American big game in its haunts; the book of the Boone and Crockett club . bedevoted to the broader object of benefiting this andsucceeding generations by preserving a stock of largegame. It is still made up of enthusiastic riflemen,and their love of the chase has not abated. But, sincethe Clubs formation, an astonishing change has comeover natural conditions in the United States—achange which, fifteen or twenty years ago, could nothave been foreseen. The extraordinary developmentof the whole Western country, with the inevitable con-traction of the range of all big game, and the absolutereduct
American big game in its haunts; the book of the Boone and Crockett club . bedevoted to the broader object of benefiting this andsucceeding generations by preserving a stock of largegame. It is still made up of enthusiastic riflemen,and their love of the chase has not abated. But, sincethe Clubs formation, an astonishing change has comeover natural conditions in the United States—achange which, fifteen or twenty years ago, could nothave been foreseen. The extraordinary developmentof the whole Western country, with the inevitable con-traction of the range of all big game, and the absolutereduction in the numbers of the game consequent onits destruction by skin hunters, head hunters andtooth hunters, has obliged the Boone and CrockettClub, in absolute self-defense, and in the hope that itsefforts may save some of the species threatened withextinction, to turn its attention more and more togame protection. The Club was established in 1888. The buffalo hadalready been swept away. Since that date two speciesof elk have practically disappeared from the land, 442. H Big-Game Refuges one being still represented by a few individuals whichfor some years have been preserved from destructionby a California cattle company; the other, found onlyin the Southwest, in territory now included withinthe Black Mesa forest reservation, may be, perhaps,without a single living representative. Over a vastextent of the territory which the antelope once in-habited, it has ceased to exist; and so speedy and sowholesale has been its disappearance that most ofthe Western States, slow as they always are to inter-fere with the privileges of their citizens to kill anddestroy at will, have passed laws either wholly pro-tecting it or, at least, limiting the number to be killedin a season to one, two or three. In 1888 no onecould have conceived that the diminution of the nativelarge game of America would be what it has provedto be within the past fifteen years. That the game stock may re-establish i
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Keywords: ., bookauthorroosevel, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, bookyear1904
