Yes, indeed!  In time the wilderness will be opened up, and the big game will all be shot out, save from the protected areas.

THE MOUNTAIN GOAT.—­Even yet, this species is not wholly extinct in the United States.  It survives in Glacier Park, Montana, and the number estimated in that region by three guide friends is too astoundingly large to mention.

This animal is much more easily killed than the big-horn.  Its white coat renders it fatally conspicuous at long range during the best hunting season; it is almost devoid of fear, and it takes altogether too many chances on man.  Thanks to the rage for sheep horns, the average sportsman’s view-point regarding wild life ranks a goat head about six contours below “old ram” heads, in desirability.  Furthermore, most guides regard the flesh of the goat as almost unfit for use as food, and far inferior to that of the big-horn.  These reasons, taken together, render the goats much less persecuted by the sportsmen, ranchmen and prospectors who enter the home of the two species.  It was because of this indifference toward goats that in 1905 Mr. John M. Phillips and his party saw 243 goats in thirty days in Goat Mountain Park, and only fourteen sheep.

Unless the preferences of western sportsmen and gunners change very considerably, the coast mountains of the great northwestern wilderness will remain stocked with wild mountain goats until long after the last big-horn has been shot to death.  Fortunately, the skin of the mountain goat has no commercial value.  I think it was in 1887 that I purchased, in Denver, 150 nicely tanned skins of our wild white goat at fifty cents each!  They were wanted for the first exhibit ever made to illustrate the extermination of American large mammals, and they were shown at the Louisville Exposition.  It must have cost the price of those skins to tan them; and I was pleased to know that some one lost money on the venture.

[Illustration MAP OF THE FORMER AND EXISTING RANGES OF THE AMERICAN ELK From “Life History of Northern Animals,” Copyright 1909 by E.T.  Seton]

At present the mountain goat extends from north-western Montana to the head of Cook Inlet, but it is not found in the interior or in the Yukon valley.  Whenever man decides that the species has lived long enough, he can quickly and easily exterminate it.  It is one of the most picturesque and interesting wild animals on this continent, and there is not the slightest excuse for shooting it, save as a specimen of natural history.  Like the antelope, it is so unique as a natural curiosity that it deserves to be taken out of the ranks of animals that are regularly pursued as game.