scrub oak, their chief stand-by, and of wild lilac or "deer brush," the
latter familiar to all readers of Muir as the Cleanothus, in those long
periods of Miltonic sweep and dignity in which he summons the clans of
the California herbs and shrubs; an enumeration as stately as the
Homeric catalogue of the ships, and, to such as lack technical knowledge
of botany, imposing respect rather by sonorous appeal to the ear than by
visual suggestion to the memory. That herbs should be marshalled in so
impressive an array fills one with admiration and with somewhat of awe
for these representatives of the vegetable kingdom. As Muir pronounces
their full-sounding titles, one feels that each is a noble in this
distinguished company. No one unprotected by a botany should have the
temerity to enter, amid these lists, alone.
We visited this country in the season of flowers. Whole hillsides of
chamisal ("chamiz" or greasewood) bore their delicate, spirea-like,
cream-colored blossoms--when seen at a distance, like a hovering breath,
as unsubstantial as dew, or as the well-named bloom on a plum or black
Hamburg grape. The superb yucca flaunted its glorious white standards,
borne proudly aloft like those of the Roman legions, each twelve or
fifteen feet in height, supporting myriads of white bells. The Mexicans
call this the "Quixote"--a noble and fitting tribute to the knight of La
Mancha. The tender center of the plant, loved as food equally by man and
beast, is protected by many bristling bayonets, an ever-vigilant guard.
At an altitude of seven thousand or eight thousand feet, one passed
through acres of buckthorn, honey-fragrant, this also a favorite of the
deer, now visited by every bee and butterfly of the mountain side. It is
to be noted that as one ascends the mountains the butterflies increase
in numbers as well as the flowers which they so closely resemble, save
only the latter's stationary estate.
One sees in its perfection of color the "Indian paint brush," with its
red of purest dye, and adjoining it solid fields of blue lupine--the
colors of Harvard and Yale, side by side, challenging birds and all
creatures of the air to a decision as to which of them bears itself the
more bravely. Here is a chestnut tree; but look not overhead for its
sheltering branches. This is a country of surprises, and if the alder
tree towers on high, the dwarf chestnut or chinkapin here delegates to
the mountains the pains of struggling toward the heavens, and, contented
with its lowly estate, freely offers to the various "small deer" of the
forest its horde of sweet, three-cornered nuts.
Under the pines one catches a distant gleam of the snow plant, an
exquisite sharp note of color, of true Roman shade, such as Rossetti
loved to introduce into his pictures, shrill like the vibrant wood of
the flute. When a ray of the sun happens to strike this it gleams like a
flaming fiery sword, symbol of that which marked the entrance to
Paradise. One can circumvent this guard here, and when he is in these
hills he is not far removed from a country well worth protecting by all
possible ingenuity, a paradise open to all such as love pure air and
wholesome strong exercise.
Much of the San Gabriel Reserve is rugged and well protected by nature
to be the home of the deer. San Bernardino, on the contrary, is the most
accessible of the southern reserves, with abundant feed for the horses
of those who visit it, well watered, and full of noble trees. So open is
the forest that in the hunting season much of it must be abandoned by
the deer, who are perfectly cognizant of their danger, and, with
somewhat of aid from man, are quite capable of taking care of
themselves.
After visiting these southern reserves, I outfitted at Redstone Park,
above Visalia, in the San Joaquin Valley, and cruised through the
Sequoia National Park, among the big trees, at that time patrolled by
colored soldiers under the able command of Captain Young, an officer who
possesses the distinction of being the only negro graduate of West
Point, I believe, now holding a commission in the United States
Army. The impression produced by the giant Sequoias is one of increasing
effect as the time among them is extended. In their province the world
has nothing to offer more majestic and more satisfying than these trees;
one must live among them to come fully beneath their charm.
Since the National Parks and military reservations are already game
refuges, it was of importance that I should see the Mt. Whitney Military
Reservation, and for this purpose I crossed the Sierra Reserve, through
broad tracts suitable for Game Refuges, thus acquiring familiarity with
a large and most interesting section of forest country. From the top of
Mt. Whitney, the highest bit of land in the United States, exclusive of
Alaska, one looks down two miles in altitude to Owen's Lake almost
directly beneath. I picked up, on the plateau of the summit, a bit of
obsidian Indian chipping, refutation in itself of the frequently
repeated statement that Indians do not climb high peaks. A month was
spent with great profit in and about the Sierra Reserve, and one might
go there many summers, ever learning something new.
Having seen these southern reserves, and desiring to bring home with me
an impression of the northern woods, sharpened by immediate contrast, I
next visited that one which is the most to the northwest of them all,
the Olympic Reserve in Washington. Here, at the head of the Elwha
Valley, near Mt. Olympus, we lived among the glaciers. The forest
between the headwaters and the sea affords a superb contrast to
California; here are found fog and moisture, and super-abounding heavy
vegetation. In the thick shade grow giant ferns of tropic
luxuriance. The rhododendron thrives, its black glossy leaves a symbol
of richly nourished power. The devil's club flaunts aloft its bright
berries, and poisonously wounds whomsoever has the misfortune even to
touch its great prickly leaves, nearly as big as an elephant's ear; if
there be a malignant old rogue of the vegetable kingdom, this is he,
sharing with the wait-a-bit thorn of Africa an evil eminence. Many new
plants meet the eye, a wealth of berries--the Oregon grape, the salmon
berry, red or yellow, as big as the yolk of an egg, the salal berry, any
quantity of blueberries, huckleberries, both red and blue, sarvis
berries, bear berries, mountain ash berries (also loved of bears),
thimble berries, high bush cranberries, gooseberries--large and
insipid--currants, wild cherries, choke cherries; many of these friends
of old, others seen here for the first time, dainty picking in the
autumn for deer, bears, foxes, squirrels and many birds. What
particularly appealed to me was a wild apple, no larger than the eye of
a hawk, but quite able to survive in a fierce contest for life, and with
a pleasant, clean, sharp taste, very tonic to the palate, and with
diminutive rosy cheeks as tempting as a stout Baldwin--a fine,
courageous little product of the wild life, symbol of the energetic
quality of the Olympic air. I, for one, am a firm believer in the axiom
that a climate which will give the right "tang" to an apple will also
produce determined and energetic men; this whole region, spite of its
fogs, has a glorious future before it. Superb firs towered hundreds of
feet above our heads, and archaic-looking cedars, a thousand years old,
thrust their sturdy shoulders firmly against the storms and the
winds. But the valleys, the trees and the glaciers, were only the
_mise-en-scene_ of that which constituted primarily the reason of
my visiting this peninsula. Here is the only wild herd of elk of any
considerable size outside of the Yellowstone National Park, a most
beautiful elk now separated from the Rocky Mountain species. Besides
this herd there are only a few survivors of the once innumerable herds
of the Pacific Coast, one little bunch in California, and a few
scattered individuals in the mountains of Oregon and Washington. It is
excessively hard to form any correct estimate of how many remain;
probably there are at least a thousand, possibly several times that
number. At all events, there is a scattered herd large enough to insure
the existence of the species if they might now be protected. Unfortunately
the sentiment of the community in the vicinity of the Olympics is just
about what it was in Colorado in the seventies and in the early
eighties--almost complete apathy, so far as taking effective precaution
is concerned, to prevent the killing of these animals in violation of the
law. I saw one superb herd south of the headwaters of the Elwha, and was
informed that in the winter a large number come lower down into the valley
of that river; here and elsewhere the finest specimens are slaughtered by
head-hunters for the market, and by anyone, in fact, who may covet their
hides or meat or their "tusks," now unfortunately very valuable.
Presumably, in so killing them, picked specimens are selected. Of course
the finest bulls may not thus be systematically eliminated without
causing the general deterioration of the herd. Nature's method of
progress is by the survival of the fittest. Man reverses this so soon
as cupidity makes him the foe of wild animals. The country here is an
excessively hard one to get about in with stock, owing to its very
rugged nature and to the scarcity of feed, so that there is slight
danger of the extermination of these elk by sportsmen during the open
season. In the winter, however, the hunters have them at their mercy. I
was assured by one very level-headed man that, in the winter of 1902-3,
two men killed seventeen elk from the Elwha herd. Since the individuals
who killed the elk are well known and are practically unmolested, the
immunity which they enjoy tempts others to similar violation of the
law. More recently still, during this last winter, the game warden of
Washington reports the finding of the carcasses of nineteen elk, killed
for their tusks.
This country, with its splendid glaciers and mountains covered with
snow, presents quite the most beautiful scenery to be found within the
limits of the United States, exclusive of Alaska, and, before many
years, is destined to become a place of general resort for
travelers. For this to be accomplished, all that is needed is greater
facility of travel. It would be a thousand pities if we should tolerate
the extermination of the elk, which would afford delight to every one
who visited the Olympics, if only the herd might be preserved. One can
hardly blame the hunters for taking advantage of the laxity of public
sentiment. The State has it within its power easily to protect these
animals by the employment of two or three game detectives of the right
sort--keen, energetic men. These would soon break up the illicit traffic
and bring the offenders to justice. The people of the whole Pacific
seaboard, who are justly proud of their region, and of every trait
peculiarly its own, would bitterly lament the final disappearance of elk
from this whole countryside, yet the fact remains that hardly a voice
there, outside of the organization of the "Elks," is raised to protest
against these flagrant acts of vandalism which are taking place beneath
their very eyes.
This visit to the northern forest was full of varied and commanding
interest, but the chief occupation of my summer, when all is said, was
with California.
Deer are practically the only game to be considered in these southern
California reserves. There are mountain sheep to the east, in the
mountains of the Mojave and Colorado deserts, but they are almost
unmolested by the hunters of the seaboard country, and, except in rare
instances, are no longer found in the reserves. Occasionally odd ones
are seen, venturesome, determined individuals, on their travels, in the
energy of youthful maturity, tempted by curiosity, but these soon
realize that they are not secure where so many humans abound, and scurry
back to their desert fastnesses. As refuges are created and breeding
grounds established, sheep will return, and, it is hoped, make their
permanent home in the reserves. There are still enough of them in
scattered places for this purpose. I was told of one method of hunting
in the desert hills, sometimes resorted to by Indians and white men of
the baser sort, that seems hateful and unsportsmanlike. The springs at
which they drink are long distances apart. In some instances the alleged
sportsmen camp by these and watch them without intermission for three
days and nights, at the end of which period, when the sheep are
exhausted by thirst, the hunter has them at his mercy. This has nearly
as much to commend it to the self-respecting sportsman as the practice
of imitating the cry of the female moose to lure the bull to mad
recklessness and his undoing, a challenge hard for a courageous animal
to resist, a treacherous snare set before his feet. It would seem as if
a right-minded man would hesitate to take so base an advantage as by
either of these two methods of hunting.
Antelope are nearly exterminated in southern California, and there is
but a single little bunch of elk--those in the San Joaquin Valley, sole
survivors of the vast herds which ranged throughout those lowlands when
Fremont came to the country in 1845. These elk are smaller than those of
the mountains, and bear a striking resemblance to the Scotch red deer,
so familiar to us in Landseer's pictures. For years they have been
protected by the generosity and wisdom of one man, now no longer young,
an altogether public-spirited and generous act. I was taken by the
manager of this ranch to see these elk as they came at night to feed in
the alfalfa fields, and again in the morning we followed their trail
into the foothills and had a capital view of seven superb bulls in their
wild estate, as pretty a sight as one might see in California. Who can
feel ought save commiseration for a man who, standing on London bridge,
could say, "Earth has not anything to show more fair"?
Twice during the summer was I told of the presence in the mountains, by
men who thought they had seen them, of the mythical ibex. My informant,
in each instance a ranger, assured me that he had had a good look at the
animal, and was sure that it was not a mountain ram. The back-curving
horns he said were "as long as his forearm," one added instance of the
fact that a fish in the brook is worth two on the string--if a good
story be at stake! What my informant had seen, of course, was a ewe, or
young mountain ram before he had arrived at the age when the horns begin
to form their characteristic spiral. As for the great size of the horns,
the animal was running away, and every hunter is aware of the enormous
proportions which the antlers attain of an escaping elk or deer. How
they suddenly shrink when the beast is shot is another story.
Incidentally, the refuges of southern California will include the
breeding places of the trout in the upper reaches of the streams, and
will afford protection to grouse, quail, and other birds, but primarily
their purpose is to prevent the extermination of big game. In California
this has gone as far as it is safe to go if we are to save the
remnant. Even the California grizzly has been killed off so relentlessly
that it was a question, when I was there, whether a single pair survived
which might possibly in that State preserve the species. The ranger who
knew the most about this was of the opinion that two or three were still
left alive. He had seen their tracks within a year.[11] There are, I
have been assured, others in Oregon.
[Footnote 11: I have been informed since the above was written that he
saw the tracks of a single grizzly after I was there, toward the end of
July.]
If I had my way, the first act in creating a game refuge should be to
insure the survival of the few that remain. These bears are pitifully
wary as compared with their former bold and domineering attitude; they
would gladly keep out of harm's way if only they might be allowed to do
so. It is time, it seems to me, to call a truce to man's hostility to
them, once a foe not to be despised. Now they are so completely
conquered that man owes it to himself not too relentlessly to pursue a
vanquished enemy. When we think of the enormous period of time,
involving millions of years, required to develop a creature of such
gigantic strength as the California grizzly, so splendidly equipped to
win his living and to maintain his unquestioned supremacy--the Sequoia
of the animal kingdom of America--and when we contemplate this creature
as the very embodiment of vitality in the wild life, we shall not
wantonly permit him to be exterminated, and thus deprive those who are
to come after us of seeing him alive, and of seeing him where his
presence adds a fine note of distinction to the landscape, a fitting
adjunct to the glacier-formed ravines of the Sierras.
The domestic sheep, which were once the prey of the bears, no longer
range in these forests, and so far as the depredation of bears among
cattle is concerned, it is of so trifling a nature as practically not to
exist. It would seem that a nation of so vast wealth as ours could
afford to indulge in an occasional extravagance, such as keeping alive
these few remaining bears; of maintaining them at the public expense
simply for the gratification of curiosity, of a quite legitimate
curiosity on the part of those who love the wild life, and every last
vanishing trait that remains of its old, keen energy. So far as danger
to man is involved by their presence, the experience in the Yellowstone
National Park is that there is no such danger; when allowed to do so,
they draw their rations as meekly as a converted Apache; if they err at
all, it is on the side of exaggerated and rather pitiful humility.
It is mainly with the deer, however, that we are concerned. It is out of
the question for any thinking man who takes the slightest interest in
these creatures to stand passively by and permit them to be
exterminated. To prevent such a catastrophe proper measures must be
taken. The hunting community increases with as great rapidity as that
with which game decreases. Where one man hunted twenty-five years ago, a
score hunt for big game to-day. Unfortunately it has become the
fashion. It is a diversion involving no danger and, for those that
understand it, but slight hardship. If people are to continue to have
this source of amusement, some well matured and concerted plan must be
devised to insure the continuance of game. Never in the past history of
the world has man held at his command the same potential control of wild
beasts as now, the same power to concentrate against them the forces of
science. Man's supremacy has advanced by leaps and bounds, while the
animal's power to escape remains unchanged; all the conditions for their
survival constantly become more difficult. Man has, in its perfection,
the rapid-firing rifle, which, with the use of smokeless powder, gives
him an enormous increase of effectiveness in its flat trajectory. This
is quite as great an element of its destructiveness as its more deadly
power and capacity for quick shooting, since it eliminates the necessity
for accurately gauging distance, one of the hardest things for the
amateur hunter to learn. If man so desires, he can command the aid of
dogs. By their power of scent he has wild animals at his mercy, and
unless he deliberately regulates the slaughter which he will permit,
their entire extermination would be a matter of only a few years. Only
at the end of the last year we were told of the celebration in the Tyrol
of the killing, by the Emperor of Austria, of his two thousandth
chamois. Eight years ago this same record was achieved by another
Austrian, a Grand Duke. This was in both instances, as I understand, by
the means of fair and square stalking, quite different from the methods
of the more degenerate battue. At a single shooting exhibition of this
latter sort by the Crown Prince of Germany at his estate in Schleswig,
on one day in December last, were killed two hundred and ten fallow
deer, three hundred and forty-one red deer, and on the day following,
eighty-seven large wild boar, one hundred and twenty-six small ones,
eighty-six fallow deer, and two hundred and one red deer. Any man,
private citizen as well as emperor or prince, has it within his power,
if he be possessed of the blood craze, to kill scores and hundreds of
every kind of game. By the facilities of rapid travel the hunter, with
the least possible sacrifice of time, is transported with whatever of
luxury a Pullman car can confer (luxury to him who likes it) to the
haunts and almost within the very sanctuaries of game. Where formerly
an expedition of months was required, now in a few days' time he is
carried to the most out-of-the-way places, to the barrens, the forests,
the peaks, the mountain glades--almost to the muskeg and the tundra.
How far the rage for hunting has captured the community in this country
of the western seaboard it is surprising to learn. In the year 1902
there were issued for the seven forest reserves south of the Pass of
Tehachapi, a tract three-quarters the size of Massachusetts, four
thousand permits to hunt. Inasmuch as one permit may admit more than a
single person to the privileges of hunting, it was estimated that at
least five thousand people bearing rifles entered the reserves. This
besides the enormous horde of the peaceably disposed who also seek
diversion here, and who naturally disturb the deer to a certain
extent. The supervisor of two reserves--the San Gabriel and San
Bernardino--embracing a tract less than half the size of Connecticut,
assured me that in 1902 sixty thousand persons entered within their
borders; in the summer of 1903 this number was estimated at no less than
ten thousand in excess of the previous year. In these two reserves the
number of permits for rifles and revolvers issued between June 1 and
December 31, increased from 1,900 in the year 1902, to 3,483 in 1903,
and as, in some cases, these were issued for two or more persons, the
supervisor estimates that at least 4,500 rifles were carried last summer
into these two reserves. He was of the opinion that two-thirds of these
were borne by hunters, the remainder as protection against bears and
other ferocious wild beasts, which exist only in imagination.[12]
[Footnote 12: "Relative to the figures for game permits, and the reason
for the larger number issued for 1903 over 1902, I cannot myself
altogether explain the large increase. One reason, however, was that our
rainfall for the winter of 1902-3 was very large compared with that of
the five previous winters. As a result grass and feed were plentiful,
and attracted many more travelers and hunters, who figured that game
would be much more plentiful owing to the abundance of feed. I believe
that this was the principal reason why so many obtained permits. The
abundant rain made camping more pleasant, as it started up springs which
had been dry for several years. I believe that this very thing, however,
also tended to protect the game as it permitted them to scatter more
than for several years before, as water was more abundant. With all the
increase in guns and hunters I do not think that any more deer were
killed than during the summer of 1902." (Letter from Forest Supervisor,
Mr. Everett B. Thomas, Los Angeles, Feb. 13, 1904.) It is to be noted
that in the southern California reserves, on the ground of precaution
against forest fires, no shotguns may be carried into the reserves. As a
result quail have greatly increased in numbers.]
It is to be borne in mind that all through this California country there
exists a race of hunters--active, determined men, who passionately love
this diversion. The people there have not been so long graduated as we
of the Atlantic Coast from the conditions of the frontier. The ozone of
a new country stirs more quickly the predatory instinct, never quite
dead in any virile race. The rifle slips easily from its scabbard, and
there in plain sight before them are the forest-clad mountains, a mile
above their heads, in the cool and vital air, ever beckoning the hunter
to be up and away. These people feel in their blood the call of the
wild. With a very considerable proportion of the people upon farms, and
still more in villages and small towns, the Fall hunt is the commanding
interest of the year. This is the one athletic contest into which they
enter heart and soul; it is foot-ball and yachting and polo and horse
racing combined. For a young man to go into the forest after deer and
to come back empty-handed, is to lose prestige to a certain extent among
his fellows. Oftentimes, when a beginner returns in this way
unsuccessful, he is so unmercifully chaffed by his companions that he
mentally records a vow not to be beaten a second time, and, when he
finds himself again in the forest for his annual hunt, with the
enthusiasm of youth, he would almost rather die than be defeated.