ee our country _swept clean
of big game_!

Two years ago, I did not believe this; but I do now. It is impossible to
exaggerate the wide extent or the seriousness of this situation. In a
country where any and every individual can rise and bluster,
"I'm-just-as-good-as-_you_-are," and bellow for his "rights" as a
"tax-payer," there is no stopping the millions who kill whenever there
is an open season. And to many Americans, no right is dearer than the
right to kill the game which by even the commonest law of equity
belongs, not to the shooter exclusively, but partly to two thousand
other persons who don't shoot at all!

Unless we come to an "About, face!" in quick time, all our big game
outside the preserves is doomed to sure and quick extermination. This is
not an individual opinion, merely: it is a _fact_; and a hundred
thousand men know it to be such.

Last winter (1911-12), because the deer of Montana were driven by cold
and hunger out of the mountains and far down into the ranchmen's
valleys, eleven thousand of them were ruthlessly slaughtered. State
Game Warden Avare says that often heads of families took out as many
licenses as there were persons in the family, and the whole quota was
killed. Such people deserve to go deerless into the future; but we can
not allow them to rob innocent people.

* * * * *

OUR SPECIES OF BIG GAME

THE PRONG-HORNED ANTELOPE, unique and wonderful, will be one of _the
first species of North American big game to become totally extinct_. We
may see this come to pass within twenty years. They can not be bred in
protection, _save in very large fenced ranges_. They are delicate,
capricious, and easily upset. They die literally "at the drop of a hat."
They are quite subject to actinomycosis (lumpy-jaw), which in wild
animals is incurable.

Already all the states that possess wild antelope, except Nevada, have
passed laws giving that species long close seasons; which is highly
creditable to the states that have done their duty. Nevada must get in
line at the next session of her legislature!

In 1908, Dr. T.S. Palmer published in his annual report of "Progress in
Game Protection" the following in regard to the prong-horned antelope:

"Antelope are still found in diminished numbers in fourteen western
states. A considerable number were killed during the year in Montana,
where the species seems to have suffered more than elsewhere since the
season wa