November 27, 28, 29, and 30, 1911, will remain a red letter day with a half thousand men for years to come.  These half thousand men gathered along the border of the Yellowstone National Park, near Gardiner, Montana, at a point known as Buffalo Flats, to exterminate elk.  The snow had driven the elk down to the foothills, and Buffalo Flats is on the border of the park and outside the park.  The elk entered this little valley for food.  Like hungry wolves, shooters, not hunters, gathered along the border waiting to catch an elk off the “reservation” and kill it.

  On November 27th about 1500 elk crossed the line, and the slaughter
  began.  I have not the data of the number killed this day, but it was
  hundreds.

On the 28th, twenty-two stepped over and were promptly executed.  Like Custer’s band, not one escaped.  On the evening of the 28th, 600 were sighted just over the line, and the army of 125 brave men entrenched themselves for the battle which was expected to open next morning.  Before daylight of the 29th the battle began.  The elk were over the line, feeding on Buffalo Flats.  One hundred and twenty-five men poured bullets into this band of 600 elk till the ground was red with blood and strewn with carcasses, and in their madness they shot each other.  One man was shot through the ear,—­a close call; another received a bullet through his coat sleeve, and another was shot through the bowels and can’t live.

My informer told me he participated in the slaughter, and while he would not take fifty dollars for what he saw, and the experience he went through, yet he would not go through it again for $1,000.  When my informer got back to Gardiner that day there were four sleigh loads of elk, each load containing from twenty to thirty-five elk, besides thirty-two mules and horses carrying one to two each.  This was only a part of the slaughter.  Hundreds more were carried to other points; and this was only one day’s work.

Hundreds of wounded elk wandered back into the park to die, and others died outside the park.  The station at Livingston, Montana, for a week looked like a packing house.  Carcasses were piled up on the trucks and depot platform.  The baggage cars were loaded with elk going to points east and west of Livingston.

  Maybe this is all right.  Maybe the government can’t stop the elk
  from crossing the line.  Maybe the elk were helped over; but it
  strikes me there is something wrong somewhere.

THE DIVISION OF HIRED LABORERS.—­The scourge of lumber-camps in big-game territory, the mining camps and the railroad-builders is a long story, and if told in detail it would make several chapters.  Their awful destructiveness is well known.  It is a common thing for “the boss” to hire a hunter to kill big game to supply the hungry outfit, and save beef and pork.