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Table of Contents

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.

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 Cañon 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.