American Big Game in Its Haunts | Page 3

Harrison, Mr. Cleveland, and Mr. McKinley did much in the way of setting aside forest reservations, but chiefly from economic motives; because they believed that the forests should be preserved, both for the timber that they might yield, if wisely exploited, and for their value as storage reservoirs for the waters of our rivers.
The view taken by Mr. Roosevelt is quite different. To him the economics of the case appeal with the same force that they might have for any hard-headed, common sense business American; but beyond this, and perhaps, if the secrets of his heart were known, more than this, Mr. Roosevelt is influenced by a love of nature, which, though considered sentimental by some, is, in fact, nothing more than a far-sightedness, which looks toward the health, happiness, and general well-being of the American race for the future.
As a boy Mr. Roosevelt was fortunate in having a strong love for nature and for outdoor life, and, as in the case of so many boys, this love took the form of an interest in birds, which found its outlet in studying and collecting them. He published, in 1877, a list of the summer birds of the Adirondacks, in Franklin county, New York, and also did more or less collecting of birds on Long Island. The result of all this was the acquiring of some knowledge of the birds of eastern North America, and, what was far more important, a knowledge of how to observe, and an appreciation of the fact that observations, to be of any scientific value, must be definite and precise.
In the many hunting tales that we have had from his pen in recent years, it is seen that these two pieces of most important instruction acquired by the boy have always been remembered, and for this reason his books of hunting and adventure have a real value--a worth not shared by many of those published on similar subjects. His hunting adventures have not been mere pleasure excursions. They have been of service to science. On one of his hunts, perhaps his earliest trip after white goats, he secured a second specimen of a certain tiny shrew, of which, up to that time, only the type was known. Much more recently, during a declared hunting trip in Colorado, he collected the best series of skins of the American panther, with the measurements taken in the flesh, that has ever been gathered from one locality by a single individual.
Mr. Roosevelt's hunting experiences have been so wide as to have covered almost every species of North American big game found within the temperate zone. Except such Arctic forms as the white and the Alaska bears, and the muskox, there is, perhaps, no species of North American game that he has not killed; and his chapter on the mountain sheep, in his book, "Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail," is confessedly the best published account of that species.
During the years that Mr. Roosevelt was actually engaged in the cattle business in North Dakota, his everyday life led him constantly to the haunts of big game, and, almost in spite of himself, gave him constant hunting opportunities. Besides that, during dull seasons of the year, he made trips to more or less distant localities in search of the species of big game not found immediately about his ranch. His mode of hunting and of traveling was quite different from that now in vogue among big-game hunters. His knowledge of the West was early enough to touch upon the time when each man was as good as his neighbor, and the mere fact that a man was paid wages to perform certain acts for you did not in any degree lower his position in the world, nor elevate yours. In those days, if one started out with a companion, hired or otherwise, to go to a certain place, or to do a certain piece of work, each man was expected to perform his share of the labor.
This fact Mr. Roosevelt recognized as soon as he went West, and, acting upon it, he made for himself a position as a man, and not as a master, which he has never lost; and it is precisely this democratic spirit which to-day makes him perhaps the most popular man in the United States at large.
Starting off, then, on some trip of several hundred miles, with a companion who might be guide, helper, cook, packer, or what not--sometimes efficient, and the best companion that could be desired, at others, perhaps, hopelessly lazy and worthless, and even with a stock of liquor cached somewhere in the packs--Mr. Roosevelt helped to pack the horses, to bring the wood, to carry the water, to cook the food, to wrangle the stock, and generally to do the work of the