1 00:00:01,440 --> 00:00:05,120 Speaker 1: Killing wildlife for money was rival by safari hunts and 2 00:00:05,160 --> 00:00:09,400 Speaker 1: destroying much of the West's original wildlife, but organizations like 3 00:00:09,400 --> 00:00:13,480 Speaker 1: the Boone and Crocket Club intervened just in time. I'm 4 00:00:13,560 --> 00:00:18,159 Speaker 1: Dan Flores and this is the American West, brought to 5 00:00:18,200 --> 00:00:21,080 Speaker 1: you by Velvet Buck Wine, where the hunt. 6 00:00:20,800 --> 00:00:21,720 Speaker 2: Meets the harvest. 7 00:00:22,280 --> 00:00:25,759 Speaker 1: A portion of each bottle goes to support backcountry hunters 8 00:00:25,760 --> 00:00:31,600 Speaker 1: and anglers. Limited supply available at Velvetbuckvineyards dot com. 9 00:00:31,840 --> 00:00:33,400 Speaker 2: Enjoy responsible. 10 00:00:48,840 --> 00:00:53,040 Speaker 1: From Safari American Style to the Boone and Crocket Club. 11 00:00:56,080 --> 00:00:59,920 Speaker 1: Five years before, Charles Darwin's blockbuster on the Origin of 12 00:01:00,120 --> 00:01:04,000 Speaker 1: Species rocked the world with its implication that, like all 13 00:01:04,160 --> 00:01:07,400 Speaker 1: earthly life, we humans were part of an evolutionary tree 14 00:01:07,440 --> 00:01:11,240 Speaker 1: branching out of the planet's distant past. In America, one 15 00:01:11,240 --> 00:01:15,279 Speaker 1: of Darwin's countrymen was entering history for a very different reason. 16 00:01:16,200 --> 00:01:20,800 Speaker 1: While Darwin was writing, Sir Saint George Gore was setting 17 00:01:20,880 --> 00:01:23,840 Speaker 1: up camp on the banks of the West's Powder River 18 00:01:24,200 --> 00:01:29,319 Speaker 1: in search of world class field sports. Having already tried 19 00:01:29,480 --> 00:01:33,200 Speaker 1: East Africa balding, fifty three year old, Gore was now 20 00:01:33,240 --> 00:01:38,160 Speaker 1: embarking on a two year Safari American Style. Since the 21 00:01:38,240 --> 00:01:42,600 Speaker 1: fifteen hundreds, hunting had been a kind of masculine cult 22 00:01:42,720 --> 00:01:48,160 Speaker 1: pastime among European elites. The American working classes killed animals 23 00:01:48,200 --> 00:01:51,400 Speaker 1: for food or for money, but Old World elites saw 24 00:01:51,520 --> 00:01:56,440 Speaker 1: shooting animals differently. Field sports were all about adventure and 25 00:01:56,520 --> 00:02:01,640 Speaker 1: trophies in far flung places, experiences the nobility viewed as 26 00:02:01,680 --> 00:02:04,960 Speaker 1: a special privilege of their class, and another way for 27 00:02:05,080 --> 00:02:08,240 Speaker 1: men with means to express their status and the social 28 00:02:08,320 --> 00:02:11,840 Speaker 1: power they had. For those with the money to push 29 00:02:11,960 --> 00:02:16,240 Speaker 1: these experiences to the hilt, technology and the colonial age 30 00:02:16,680 --> 00:02:22,040 Speaker 1: vastly expanded the geographic possibilities for field sports. The last 31 00:02:22,120 --> 00:02:25,880 Speaker 1: wild places on Earth, plus far more exotic animals than 32 00:02:25,880 --> 00:02:30,000 Speaker 1: those still remaining in Europe, were now within reach. Field 33 00:02:30,000 --> 00:02:33,120 Speaker 1: sports was, in truth a sort of beginning for what 34 00:02:33,400 --> 00:02:38,200 Speaker 1: became twentieth century sport hunting. In contrast with the American 35 00:02:38,360 --> 00:02:41,920 Speaker 1: market hunt, the European field sports experience was to some 36 00:02:42,080 --> 00:02:46,080 Speaker 1: degree reflective about the pursuit of animals, and certainly more 37 00:02:46,160 --> 00:02:50,760 Speaker 1: interested in their natural history. On the other hand, morality 38 00:02:50,840 --> 00:02:54,760 Speaker 1: about the chase our empathy towards animal life, even as 39 00:02:54,840 --> 00:02:58,160 Speaker 1: Darwin's insights were about to rock the world, were missing 40 00:02:58,160 --> 00:03:03,359 Speaker 1: in action. Conservation itself was as yet an unimagined idea 41 00:03:03,600 --> 00:03:07,720 Speaker 1: in Western society as for the rights of posterity of 42 00:03:07,800 --> 00:03:13,320 Speaker 1: future generations to experience an unmarred America, as Gilded Age 43 00:03:13,400 --> 00:03:18,200 Speaker 1: corporate titan Cornelis Vanderbilt quipped, what did posterity ever do 44 00:03:18,280 --> 00:03:23,320 Speaker 1: for me? In Africa and America, where societal regulations didn't 45 00:03:23,400 --> 00:03:26,560 Speaker 1: yet stand in the way of human nature? A philosophy 46 00:03:26,639 --> 00:03:30,800 Speaker 1: like this afforded European elites as much impulsiveness over the 47 00:03:30,880 --> 00:03:35,000 Speaker 1: life and death of animals as they wished to indulge. 48 00:03:35,040 --> 00:03:39,480 Speaker 1: And indulgence is exactly what brought Sir Saint George Gore 49 00:03:39,880 --> 00:03:45,880 Speaker 1: to Darkest America in the eighteen fifties. Gore was the 50 00:03:45,920 --> 00:03:51,120 Speaker 1: eighth Baronet of Manor Gore in County Donegal, Ireland. Sitting 51 00:03:51,120 --> 00:03:53,880 Speaker 1: by the fire in their castles, he and others like 52 00:03:54,000 --> 00:03:58,000 Speaker 1: him had read Lewis and Clark, James Fenimore, Cooper, Francis 53 00:03:58,040 --> 00:04:02,600 Speaker 1: Parkman and britt MOUNTAINOK and Frederick Ruxton's books that had 54 00:04:02,640 --> 00:04:06,880 Speaker 1: gone to see George Catlan's Indian exhibitions, and the developed 55 00:04:06,920 --> 00:04:13,800 Speaker 1: an obsession Buffalo, grizzly bears and elk were larger, more charismatic, 56 00:04:14,040 --> 00:04:17,760 Speaker 1: and more dangerous creatures than foxes or partridges. On the 57 00:04:17,800 --> 00:04:21,560 Speaker 1: moors of the British Isles. In America, the only restrictions 58 00:04:21,560 --> 00:04:26,720 Speaker 1: on behavior involved avoiding getting mauled, stampeded, or captured by 59 00:04:26,800 --> 00:04:31,599 Speaker 1: native people, and American safari implied complete freedom in the 60 00:04:31,600 --> 00:04:35,640 Speaker 1: world because it was the grasslands east of the Rockies, 61 00:04:35,680 --> 00:04:38,560 Speaker 1: with their teeming herds of big animals that drew them. 62 00:04:38,760 --> 00:04:42,040 Speaker 1: Gore and others called a fascination with the West and 63 00:04:42,120 --> 00:04:47,800 Speaker 1: its animals prairie fever. To be sure, Gore wasn't the 64 00:04:47,880 --> 00:04:51,400 Speaker 1: first Old World aristocrat to take his kill lust to America. 65 00:04:52,000 --> 00:04:57,200 Speaker 1: British adventurer Sir William Drummond Stuart had commenced luxurious guided 66 00:04:57,240 --> 00:05:00,400 Speaker 1: field sports in the West at the same time the 67 00:05:00,440 --> 00:05:06,080 Speaker 1: early eighteen thirties that William Cornwallis Harris was swashbuckling through 68 00:05:06,120 --> 00:05:10,760 Speaker 1: his own hunts in South Africa. Although the Swahili word 69 00:05:11,040 --> 00:05:14,960 Speaker 1: safari didn't enter English until the eighteen fifties as a 70 00:05:15,000 --> 00:05:18,479 Speaker 1: result of Sir Richard Burton's books, all the elements of 71 00:05:18,520 --> 00:05:22,160 Speaker 1: these hunts are recognizable to anyone who's seen the film 72 00:05:22,360 --> 00:05:26,840 Speaker 1: Out of Africa are read Hemingway's The Snows of Kilimanjaro. 73 00:05:27,800 --> 00:05:32,280 Speaker 1: Robert Redford's white hunter Dennis Finchhatton and out of Africa 74 00:05:32,839 --> 00:05:38,159 Speaker 1: wasn't some singular figure in Kenya. In both Africa and America, 75 00:05:38,360 --> 00:05:41,720 Speaker 1: local guides who knew the land, the habits of the animals, 76 00:05:41,960 --> 00:05:46,520 Speaker 1: and could communicate with the indigenous people were essential to success. 77 00:05:47,279 --> 00:05:51,200 Speaker 1: The hunt also needed numbers parties large enough to give 78 00:05:51,360 --> 00:05:58,120 Speaker 1: pause to whatever natives won encountered, whether Massai, Zulus or Lakotas. 79 00:05:58,440 --> 00:06:01,960 Speaker 1: The natives very well might not be thrilled to see 80 00:06:02,080 --> 00:06:07,680 Speaker 1: wildlife destroyed in their homelands. On his initial hunt in 81 00:06:07,800 --> 00:06:11,760 Speaker 1: eighteen thirty three to eighteen thirty five, William Drummond Stewart 82 00:06:11,839 --> 00:06:15,479 Speaker 1: had traveled with various parties of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, 83 00:06:15,640 --> 00:06:19,600 Speaker 1: shooting animals from Colorado to Wyoming and back again, with 84 00:06:19,720 --> 00:06:25,000 Speaker 1: William Sublette and Kit Carson as his guides. With that experience, 85 00:06:25,160 --> 00:06:28,919 Speaker 1: in eighteen thirty six, Stuart launched his own expedition and 86 00:06:29,160 --> 00:06:33,160 Speaker 1: established a template for those who followed. He brought two 87 00:06:33,200 --> 00:06:38,800 Speaker 1: wagonloads of rare liquors, fine cigars, wines, brandy whiskey, along 88 00:06:38,800 --> 00:06:42,240 Speaker 1: with a companion at least one observer referred to as 89 00:06:42,279 --> 00:06:46,600 Speaker 1: a handsome young english blood he was actually the wealthy 90 00:06:46,720 --> 00:06:52,120 Speaker 1: German adventurer her Sillin. Stuart and Scillin tended together and 91 00:06:52,200 --> 00:06:54,640 Speaker 1: had all their needs met by servants who cooked their 92 00:06:54,680 --> 00:06:59,440 Speaker 1: meals and served their drinks, broke their camps, cleaned their firearms, 93 00:06:59,560 --> 00:07:04,120 Speaker 1: and came out their trophies. The next year, eighteen thirty seven, 94 00:07:04,440 --> 00:07:08,880 Speaker 1: Stuart invited New Orleans painter Alfred Jacob Miller, like Sillin, 95 00:07:08,960 --> 00:07:12,320 Speaker 1: more than a decade younger than Stuart, along to record 96 00:07:12,360 --> 00:07:15,920 Speaker 1: their adventures. This time, he and his companion camp in 97 00:07:15,960 --> 00:07:20,520 Speaker 1: an expansive, rug strewn, green striped tent the size of 98 00:07:20,560 --> 00:07:24,960 Speaker 1: a yert. The writer Bernard de Voto characterized Stuart's few 99 00:07:25,040 --> 00:07:30,440 Speaker 1: surviving letters as brimming with what Devoto called mysterious longings 100 00:07:30,480 --> 00:07:36,840 Speaker 1: and melancholies, romantic passions, unhappiness, and frustration. He passed off 101 00:07:36,840 --> 00:07:41,520 Speaker 1: Stuart's oddities as upbringing and a longing for military action. 102 00:07:42,280 --> 00:07:45,560 Speaker 1: Some of Stuart's party were not so sure that's what 103 00:07:45,680 --> 00:07:50,240 Speaker 1: was going on. A Decade before Gore's Powder River Safari, 104 00:07:50,600 --> 00:07:54,440 Speaker 1: Stuart had made one more Western trip, refining the American 105 00:07:54,600 --> 00:07:59,120 Speaker 1: safari model even further. In eighteen forty three, now forty 106 00:07:59,160 --> 00:08:02,200 Speaker 1: seven years old, he journeyed once more to the Wind 107 00:08:02,280 --> 00:08:05,440 Speaker 1: River Mountains, although most of the hunting took place on 108 00:08:05,520 --> 00:08:09,520 Speaker 1: the return trip along the North Platte River. One day 109 00:08:09,600 --> 00:08:13,720 Speaker 1: on the Platte they saw what Stuart estimated were fifty 110 00:08:13,800 --> 00:08:18,080 Speaker 1: thousand buffalo, which they shot into from daybreak till nightfall. 111 00:08:18,880 --> 00:08:22,840 Speaker 1: That was just the advance swarm. A few days later, 112 00:08:23,200 --> 00:08:27,920 Speaker 1: a mass Stuart estimated at a million animals descended on 113 00:08:28,040 --> 00:08:32,560 Speaker 1: them and completely enveloped them. The din and dust were 114 00:08:32,600 --> 00:08:36,400 Speaker 1: beyond all experience. At night, they had to deflect the 115 00:08:36,440 --> 00:08:40,839 Speaker 1: immense living mass from their camp with bonfires. Stuart's party 116 00:08:40,920 --> 00:08:43,640 Speaker 1: was in the midst of this incredible expression of Western 117 00:08:43,679 --> 00:08:47,720 Speaker 1: life for two full days. Although Stuart never did so, 118 00:08:48,280 --> 00:08:52,400 Speaker 1: several members of the trip later expressed remorse over what 119 00:08:52,480 --> 00:08:56,520 Speaker 1: they called the many murders we had committed among the 120 00:08:56,559 --> 00:08:59,839 Speaker 1: poor brutes of the prairie, what one referred to later 121 00:09:00,440 --> 00:09:04,280 Speaker 1: with a shiver of horror, as a tumbling ocean of 122 00:09:04,320 --> 00:09:05,200 Speaker 1: buffalo blood. 123 00:09:08,880 --> 00:09:09,440 Speaker 2: So here. 124 00:09:09,800 --> 00:09:13,960 Speaker 1: Ten years later was Sir Saint George Gore setting up 125 00:09:13,960 --> 00:09:16,720 Speaker 1: in the Powder River country on a trip that cost 126 00:09:16,800 --> 00:09:20,839 Speaker 1: him one hundred thousand dollars in an age when entire 127 00:09:21,000 --> 00:09:25,720 Speaker 1: states barely had annual budgets that size. In Gore's case, 128 00:09:26,040 --> 00:09:33,800 Speaker 1: his entourage included a staff of fifty secretaries, Stewart's cooks, flymakers, 129 00:09:34,160 --> 00:09:39,360 Speaker 1: dog tenders, hunters, servants, along with imported foods and wines, 130 00:09:39,600 --> 00:09:43,600 Speaker 1: and an extensive library. The scale of his assault on 131 00:09:43,640 --> 00:09:48,400 Speaker 1: the West had his caravan of six wagons, twenty one carts, 132 00:09:48,720 --> 00:09:53,200 Speaker 1: a dozen yokes of oxen, fifty dogs, forty mules, and 133 00:09:53,280 --> 00:09:56,960 Speaker 1: one hundred and twelve fine hunting horses stringing out for 134 00:09:57,080 --> 00:10:01,880 Speaker 1: well over two miles across the plains. This was glamping 135 00:10:02,040 --> 00:10:07,240 Speaker 1: at its most indulgent. Gore's personal wagons held a brass bed, 136 00:10:07,679 --> 00:10:12,680 Speaker 1: a steel bathtub, and more pointedly, seventy five firearms and 137 00:10:12,960 --> 00:10:19,400 Speaker 1: three tons of ammunition. Having alienated White hunter Henry Chatillon 138 00:10:19,600 --> 00:10:23,079 Speaker 1: so thoroughly that he abandoned the expedition. At Fort Laramie, 139 00:10:23,120 --> 00:10:26,800 Speaker 1: Gore found a new guide in mountain man Jim Bridger. 140 00:10:27,720 --> 00:10:30,480 Speaker 1: For the most part, Bridger and the other guys white 141 00:10:30,559 --> 00:10:33,520 Speaker 1: an Indian, seemed to like Gore well enough, or at 142 00:10:33,600 --> 00:10:37,000 Speaker 1: least were intrigued by his obsession with the West animals, 143 00:10:37,320 --> 00:10:39,720 Speaker 1: but they did have to listen to him read aloud 144 00:10:39,840 --> 00:10:43,280 Speaker 1: from the classics by firelight at night, only to find 145 00:10:43,320 --> 00:10:47,040 Speaker 1: themselves sitting around camp until nearly noon every day while 146 00:10:47,040 --> 00:10:51,800 Speaker 1: he slept in What made a nineteenth century safari, either 147 00:10:51,880 --> 00:10:56,280 Speaker 1: the African or American version, was not just servants, hawk 148 00:10:56,320 --> 00:11:00,000 Speaker 1: cuisine on fine China, or companions who could at least 149 00:11:00,000 --> 00:11:06,599 Speaker 1: these tolerate Shakespeare field sports. Safaris were blood sports. Success 150 00:11:06,720 --> 00:11:09,760 Speaker 1: was measured in body counts, and almost no one in 151 00:11:09,840 --> 00:11:15,480 Speaker 1: recorded history matched Gore's bloodlust, although George Gordon Cumming on 152 00:11:15,559 --> 00:11:18,960 Speaker 1: safari in South Africa in the eighteen forties was a 153 00:11:19,000 --> 00:11:23,160 Speaker 1: possible rival. On the Powder River in eighteen fifty five, 154 00:11:23,600 --> 00:11:28,200 Speaker 1: Gore ended animal's existence as if they their pain, their 155 00:11:28,280 --> 00:11:33,400 Speaker 1: lives were meaningless except to serve as convenient life targets 156 00:11:33,440 --> 00:11:38,280 Speaker 1: for the nobleman's personal sadistic needs. Some of the animals 157 00:11:38,320 --> 00:11:41,520 Speaker 1: fed the party, true enough, although Gore could have taken 158 00:11:41,559 --> 00:11:45,040 Speaker 1: his entire entourage to dinner in Saint Louis every evening 159 00:11:45,120 --> 00:11:51,400 Speaker 1: for less, this was mass death administered for pleasure. It 160 00:11:51,559 --> 00:11:54,480 Speaker 1: interests me that it bore every resemblance to the mass 161 00:11:54,520 --> 00:11:58,520 Speaker 1: slaughter of gazelles disoriented in a storm by a pack 162 00:11:58,559 --> 00:12:02,559 Speaker 1: of hyenas that by biologists Hans Kruck would come upon 163 00:12:02,760 --> 00:12:06,880 Speaker 1: and make famous in science a century later. Gore was 164 00:12:06,960 --> 00:12:12,360 Speaker 1: indulging an ancient predatory impulse that among hyenas Kruck would 165 00:12:12,400 --> 00:12:18,160 Speaker 1: call surplus killing. Perpetrated either by British elites or hyenas, 166 00:12:18,480 --> 00:12:22,160 Speaker 1: It was never moral. Indeed, there's no perspective from which 167 00:12:22,160 --> 00:12:26,479 Speaker 1: you can make Gore's Western safari look even partially defensible. 168 00:12:27,160 --> 00:12:31,520 Speaker 1: He religiously kept kill totals, ultimately extinguishing the lives of 169 00:12:31,640 --> 00:12:35,960 Speaker 1: more than four thousand buffaloes and one hundred and five bears. 170 00:12:36,320 --> 00:12:38,360 Speaker 2: The bulk of those grizzlies. 171 00:12:38,520 --> 00:12:43,160 Speaker 1: He also tallied in his game book pronghorns, elk, mule, deer, 172 00:12:43,280 --> 00:12:46,480 Speaker 1: big horn sheep, all the great wolves Bridger could find 173 00:12:46,520 --> 00:12:51,240 Speaker 1: for him, the totals running into the thousands. A few animals, 174 00:12:51,280 --> 00:12:55,440 Speaker 1: like coyotes, he regarded as merely targets for practice, so 175 00:12:55,679 --> 00:13:02,319 Speaker 1: generously spared them account Ultimately, Gore slaughtered so many animals 176 00:13:02,640 --> 00:13:06,160 Speaker 1: that the crows and lakotas found out about this man 177 00:13:06,360 --> 00:13:10,120 Speaker 1: who shot animals down for no reason they could ascertain. 178 00:13:10,880 --> 00:13:14,880 Speaker 1: They complained to their agents, who warned Gore's party that 179 00:13:15,000 --> 00:13:20,560 Speaker 1: his bloodbath might well invite attack. Such selfish, pointless destruction 180 00:13:20,760 --> 00:13:24,480 Speaker 1: was politically incorrect even in the eighteen fifties, and more 181 00:13:24,520 --> 00:13:29,400 Speaker 1: than just the threat of native fury ultimately ended it. Apparently, 182 00:13:29,440 --> 00:13:34,000 Speaker 1: the Lakotas finally confronted Gore's party and confiscated all their 183 00:13:34,080 --> 00:13:38,160 Speaker 1: guns and their clothes for good measure in a small 184 00:13:38,160 --> 00:13:43,480 Speaker 1: degree of justice, Sir Saint George Gore, eighth Baronet of Manor. 185 00:13:43,520 --> 00:13:46,600 Speaker 1: Gore appears to have had to walk naked out of 186 00:13:46,640 --> 00:13:49,680 Speaker 1: the Black Hills and be rescued by a band of 187 00:13:49,800 --> 00:13:51,760 Speaker 1: Indians friendly to the whites. 188 00:13:54,280 --> 00:13:55,840 Speaker 2: While Gore was taking. 189 00:13:55,559 --> 00:14:00,160 Speaker 1: Out whole ecologies along the Powder River and other europe 190 00:14:00,000 --> 00:14:04,600 Speaker 1: He and Prairie fever tourists like Russia's Grand Duke ALEXI, 191 00:14:04,880 --> 00:14:08,400 Speaker 1: were planning their own safaris. The dukes aimed at the 192 00:14:08,440 --> 00:14:12,480 Speaker 1: animals of the Nebraska and Colorado plains. In eighteen seventy 193 00:14:12,520 --> 00:14:16,960 Speaker 1: one and seventy two, ministers and journalists were spilling vast 194 00:14:17,000 --> 00:14:20,960 Speaker 1: amounts of ink and argument over Darwinian evolution. 195 00:14:22,000 --> 00:14:23,240 Speaker 2: Some of it was even witty. 196 00:14:23,760 --> 00:14:27,000 Speaker 1: One critic demanded to be shown a bed of oysters 197 00:14:27,040 --> 00:14:30,960 Speaker 1: evolving into the British Parliament. Another reviewer wrote that if 198 00:14:30,960 --> 00:14:33,920 Speaker 1: we humans were after all related to dogs and cats, 199 00:14:34,120 --> 00:14:37,000 Speaker 1: and not that much advanced beyond them. Then we needed 200 00:14:37,040 --> 00:14:39,440 Speaker 1: to make every animal out to be as fine a 201 00:14:39,480 --> 00:14:42,960 Speaker 1: fellow as possible. But in the wild, wild West, with 202 00:14:43,080 --> 00:14:46,920 Speaker 1: no restrictions on human nature, there was still money to 203 00:14:46,960 --> 00:14:50,560 Speaker 1: be made from killing wild animals, no matter what fine 204 00:14:50,600 --> 00:14:54,880 Speaker 1: fellows they might be. There was also field sport safari 205 00:14:54,960 --> 00:14:58,560 Speaker 1: fun to be had, and both these trumped any philosophical 206 00:14:58,600 --> 00:15:04,000 Speaker 1: debate intellectuals might be having about humanity's own animal origins. 207 00:15:04,560 --> 00:15:08,400 Speaker 1: This was one area where working class Westerners and European 208 00:15:08,440 --> 00:15:11,920 Speaker 1: elites agreed. Even if we were more like animals than 209 00:15:11,960 --> 00:15:15,520 Speaker 1: we'd thought. Other animals hadn't invented guns. 210 00:15:15,440 --> 00:15:23,720 Speaker 2: We had. 211 00:15:21,320 --> 00:15:24,160 Speaker 1: The elite field sports assault on the West assumed in 212 00:15:24,280 --> 00:15:29,960 Speaker 1: American form, with fastidious adventures like the Kansas Pacific Railroads 213 00:15:30,080 --> 00:15:34,680 Speaker 1: offer that paying customers could shoot down Western animals out 214 00:15:34,720 --> 00:15:39,440 Speaker 1: the windows of their trains. Meanwhile, the market wipeout of 215 00:15:39,520 --> 00:15:44,080 Speaker 1: charismatic animals west of the Mississippi continued too. A few 216 00:15:44,120 --> 00:15:48,080 Speaker 1: of the ancient Western natives, wolves, coyotes, and wild horses 217 00:15:48,280 --> 00:15:53,560 Speaker 1: would join passenger pigeons, giant woodpeckers, native parrots, and straggle 218 00:15:53,640 --> 00:15:57,920 Speaker 1: alive into the twentieth century. But by eighteen ninety there 219 00:15:57,920 --> 00:16:02,080 Speaker 1: were five transcontinental railroad from the Midwest to the Pacific, 220 00:16:02,440 --> 00:16:06,360 Speaker 1: and everywhere a rail line reached, animals died by the 221 00:16:06,480 --> 00:16:10,640 Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands. Europe remained a market, but so did 222 00:16:10,640 --> 00:16:14,040 Speaker 1: the United States, whose population had grown from a little 223 00:16:14,040 --> 00:16:18,560 Speaker 1: more than five million in eighteen hundred to sixty three 224 00:16:18,720 --> 00:16:23,840 Speaker 1: million by eighteen ninety. Like the bacteria and some petri 225 00:16:24,000 --> 00:16:29,040 Speaker 1: dish experiment, when uncontrolled by any introduced check, will devour 226 00:16:29,160 --> 00:16:32,920 Speaker 1: the contents of their dish until every particle is gone, 227 00:16:33,400 --> 00:16:38,800 Speaker 1: humans seemed intent on erasing every wild species available to us. 228 00:16:40,240 --> 00:16:42,960 Speaker 1: Thanks to the efforts of a trio of Park Service 229 00:16:43,120 --> 00:16:47,120 Speaker 1: historians who assemble first hand accounts of this story, the 230 00:16:47,280 --> 00:16:51,440 Speaker 1: market slaughter of the West's last big animals is documented 231 00:16:51,480 --> 00:16:56,040 Speaker 1: better on the Yellowstone Plateau than anywhere else. Yellowstone had 232 00:16:56,040 --> 00:16:58,680 Speaker 1: ceased to be just another part of America in eighteen 233 00:16:58,800 --> 00:17:03,480 Speaker 1: seventy two, when Congress withdrew from private homesteading a block 234 00:17:03,520 --> 00:17:07,040 Speaker 1: of two million acres of federal land to create the 235 00:17:07,080 --> 00:17:13,120 Speaker 1: world's first national park. Making Yellowstone a wildlife part never 236 00:17:13,200 --> 00:17:16,480 Speaker 1: came up in the debates, but the question did surface 237 00:17:16,560 --> 00:17:20,639 Speaker 1: about whether Congress should allow the pursuit of game and 238 00:17:20,760 --> 00:17:26,000 Speaker 1: fish for gain or profit. Remarkably, the consensus was that 239 00:17:26,040 --> 00:17:28,960 Speaker 1: there ought to be no hunting in the park at all, 240 00:17:29,320 --> 00:17:33,119 Speaker 1: let alone market hunting, for fear of an entire destruction 241 00:17:33,480 --> 00:17:37,800 Speaker 1: of the area's wild animals. This federal ban on market 242 00:17:37,880 --> 00:17:42,160 Speaker 1: hunting in the world's first national park was an unprecedented 243 00:17:42,240 --> 00:17:46,359 Speaker 1: move on the part of the US government. Straddling the 244 00:17:46,480 --> 00:17:51,000 Speaker 1: Rockies Continental Divide, the Yellowstone Plateau was the central place 245 00:17:51,080 --> 00:17:55,680 Speaker 1: setting of an enormous ecology of island mountains rising out 246 00:17:55,680 --> 00:18:00,080 Speaker 1: of the vast grassland deserts of the northern west, of 247 00:18:00,119 --> 00:18:03,600 Speaker 1: the most wildlife rich regions in North America, a kind 248 00:18:03,640 --> 00:18:07,400 Speaker 1: of Kentucky of the West, containing all the charismatic animals 249 00:18:07,400 --> 00:18:10,960 Speaker 1: and birds that had made John James Automan swoon over 250 00:18:11,000 --> 00:18:15,120 Speaker 1: the Upper Missouri country. The descriptions of abundance are legion, 251 00:18:15,400 --> 00:18:20,399 Speaker 1: and they attached to almost every Western animal imaginable. The 252 00:18:20,440 --> 00:18:24,359 Speaker 1: trapper Osborne Russell, who in the eighteen thirties explored and 253 00:18:24,400 --> 00:18:27,440 Speaker 1: wrote about the plateau as a garden of the world, 254 00:18:27,720 --> 00:18:32,040 Speaker 1: told of thousands of mountain sheep in the surrounding ranges, 255 00:18:32,280 --> 00:18:36,320 Speaker 1: an account later seconded by a camper near present gardener 256 00:18:36,680 --> 00:18:40,080 Speaker 1: in eighteen sixty six, who wrote that you could see 257 00:18:40,080 --> 00:18:44,680 Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of mountain sheep, all fattest pigs. We 258 00:18:44,760 --> 00:18:47,640 Speaker 1: never went over one hundred yards from camp to kill 259 00:18:47,640 --> 00:18:51,880 Speaker 1: a sheep. You couldn't look anywhere without seeing sheep. There 260 00:18:51,920 --> 00:18:55,600 Speaker 1: were grizzlies everywhere too. Russell wrote that because of all 261 00:18:55,640 --> 00:18:59,080 Speaker 1: the wild plums and cherries, grizzlies were more numerous here 262 00:18:59,240 --> 00:19:03,000 Speaker 1: than anywhere else in the mountains. I've frequently seen seven 263 00:19:03,119 --> 00:19:06,359 Speaker 1: or eight standing about the clumps of cherry bushes on 264 00:19:06,400 --> 00:19:11,640 Speaker 1: their hind legs, merely casting a sidelong glance at intruding humans. 265 00:19:12,640 --> 00:19:15,960 Speaker 1: Because of its vast elk herds, the crow name for 266 00:19:16,000 --> 00:19:21,199 Speaker 1: the Yellowstone River was Elk River. Millions of pronghorns thronged 267 00:19:21,200 --> 00:19:25,520 Speaker 1: the nearby plains, too, with hundreds of thousands migrating in 268 00:19:25,600 --> 00:19:30,159 Speaker 1: advance of big winter storms, their rumps resembling nothing so 269 00:19:30,280 --> 00:19:34,320 Speaker 1: much as a lake driven to foamy white caps by 270 00:19:34,359 --> 00:19:39,879 Speaker 1: a hard wind. Army Corps explorer WF. Rannoles rode in 271 00:19:39,920 --> 00:19:45,400 Speaker 1: eighteen sixty of the immense number of wolves. As for bison, 272 00:19:45,720 --> 00:19:48,560 Speaker 1: when the US proclaimed the existence of the part there 273 00:19:48,560 --> 00:19:52,160 Speaker 1: were still probably four million of them on the northern plains. 274 00:19:52,880 --> 00:19:58,000 Speaker 1: Russell's compatriot in the beaver trapping business, Warren Ferris, offered 275 00:19:58,119 --> 00:20:02,560 Speaker 1: one way to imagine them in the mine. Immense herds 276 00:20:02,600 --> 00:20:07,040 Speaker 1: of bison in every direction were galloping over the prairie 277 00:20:07,440 --> 00:20:12,800 Speaker 1: like vast squadrons of cavalry. But it seemed that no 278 00:20:12,920 --> 00:20:18,120 Speaker 1: sooner had America discovered Yellowstone than market hunters calibrated their 279 00:20:18,160 --> 00:20:22,560 Speaker 1: compass for the very spot. The Paradise Valley, carved during 280 00:20:22,560 --> 00:20:25,840 Speaker 1: glacial times by the Yellowstone River as it exits. The 281 00:20:25,880 --> 00:20:29,920 Speaker 1: park became the early staging ground for market and safari 282 00:20:30,000 --> 00:20:34,959 Speaker 1: hunters around both the Yellowstone Plateau and nearby plains. In 283 00:20:35,000 --> 00:20:38,479 Speaker 1: eighteen seventy two, the year the park came into being, 284 00:20:38,760 --> 00:20:43,120 Speaker 1: the Butler Brothers ranch there made an initial Pelt shipment 285 00:20:43,200 --> 00:20:46,760 Speaker 1: to New York of three hundred and one elk, five 286 00:20:46,880 --> 00:20:50,200 Speaker 1: hundred and fifty five wolves, and two hundred and fifty 287 00:20:50,440 --> 00:20:55,399 Speaker 1: deer and antelope skins. By eighteen seventy the nearby town 288 00:20:55,440 --> 00:20:59,440 Speaker 1: of Bozeman was emerging as one of the important shipping points. 289 00:20:59,640 --> 00:21:03,560 Speaker 1: The market hunt seeming to strike many early Bozeman residents 290 00:21:03,600 --> 00:21:07,840 Speaker 1: as an attractive mode of obtaining a living, as one 291 00:21:07,840 --> 00:21:11,040 Speaker 1: of them put it. One group in Bozeman reported a 292 00:21:11,080 --> 00:21:14,399 Speaker 1: wage of three hundred and fifty dollars a man for 293 00:21:14,520 --> 00:21:20,000 Speaker 1: a winner's work of killing and skinning. Then things started 294 00:21:20,000 --> 00:21:24,800 Speaker 1: getting serious. In eighteen seventy four, Bozeman market hunters were 295 00:21:24,880 --> 00:21:28,680 Speaker 1: hip deep in the big bonanza. That year, they shipped 296 00:21:28,720 --> 00:21:34,159 Speaker 1: out forty eight tons of elk skins, forty two tons 297 00:21:34,160 --> 00:21:38,920 Speaker 1: of deer skins, seventeen tons of prong horn skins, and 298 00:21:39,119 --> 00:21:43,639 Speaker 1: seven hundred and sixty pounds of big horn skins. In 299 00:21:43,760 --> 00:21:48,639 Speaker 1: numbers of actual dead animals that translated to seventy seven 300 00:21:48,840 --> 00:21:54,200 Speaker 1: hundred elk, twenty two thousand deer, twelve thousand prong horns, 301 00:21:54,480 --> 00:21:58,719 Speaker 1: and two hundred big horns. The killers shot pregnant females 302 00:21:58,960 --> 00:22:01,399 Speaker 1: and left murdered an animals to rot when. 303 00:22:01,280 --> 00:22:02,600 Speaker 2: They couldn't deal with them. 304 00:22:02,880 --> 00:22:05,760 Speaker 1: In the case of elk, wasting three hundred to five 305 00:22:05,840 --> 00:22:09,960 Speaker 1: hundred pounds of meat for every animal killed. That eighteen 306 00:22:10,160 --> 00:22:14,320 Speaker 1: seventy four killing orgy had a significant effect on wildlife, 307 00:22:14,520 --> 00:22:17,399 Speaker 1: as the next year the take in elk skins was 308 00:22:17,440 --> 00:22:21,080 Speaker 1: down to fewer than fifteen tons, and deer and pronghorn 309 00:22:21,160 --> 00:22:26,600 Speaker 1: skins together dropped to seventeen tons, but wolves one thousand, 310 00:22:26,760 --> 00:22:31,199 Speaker 1: six hundred and eighty skins, coyotes five hundred and twenty 311 00:22:31,560 --> 00:22:34,840 Speaker 1: and bears two hundred and twenty five made up for 312 00:22:34,920 --> 00:22:39,520 Speaker 1: the falling ungulate numbers. By June of that year, Bozeman 313 00:22:39,640 --> 00:22:44,000 Speaker 1: had shipped out sixty thousand dollars in animal parts, a 314 00:22:44,040 --> 00:22:48,640 Speaker 1: sum that translates to roughly one point six million today, 315 00:22:49,680 --> 00:22:52,359 Speaker 1: at the request of their chiefs. The next year, the 316 00:22:52,440 --> 00:22:57,600 Speaker 1: nearby Crow Agency moved to ban non Indians from trapping, hunting, 317 00:22:58,000 --> 00:23:03,640 Speaker 1: or wolfing within the boundaries of the Crow Reservation. Midwesterner 318 00:23:03,840 --> 00:23:07,639 Speaker 1: Phelitus Norris, a former trapper himself who had risen to 319 00:23:07,720 --> 00:23:11,000 Speaker 1: the rank of colonel in the Civil War, became the 320 00:23:11,040 --> 00:23:16,840 Speaker 1: second superintendent of Yellowstone Park in eighteen seventy seven. Norris 321 00:23:16,920 --> 00:23:20,200 Speaker 1: quickly conveyed the idea back East that the region around 322 00:23:20,240 --> 00:23:24,080 Speaker 1: the park possessed a world class abundance of animals, and 323 00:23:24,119 --> 00:23:28,000 Speaker 1: that they were fearless of and easily slaughtered by man. 324 00:23:28,080 --> 00:23:32,200 Speaker 1: As he put it, Norris estimated that from eighteen seventy 325 00:23:32,240 --> 00:23:37,840 Speaker 1: five to eighteen seventy seven, market poachers killed seven thousand 326 00:23:37,960 --> 00:23:43,199 Speaker 1: elk within the park's boundaries, then poisoned the discarded carcasses 327 00:23:43,240 --> 00:23:47,360 Speaker 1: with strychnine for a second harvest of wolves and coyotes. 328 00:23:48,160 --> 00:23:52,120 Speaker 1: The hunter mountaineers, as he called them, or a small 329 00:23:52,160 --> 00:23:56,640 Speaker 1: but despicable class of prowlers, told him that so long 330 00:23:56,720 --> 00:24:00,399 Speaker 1: as the government stood aside, they planned to continue doing 331 00:24:00,600 --> 00:24:06,040 Speaker 1: exactly as they wished. So the outrages went on. In 332 00:24:06,200 --> 00:24:11,080 Speaker 1: eighteen eighty one, the Sioux City Journal described a steamboat 333 00:24:11,359 --> 00:24:15,920 Speaker 1: called the Terry descending the Missouri so draped with products 334 00:24:16,000 --> 00:24:20,119 Speaker 1: from the market hunt that saved the smokestack and pilot house. 335 00:24:20,520 --> 00:24:24,800 Speaker 1: The boat appeared as a floating mounded island of skins 336 00:24:25,720 --> 00:24:29,760 Speaker 1: transferred to trains. The Winner's take of hides coming down 337 00:24:30,040 --> 00:24:34,840 Speaker 1: just this one river filled three hundred and fifty box cars. 338 00:24:35,640 --> 00:24:38,000 Speaker 1: Nothing like it has ever been known in the. 339 00:24:37,920 --> 00:24:40,480 Speaker 2: History of the fur trade. The paper marveled. 340 00:24:41,760 --> 00:24:45,120 Speaker 1: In the plains country, not far from Yellowstone, bison were 341 00:24:45,200 --> 00:24:50,280 Speaker 1: now entirely gone, Pronghorns were down to a few wild bands. 342 00:24:50,880 --> 00:24:53,600 Speaker 1: There were still some big horns in elk, but as 343 00:24:53,640 --> 00:24:57,239 Speaker 1: if to imply how fragile even those survivors were, in 344 00:24:57,240 --> 00:25:00,040 Speaker 1: the Winner of eighteen eighty four, a group said to 345 00:25:00,080 --> 00:25:05,359 Speaker 1: insists of guides and cowboys shot down fifteen hundred elt 346 00:25:05,600 --> 00:25:10,879 Speaker 1: within sight of Mammoth Hot springs, horrifying the park's tourists. 347 00:25:10,920 --> 00:25:14,160 Speaker 1: In an effort to protect what was left, Phil Sheridan 348 00:25:14,320 --> 00:25:19,239 Speaker 1: approached Forest and Stream magazine to publicize his proposal to 349 00:25:19,359 --> 00:25:23,160 Speaker 1: increase the size of the park to include nearby valleys 350 00:25:23,160 --> 00:25:27,320 Speaker 1: and plains where animals migrated in winter. So, as he 351 00:25:27,359 --> 00:25:30,320 Speaker 1: put it, the noble game of the Rocky Mountains might 352 00:25:30,400 --> 00:25:34,720 Speaker 1: find a retreat from scan hunters. But the park size 353 00:25:34,880 --> 00:25:37,960 Speaker 1: really wasn't going to make any difference so long as 354 00:25:38,000 --> 00:25:41,960 Speaker 1: no one seemed serious about stopping such horrors. By then, 355 00:25:42,080 --> 00:25:46,960 Speaker 1: tourists visiting Yellisone rarely saw animals anymore. The few bison 356 00:25:47,040 --> 00:25:52,040 Speaker 1: were invisible. Cougar's rare grizzly is uncommon and poisoned and 357 00:25:52,119 --> 00:25:56,080 Speaker 1: now bountied by the tens of thousands. Wolves and coyotes 358 00:25:56,160 --> 00:26:00,399 Speaker 1: went unseen and unheard. The destruction of virtually all the 359 00:26:00,480 --> 00:26:04,439 Speaker 1: large wild animals across the entire region was the most 360 00:26:04,520 --> 00:26:09,800 Speaker 1: important event in brand New Yellowstone National Park's young history, 361 00:26:10,320 --> 00:26:17,440 Speaker 1: save establishing the park itself. Born to a New York 362 00:26:17,520 --> 00:26:21,520 Speaker 1: family of the patrician class, three years before the outbreak 363 00:26:21,560 --> 00:26:24,520 Speaker 1: of the Civil War, with a Southern mother, for whom 364 00:26:24,600 --> 00:26:30,560 Speaker 1: the whole war reconstruction thing was conversationally off limits. Theodore 365 00:26:30,680 --> 00:26:35,359 Speaker 1: Roosevelt early settled on nature as a suitable dinner topic. 366 00:26:37,040 --> 00:26:40,919 Speaker 1: At Harvard, Roosevelt first wanted to study natural history, but 367 00:26:41,000 --> 00:26:43,640 Speaker 1: he had long hoped to be a writer, and by 368 00:26:43,640 --> 00:26:46,760 Speaker 1: the end of his time in college he had discovered history, 369 00:26:47,040 --> 00:26:49,760 Speaker 1: which turned out to be a way to explore and 370 00:26:49,920 --> 00:26:54,080 Speaker 1: hunt and collect in the imagination. This led him into 371 00:26:54,119 --> 00:26:57,800 Speaker 1: a multi year project writing what he would call The 372 00:26:57,840 --> 00:27:02,160 Speaker 1: Winning of the West, in which he conceived frontier hunters 373 00:27:02,480 --> 00:27:07,879 Speaker 1: as the true heroes of the whole colonial process. Roosevelt's 374 00:27:07,880 --> 00:27:11,280 Speaker 1: book came out at almost exactly the same time that 375 00:27:11,320 --> 00:27:16,359 Speaker 1: the Wisconsin historian Frederick Jackson Turner used Darwinian ideas to 376 00:27:16,600 --> 00:27:21,000 Speaker 1: argue in a famous essay that the American wilderness had 377 00:27:21,080 --> 00:27:26,320 Speaker 1: turned Europeans into a sort of Homo Americanus, a new 378 00:27:26,480 --> 00:27:32,320 Speaker 1: and exceptional people forged by their relationship with nature. Roosevelt's 379 00:27:32,320 --> 00:27:36,359 Speaker 1: and Turner's ideas shaped and prefigured many of the developments 380 00:27:36,359 --> 00:27:40,880 Speaker 1: around American animals and wilderness for the next six decades, 381 00:27:42,359 --> 00:27:45,840 Speaker 1: But the wild world around him was changing so rapidly 382 00:27:46,280 --> 00:27:49,920 Speaker 1: that first the future president, had to figure out how 383 00:27:49,960 --> 00:27:53,120 Speaker 1: to save the animals that had made the country the 384 00:27:53,160 --> 00:27:57,480 Speaker 1: frontier adventureland he believed it to be. This was a 385 00:27:57,520 --> 00:28:01,680 Speaker 1: battle his friend Arthur George Berg Garnell had been fighting 386 00:28:01,720 --> 00:28:05,320 Speaker 1: for in the pages of his magazine Forests and Stream, 387 00:28:05,680 --> 00:28:09,560 Speaker 1: and with organizations that he had founded like the Autumn Society. 388 00:28:10,440 --> 00:28:12,760 Speaker 1: Shocked by what he had witnessed in the West from 389 00:28:12,800 --> 00:28:16,280 Speaker 1: his two ranches in North Dakota, in December of eighteen 390 00:28:16,280 --> 00:28:20,760 Speaker 1: eighty seven, Roosevelt invited Grinnell and ten other friends, all 391 00:28:20,880 --> 00:28:26,520 Speaker 1: wealthy Northeastern elites with economic and philosophical underpinnings little different 392 00:28:26,560 --> 00:28:30,119 Speaker 1: than the nobility class from Europe, to launch an organization 393 00:28:30,480 --> 00:28:35,359 Speaker 1: Roosevelt named after his two favorite frontier hunters. He called 394 00:28:35,359 --> 00:28:40,680 Speaker 1: it the Booning Crocket Club. The difference between the eighteen 395 00:28:40,840 --> 00:28:46,200 Speaker 1: fifties and the late eighteen eighties, though, had become blindingly obvious, 396 00:28:47,120 --> 00:28:51,000 Speaker 1: whether via working class people killing animals for money or 397 00:28:51,040 --> 00:28:54,520 Speaker 1: elites without a conscience who shot down animals en mass 398 00:28:54,520 --> 00:28:58,160 Speaker 1: for pleasure. By the eighteen eighties, wildlife in America was 399 00:28:58,320 --> 00:29:04,520 Speaker 1: evaporating before people's eyes without a monumental change. Soon, the 400 00:29:04,720 --> 00:29:09,240 Speaker 1: ancient Bestiary Old worlders had found in America two hundred 401 00:29:09,240 --> 00:29:15,480 Speaker 1: and fifty years earlier, could easily be lost entirely distinct 402 00:29:15,600 --> 00:29:18,760 Speaker 1: from the market hunt related to the field sports, but 403 00:29:18,880 --> 00:29:23,720 Speaker 1: more adaptable. Sport hunting as an idea had first emerged 404 00:29:23,840 --> 00:29:27,160 Speaker 1: in the eighteen forties with the writings of an English 405 00:29:27,200 --> 00:29:32,040 Speaker 1: immigrant named William Herbert. Herbert insisted that what had made 406 00:29:32,040 --> 00:29:36,160 Speaker 1: Brits the great imperialists were was a hunting tradition among 407 00:29:36,320 --> 00:29:40,720 Speaker 1: upper class men. In Herbert's view, hunting was a noble 408 00:29:40,800 --> 00:29:45,280 Speaker 1: recreation that kept men from succumbing to a threat from within, 409 00:29:46,000 --> 00:29:52,200 Speaker 1: namely the creeping feminization of modern life. For men in cities, 410 00:29:52,400 --> 00:29:56,640 Speaker 1: Herbert recommended a return to the virtues of colonial hunters, 411 00:29:56,960 --> 00:30:01,440 Speaker 1: but with the aspirations of an upper class with a conscience. 412 00:30:02,200 --> 00:30:05,920 Speaker 1: In his view, most rural hunters were pot hunters at best, 413 00:30:06,360 --> 00:30:10,320 Speaker 1: meaning they hunted for food. At worst, they were market hunters, 414 00:30:10,600 --> 00:30:14,160 Speaker 1: and neither knew nor cared anything about the natural history 415 00:30:14,160 --> 00:30:17,840 Speaker 1: of the animals they shot. But middle class hunters could 416 00:30:17,880 --> 00:30:22,920 Speaker 1: emulate the elite European model and endeavor to understand animal science. 417 00:30:23,640 --> 00:30:27,960 Speaker 1: As sport hunters, they could look on animals benevolently with 418 00:30:28,160 --> 00:30:31,240 Speaker 1: empathy not as a means to easy cash. 419 00:30:31,480 --> 00:30:32,680 Speaker 2: They could engage in. 420 00:30:32,800 --> 00:30:38,200 Speaker 1: Morally superior behavior, practicing so called fair chase, refraining from 421 00:30:38,240 --> 00:30:42,640 Speaker 1: shooting nursing females or they're young. They could even observe 422 00:30:42,720 --> 00:30:47,200 Speaker 1: the laws the states and territories were frantically passing to 423 00:30:47,360 --> 00:30:52,840 Speaker 1: regulate and halt the destruction of wild animals. Restrictions like 424 00:30:52,920 --> 00:30:57,440 Speaker 1: these were a hard sell to many Americans, especially in 425 00:30:57,600 --> 00:30:59,000 Speaker 1: rural parts of the country. 426 00:31:00,000 --> 00:31:01,640 Speaker 2: Grmeral and immigrant hunters. 427 00:31:01,320 --> 00:31:03,840 Speaker 1: Who wanted to keep killing animals for food and money 428 00:31:04,080 --> 00:31:08,720 Speaker 1: clashed now almost yearly with the new sport hunters, most 429 00:31:08,760 --> 00:31:12,280 Speaker 1: of them from the cities, who increasingly saw hunting as 430 00:31:12,320 --> 00:31:18,120 Speaker 1: a weekend recreation. Roosevelt's Booney Crockett Club was washed then 431 00:31:18,320 --> 00:31:23,280 Speaker 1: in the blood of William Herbert's philosophy. Its initial roster 432 00:31:23,640 --> 00:31:27,840 Speaker 1: of one hundred full time members and fifty associates came 433 00:31:27,960 --> 00:31:32,640 Speaker 1: from the right class. All were prominent, All were Easterners, 434 00:31:32,800 --> 00:31:38,560 Speaker 1: all urban. They were also all men. There were celebrity 435 00:31:38,600 --> 00:31:43,000 Speaker 1: painters and writers like Albert Beerstatt and Owen Wister, military 436 00:31:43,080 --> 00:31:47,000 Speaker 1: heroes such as Philip Sheridan and William Tacum See Sherman. 437 00:31:47,560 --> 00:31:52,640 Speaker 1: Prominent scientists like Clarence King. Animals did figure into the 438 00:31:52,680 --> 00:31:57,120 Speaker 1: club's constitution, as its primary purpose was to work for 439 00:31:57,200 --> 00:32:01,000 Speaker 1: the preservation of the large game of this and a 440 00:32:01,120 --> 00:32:05,240 Speaker 1: second one was to assist in enforcing the existing laws 441 00:32:06,000 --> 00:32:10,720 Speaker 1: promoting natural history. Science was there too, but the core 442 00:32:10,880 --> 00:32:14,480 Speaker 1: of the club was hunting. To be a member, one 443 00:32:14,560 --> 00:32:18,880 Speaker 1: had to have pursued and shot three different species of 444 00:32:19,240 --> 00:32:24,800 Speaker 1: that large game with a rifle. Indeed, firearms, especially the rifle, 445 00:32:25,200 --> 00:32:29,520 Speaker 1: figured as prominently in the constitution as the animals themselves. 446 00:32:30,120 --> 00:32:33,440 Speaker 1: The very first of the Boone and Crocket's bylaws made 447 00:32:33,480 --> 00:32:38,840 Speaker 1: clear the club's purpose was manly sport with the rifle. 448 00:32:39,720 --> 00:32:42,960 Speaker 1: That coin had two sides. The only way to preserve 449 00:32:43,160 --> 00:32:48,520 Speaker 1: the manly sport was to save America's animals. In its 450 00:32:48,520 --> 00:32:51,640 Speaker 1: first two decades, the Boone and Crocket Club moved heaven 451 00:32:51,720 --> 00:32:55,520 Speaker 1: and earth to rescue some of the country's disappearing wildlife. 452 00:32:56,000 --> 00:32:59,640 Speaker 1: Its efforts began when the club became a force supporting 453 00:32:59,640 --> 00:33:03,600 Speaker 1: the UA Armies role in ending poaching and market hunting 454 00:33:03,640 --> 00:33:08,440 Speaker 1: in Yellowstone and other early national parks. It continued when 455 00:33:08,480 --> 00:33:12,960 Speaker 1: the club advocated on behalf of a holy New idea 456 00:33:13,160 --> 00:33:17,840 Speaker 1: in America. Rather than seeing the general Land Office continued 457 00:33:17,880 --> 00:33:21,320 Speaker 1: to privatize every square inch of federal land through the 458 00:33:21,400 --> 00:33:26,480 Speaker 1: Homestead Acts and giveaways to encourage rail lines and other infrastructure. 459 00:33:27,080 --> 00:33:31,880 Speaker 1: The clubs supported the federal government retaining important parts of 460 00:33:31,960 --> 00:33:37,720 Speaker 1: its Western landscape as public lands, and urgedone by Grinnell. 461 00:33:38,240 --> 00:33:42,640 Speaker 1: The Boone and Crocket Club promoted yet another unprecedented step 462 00:33:42,880 --> 00:33:46,960 Speaker 1: for the federal government the passage of the Lacey Act 463 00:33:47,320 --> 00:33:51,600 Speaker 1: in nineteen hundred to curb the market hunt that had 464 00:33:51,640 --> 00:33:56,520 Speaker 1: made American animals commodity resources for three centuries. 465 00:33:57,400 --> 00:33:59,400 Speaker 2: William Hornety, with a. 466 00:33:59,400 --> 00:34:02,880 Speaker 1: State Unit Diversity degree not quite elite enough to be 467 00:34:03,000 --> 00:34:06,959 Speaker 1: invited into the club, was then writing a book called 468 00:34:07,360 --> 00:34:13,120 Speaker 1: Our Vanishing Wildlife, which included these lines, Here is an 469 00:34:13,160 --> 00:34:18,280 Speaker 1: inexorable law of nature to which there are no exceptions. 470 00:34:18,800 --> 00:34:24,640 Speaker 1: No wild species of bird, mammal, reptile, or fish can 471 00:34:24,719 --> 00:34:32,920 Speaker 1: withstand exploitation for commercial purposes. These were revolutionary steps for 472 00:34:33,040 --> 00:34:38,560 Speaker 1: a country steeped in Adam Smith economics, John Stuart Mill freedoms, 473 00:34:38,840 --> 00:34:39,880 Speaker 1: and the anarchy of. 474 00:34:39,880 --> 00:34:41,279 Speaker 2: The wild wild West. 475 00:34:41,760 --> 00:34:45,919 Speaker 1: The public lands idea was so truly revolutionary that I'll 476 00:34:45,960 --> 00:34:49,959 Speaker 1: devote a coming episode to how that happened. But ending 477 00:34:50,000 --> 00:34:55,080 Speaker 1: the market slaughter of wildlife was equally a watershed. Shooting, trapping, 478 00:34:55,120 --> 00:34:58,640 Speaker 1: and netting animals and birds for profit had been central 479 00:34:58,680 --> 00:35:02,560 Speaker 1: to Americanism since colonial times, but by the end of 480 00:35:02,560 --> 00:35:05,920 Speaker 1: the nineteenth century its role in wrecking the natural world 481 00:35:06,120 --> 00:35:11,600 Speaker 1: had grown impossible to ignore. As for safari field sports, 482 00:35:11,880 --> 00:35:15,920 Speaker 1: at least in America, these kinds of massacres sank under 483 00:35:15,960 --> 00:35:21,400 Speaker 1: the weight of their own excesses. Wyndham Thomas Wyndham Quinn, 484 00:35:22,000 --> 00:35:25,840 Speaker 1: fourth Earl of Dunraven, was an example of a field 485 00:35:25,880 --> 00:35:30,200 Speaker 1: sport elite who was sensitive enough to sit beside a 486 00:35:30,280 --> 00:35:34,839 Speaker 1: fire in the eighteen seventies and pin a premonition of 487 00:35:34,880 --> 00:35:39,440 Speaker 1: the future. On this particular day, he and his guides 488 00:35:39,480 --> 00:35:42,720 Speaker 1: had run their horses into a huge herd of elk. 489 00:35:43,560 --> 00:35:46,520 Speaker 1: If you had no moral conscious about what you were doing, 490 00:35:46,920 --> 00:35:52,800 Speaker 1: it was exhilarating. This elk running is perfectly magnificent, he wrote. 491 00:35:53,040 --> 00:35:56,759 Speaker 1: We gallop after them like maniacs, cutting them off till 492 00:35:56,800 --> 00:35:58,040 Speaker 1: we get in the midst of them. 493 00:35:58,280 --> 00:35:59,960 Speaker 2: When we shoot all that we can. 494 00:36:01,320 --> 00:36:07,000 Speaker 1: But as the adrenaline ebbed done, Raven experienced an odd enui. 495 00:36:07,840 --> 00:36:10,200 Speaker 1: At the end of the shooting, he had gotten a 496 00:36:10,280 --> 00:36:13,319 Speaker 1: glimpse of the future. He tried to fight it off, 497 00:36:13,560 --> 00:36:16,799 Speaker 1: but he knew it was real. In a second, it 498 00:36:17,000 --> 00:36:20,880 Speaker 1: was all gone. There was not a living creature to 499 00:36:20,960 --> 00:36:25,560 Speaker 1: be seen, and the oppressive silence was unbroken by the 500 00:36:25,600 --> 00:36:30,040 Speaker 1: faintest sound. I looked all around the horizon, not a 501 00:36:30,120 --> 00:36:38,000 Speaker 1: sign of life. Everything seemed dull, dead, quiet, unutterably sad 502 00:36:38,080 --> 00:36:44,239 Speaker 1: and melancholy done. Raven knew what he had just participated in. 503 00:36:44,880 --> 00:36:50,120 Speaker 1: Simply couldn't stand or else that oppressive silence was coming 504 00:36:50,520 --> 00:36:59,400 Speaker 1: for all wild America. 505 00:37:03,520 --> 00:37:13,160 Speaker 3: So, Dan, I think today's hunters look back to sort 506 00:37:13,160 --> 00:37:16,440 Speaker 3: of the eighteen eighties eighteen nineties is sort of the 507 00:37:17,880 --> 00:37:23,960 Speaker 3: origin story of our pastime, our culture as hunters. And 508 00:37:24,160 --> 00:37:30,440 Speaker 3: it gets fuzzier when you go back further than that, because, 509 00:37:30,440 --> 00:37:33,640 Speaker 3: as you explain here, there's certain like missing cultural elements 510 00:37:33,640 --> 00:37:38,520 Speaker 3: that simply are absent in that in those earlier decades. 511 00:37:38,560 --> 00:37:40,560 Speaker 3: And so when you go when you start to think about, 512 00:37:41,320 --> 00:37:44,319 Speaker 3: you know, heritage versus history and sort of how we 513 00:37:44,400 --> 00:37:47,160 Speaker 3: explain who we are today by looking back at the past, 514 00:37:48,040 --> 00:37:51,840 Speaker 3: there's not really a there's not really an obvious like 515 00:37:51,920 --> 00:37:55,320 Speaker 3: forerunner in the eighteen fifties, eighteen forties. 516 00:37:55,520 --> 00:38:00,960 Speaker 1: No, there's not I mean, so I wanted to tell 517 00:38:01,160 --> 00:38:05,920 Speaker 1: this story or these stories about people like William Drummond 518 00:38:05,920 --> 00:38:12,959 Speaker 1: Stewart and Sir Saint George Gore, because they I think 519 00:38:13,120 --> 00:38:20,000 Speaker 1: illustrate a kind of a classic of the really the 520 00:38:20,040 --> 00:38:23,759 Speaker 1: anarchy of the so called Western Frontier, what we have 521 00:38:24,000 --> 00:38:27,160 Speaker 1: referred to still referred to as the wild wild West, 522 00:38:27,600 --> 00:38:30,839 Speaker 1: when everything was wide open you could, I mean, if 523 00:38:30,920 --> 00:38:33,319 Speaker 1: you were interested in freedom, this was it. 524 00:38:33,560 --> 00:38:33,959 Speaker 2: You could. 525 00:38:34,000 --> 00:38:38,200 Speaker 1: You were free to do whatever human nature compels. 526 00:38:37,760 --> 00:38:38,239 Speaker 2: You to do. 527 00:38:39,120 --> 00:38:43,719 Speaker 1: And when you look back at those stories, even at 528 00:38:43,760 --> 00:38:49,680 Speaker 1: the time, they were disturbing, and particularly now, they're pretty 529 00:38:49,719 --> 00:38:54,560 Speaker 1: remarkably disturbing. I mean, what you see is human nature 530 00:38:56,040 --> 00:39:00,439 Speaker 1: equipped humans equipped with modern technology, at least in terms 531 00:39:00,480 --> 00:39:04,759 Speaker 1: of firearms that are capable of taking out large animals, 532 00:39:05,600 --> 00:39:12,120 Speaker 1: and people with the ability to spend a lot of 533 00:39:12,200 --> 00:39:16,040 Speaker 1: money and go to exotic places where there are no 534 00:39:16,200 --> 00:39:21,360 Speaker 1: regulations whatsoever on what you can do. And the result 535 00:39:21,520 --> 00:39:24,920 Speaker 1: is some of the things that happened in the American 536 00:39:25,000 --> 00:39:29,520 Speaker 1: West from the eighteen thirties really through the Safaris didn't 537 00:39:29,560 --> 00:39:33,759 Speaker 1: really end until the eighteen eighties. And I mean I 538 00:39:33,800 --> 00:39:36,959 Speaker 1: only told the stories of two or three or four 539 00:39:37,280 --> 00:39:39,760 Speaker 1: of the people who were involved, there were many more 540 00:39:40,000 --> 00:39:43,480 Speaker 1: of them. I mean, this was happening on a fairly 541 00:39:43,520 --> 00:39:46,200 Speaker 1: regular basis. And of course, as I try to point out, 542 00:39:46,400 --> 00:39:51,840 Speaker 1: this is before the idea of conservation ever emerges. It's 543 00:39:52,040 --> 00:39:57,080 Speaker 1: before anyone is thinking about posterity, which is why I 544 00:39:57,080 --> 00:40:01,440 Speaker 1: wanted to use that Cornelius Vanderbilt. You know, what the 545 00:40:01,480 --> 00:40:04,040 Speaker 1: hell did posterity ever do for me? I mean, that's 546 00:40:04,120 --> 00:40:06,960 Speaker 1: kind of the sense that many of the people have then, 547 00:40:07,160 --> 00:40:10,600 Speaker 1: And so what they do, of course, is they those 548 00:40:10,640 --> 00:40:17,080 Speaker 1: people alive then indulging in the kind of really kind 549 00:40:17,120 --> 00:40:22,920 Speaker 1: of sadistic sort of killing that they did. I mean, 550 00:40:23,000 --> 00:40:26,799 Speaker 1: they ended up robbing those of us down the timeline 551 00:40:26,920 --> 00:40:30,920 Speaker 1: from being able to experience something of that world. So 552 00:40:30,960 --> 00:40:35,239 Speaker 1: it's kind of to me, it's a disturbing lesson out 553 00:40:35,239 --> 00:40:39,200 Speaker 1: of history. And we finally we righted the ship kind 554 00:40:39,239 --> 00:40:42,799 Speaker 1: of at the last, almost the last moment when it 555 00:40:42,840 --> 00:40:46,479 Speaker 1: could be righted. But boy, these stories from earlier are 556 00:40:46,520 --> 00:40:48,200 Speaker 1: pretty pretty disturbing. 557 00:40:48,640 --> 00:40:54,840 Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think one aspect of the story that 558 00:40:54,920 --> 00:41:00,680 Speaker 3: you touch on in this episode is that, like when 559 00:41:00,719 --> 00:41:03,439 Speaker 3: we talk about Theodore Roosevelt and like what he did 560 00:41:03,600 --> 00:41:07,239 Speaker 3: with establishing public lands, establishing national forests, like we we 561 00:41:07,360 --> 00:41:10,799 Speaker 3: easily recognize that as it was controversial at the time 562 00:41:11,680 --> 00:41:14,399 Speaker 3: and he had a lot of adversaries and enemies. Now, yeah, 563 00:41:14,480 --> 00:41:18,680 Speaker 3: we don't often talk about how early efforts to curtail 564 00:41:19,080 --> 00:41:25,239 Speaker 3: this type of slaughter was equally equally resisting, equally resistant. Yeah, 565 00:41:25,239 --> 00:41:28,360 Speaker 3: and you know, you read books like Louis Warrens and 566 00:41:28,920 --> 00:41:32,000 Speaker 3: there's game wardens, the first game wardens are getting killed 567 00:41:32,080 --> 00:41:36,200 Speaker 3: and and it's it's very much an urban rural divide here, 568 00:41:36,760 --> 00:41:42,080 Speaker 3: and we look to tr as sort of the everyman. 569 00:41:42,800 --> 00:41:45,960 Speaker 3: Uh you know, Hunters today at least looked towards him 570 00:41:45,960 --> 00:41:49,600 Speaker 3: as sort of the everyman, every like champion of the 571 00:41:49,640 --> 00:41:52,040 Speaker 3: common man. But a lot of what he was doing 572 00:41:52,160 --> 00:41:54,319 Speaker 3: even then was controversial at the time. 573 00:41:54,880 --> 00:41:55,560 Speaker 2: Yeah, it was. 574 00:41:55,760 --> 00:42:01,200 Speaker 1: And you know, and as you said, uh, it was 575 00:42:01,360 --> 00:42:07,360 Speaker 1: class warfare around this idea, particularly to try to stop 576 00:42:07,440 --> 00:42:11,239 Speaker 1: the market hunt, which had been going on since the 577 00:42:11,400 --> 00:42:14,680 Speaker 1: sixteen twenties. I mean, we had been doing this in 578 00:42:14,719 --> 00:42:19,239 Speaker 1: America forever. And you know, in my book While New World, 579 00:42:19,320 --> 00:42:22,879 Speaker 1: one of the things that I wanted to do at 580 00:42:23,000 --> 00:42:26,960 Speaker 1: regular intervals, and it wasn't hard because the material was there, 581 00:42:27,440 --> 00:42:34,120 Speaker 1: was to demonstrate how Americans thought of this freedom to 582 00:42:34,440 --> 00:42:37,920 Speaker 1: kill wild animals for money as a part of the 583 00:42:37,960 --> 00:42:41,000 Speaker 1: American franchise. I mean it was like men having the 584 00:42:41,080 --> 00:42:45,040 Speaker 1: right to vote. I mean they just believe that this 585 00:42:45,239 --> 00:42:48,239 Speaker 1: was something that went with being an American. You got 586 00:42:48,280 --> 00:42:50,960 Speaker 1: to go out and kill animals as many as you want. 587 00:42:51,000 --> 00:42:53,799 Speaker 1: And if you happen to live in the rural countryside, 588 00:42:53,800 --> 00:42:57,080 Speaker 1: and of course huge numbers of Americans did, the majority 589 00:42:57,400 --> 00:43:01,080 Speaker 1: population lived in rural America up until the nineteen twenties. 590 00:43:01,840 --> 00:43:03,520 Speaker 1: A lot of people thought this was a way to 591 00:43:03,640 --> 00:43:08,640 Speaker 1: enter the cash economy. I mean, if the modern world 592 00:43:08,719 --> 00:43:11,040 Speaker 1: was being ruled by cash money, this was one of 593 00:43:11,040 --> 00:43:14,000 Speaker 1: the ways to get it. You just laid waste. So 594 00:43:14,120 --> 00:43:19,560 Speaker 1: whatever particular animals happened to be within reach. And so yeah, 595 00:43:19,600 --> 00:43:27,560 Speaker 1: this particular episode about the elites operating without a conscience 596 00:43:27,640 --> 00:43:32,600 Speaker 1: of any kind because they can combined with the market hunt, 597 00:43:32,600 --> 00:43:35,200 Speaker 1: which is a kind of a working class phenomenon. I mean, 598 00:43:35,200 --> 00:43:38,040 Speaker 1: when you look at that at say, in the eighteen fifties, 599 00:43:38,280 --> 00:43:41,279 Speaker 1: it doesn't look as if fifty years out there's going 600 00:43:41,360 --> 00:43:42,920 Speaker 1: to be a resolution of this. 601 00:43:43,080 --> 00:43:43,640 Speaker 2: It looks like. 602 00:43:43,600 --> 00:43:48,400 Speaker 1: From two different angles from the market hunt on the 603 00:43:48,440 --> 00:43:55,960 Speaker 1: part of rural people and this kind of consciousness, exploitation 604 00:43:56,320 --> 00:43:58,839 Speaker 1: of nature on the part of elites, that we're going 605 00:43:58,880 --> 00:44:03,440 Speaker 1: to end up with nothing, And so Roosevelt and George 606 00:44:03,440 --> 00:44:06,720 Speaker 1: burg Grenelle and you know, and the Boone and Crocket Club. 607 00:44:06,760 --> 00:44:09,680 Speaker 1: I mean, it was almost you kind of look at 608 00:44:09,680 --> 00:44:13,640 Speaker 1: it in history as almost out of nowhere, but somehow 609 00:44:13,640 --> 00:44:16,000 Speaker 1: they managed to put this together and bring a halt 610 00:44:16,040 --> 00:44:16,800 Speaker 1: to what was happening. 611 00:44:16,920 --> 00:44:19,000 Speaker 3: Yeah, it almost strikes me as sort of like a coup. 612 00:44:20,120 --> 00:44:24,480 Speaker 3: You know, it's a small group of a very powerful, 613 00:44:24,560 --> 00:44:29,960 Speaker 3: influential people who sort of flip the world, flip the 614 00:44:29,960 --> 00:44:33,080 Speaker 3: world on its head in a sense, and they're in 615 00:44:33,120 --> 00:44:38,720 Speaker 3: such positions of power that the world follows along very quickly. 616 00:44:38,760 --> 00:44:44,480 Speaker 3: And I think, you know, obviously people who read about 617 00:44:44,520 --> 00:44:46,840 Speaker 3: the history of hunting in this country are more informed 618 00:44:46,880 --> 00:44:47,880 Speaker 3: than the general public. 619 00:44:47,920 --> 00:44:49,080 Speaker 2: But the Boone and. 620 00:44:49,080 --> 00:44:52,840 Speaker 3: Crockett Club has this reputation as being most commonly associated 621 00:44:52,880 --> 00:44:57,640 Speaker 3: with its record book. But if you look at conservation 622 00:44:57,840 --> 00:45:03,040 Speaker 3: laws from it's found up through the twenties thirties Ford, 623 00:45:03,120 --> 00:45:06,279 Speaker 3: I mean, it's they have a hand in everything, and 624 00:45:06,480 --> 00:45:09,480 Speaker 3: especially in that turn of the century moment. I mean 625 00:45:09,520 --> 00:45:14,200 Speaker 3: they're the prime mover behind the scenes getting things done 626 00:45:14,480 --> 00:45:17,680 Speaker 3: in terms of the Lacy Act and other landmark legislation 627 00:45:17,840 --> 00:45:18,080 Speaker 3: like that. 628 00:45:18,120 --> 00:45:20,600 Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I remember that when we were both 629 00:45:20,640 --> 00:45:22,840 Speaker 1: at the University of Montana. I mean, you were working 630 00:45:22,840 --> 00:45:26,080 Speaker 1: on the Boone and Crocket Club for a good bit 631 00:45:26,360 --> 00:45:29,360 Speaker 1: and I know you've read an enormous amount of the 632 00:45:30,280 --> 00:45:34,640 Speaker 1: original documents from that organization. But yeah, it was you know, 633 00:45:34,680 --> 00:45:37,560 Speaker 1: we don't think of it so much today in these terms, 634 00:45:37,600 --> 00:45:41,759 Speaker 1: but it was one of the key environmental or conservation 635 00:45:41,920 --> 00:45:45,520 Speaker 1: progressive organizations back at the turn of the twentieth century 636 00:45:45,560 --> 00:45:51,879 Speaker 1: when Teddy Roosevelt was president and it's focus. Obviously, there 637 00:45:51,880 --> 00:45:56,239 Speaker 1: were other government agencies that focused on things like timber 638 00:45:56,280 --> 00:45:59,400 Speaker 1: and on water, but this one particularly, which was not 639 00:45:59,480 --> 00:46:02,279 Speaker 1: of government, focused on wildlife, you know, And you have 640 00:46:02,360 --> 00:46:04,359 Speaker 1: to say, I mean, one of the reasons they did 641 00:46:04,440 --> 00:46:07,360 Speaker 1: is because they wanted to continue to be able to hunt. 642 00:46:07,400 --> 00:46:10,320 Speaker 1: They wanted to have animals that were still out there. 643 00:46:10,360 --> 00:46:14,000 Speaker 1: And so you know, it's looking back, and I'll do 644 00:46:14,040 --> 00:46:16,880 Speaker 1: this in some later episodes, it's easy to kind of 645 00:46:16,880 --> 00:46:20,879 Speaker 1: critique this early sort of wildlife rescue as well. What 646 00:46:20,920 --> 00:46:23,760 Speaker 1: we were interested in was things that we wanted to hunt, 647 00:46:24,040 --> 00:46:26,960 Speaker 1: and we didn't have much interest in we didn't know 648 00:46:26,960 --> 00:46:30,959 Speaker 1: anything about ecologies. We weren't interested in predators and things 649 00:46:31,000 --> 00:46:33,239 Speaker 1: like that except to get rid of them, and so 650 00:46:33,680 --> 00:46:38,640 Speaker 1: that obviously allows for other sort of historical forces to 651 00:46:38,680 --> 00:46:42,040 Speaker 1: play out in the future. But it was critical for 652 00:46:42,120 --> 00:46:44,520 Speaker 1: the Boone and Crocket Club to emerge when it did 653 00:46:44,600 --> 00:46:47,319 Speaker 1: because things were really looking bad. I mean, we had 654 00:46:47,360 --> 00:46:50,839 Speaker 1: gotten we'd gotten bisoned down to the point where it 655 00:46:51,040 --> 00:46:55,400 Speaker 1: was really sketchy about whether the genetic diversity was sufficient 656 00:46:55,560 --> 00:46:58,640 Speaker 1: to rescue them. And we were getting animals like prong 657 00:46:58,719 --> 00:47:02,200 Speaker 1: horns down to the point some sources say five thousand, 658 00:47:02,440 --> 00:47:06,040 Speaker 1: only five thousand left, some seven thousand, but down to 659 00:47:06,239 --> 00:47:10,719 Speaker 1: numbers where you start worrying about genetic diversity to be 660 00:47:10,760 --> 00:47:13,440 Speaker 1: able to save things. I mean, that's one of, of course, 661 00:47:13,560 --> 00:47:18,799 Speaker 1: the real issues and endangered species rescue is that you 662 00:47:18,960 --> 00:47:21,960 Speaker 1: can't let things get down to the point where the 663 00:47:22,040 --> 00:47:25,359 Speaker 1: genetic diversity is so small that the animals are not 664 00:47:25,640 --> 00:47:30,400 Speaker 1: able to really survive in a healthy way into the future. 665 00:47:30,760 --> 00:47:32,520 Speaker 1: And we were getting close to that with a lot 666 00:47:32,560 --> 00:47:34,400 Speaker 1: of things at the turn of the twentieth century. 667 00:47:35,040 --> 00:47:35,319 Speaker 2: Yeah, And. 668 00:47:36,960 --> 00:47:39,319 Speaker 3: I think one of the interesting aspects about the Boon 669 00:47:39,320 --> 00:47:43,239 Speaker 3: and Crockett story is this idea of sportsmanship and a 670 00:47:43,320 --> 00:47:48,160 Speaker 3: new I mean it's really what it is is a restraint, 671 00:47:48,480 --> 00:47:52,200 Speaker 3: self imposed restraint that then gets written into law in 672 00:47:52,960 --> 00:47:55,880 Speaker 3: a lot of ways. But this is the creation of 673 00:47:55,920 --> 00:47:58,560 Speaker 3: something very new. It's not just sort of the winning 674 00:47:58,600 --> 00:48:02,279 Speaker 3: out of one adverse the other. It's a very new 675 00:48:02,960 --> 00:48:04,320 Speaker 3: cultural movement. 676 00:48:05,160 --> 00:48:05,799 Speaker 2: Yeah it is. 677 00:48:05,960 --> 00:48:08,960 Speaker 1: And you know, and you have to say, it's in 678 00:48:09,280 --> 00:48:15,719 Speaker 1: a good measure, based on a respect for the animals 679 00:48:15,800 --> 00:48:19,200 Speaker 1: themselves and a kind of a growing empathy and a 680 00:48:19,200 --> 00:48:22,520 Speaker 1: billy And I think, you know, this is the Darwinian Age, 681 00:48:22,560 --> 00:48:23,200 Speaker 1: for one thing. 682 00:48:23,800 --> 00:48:25,440 Speaker 2: And I think that. 683 00:48:27,120 --> 00:48:31,920 Speaker 1: Darwin's ideas probably we were in the minds of a 684 00:48:31,960 --> 00:48:36,239 Speaker 1: great many of these people, and that helped produce a 685 00:48:36,320 --> 00:48:42,000 Speaker 1: kind of an emerging empathy for other species that hadn't 686 00:48:42,040 --> 00:48:44,279 Speaker 1: been there before. I mean, you certainly don't see it 687 00:48:44,760 --> 00:48:48,960 Speaker 1: when Saint George Gore is on the Powder River in 688 00:48:49,000 --> 00:48:51,960 Speaker 1: the eighteen fifties. He seemed to have no compassion or 689 00:48:52,000 --> 00:48:57,200 Speaker 1: empathy whatsoever. And so I think the Darwinian Age helps 690 00:48:57,719 --> 00:49:02,000 Speaker 1: cultivate some of that, this sense that the nature writers 691 00:49:02,040 --> 00:49:04,040 Speaker 1: of the time in the early twentieth century were trying 692 00:49:04,040 --> 00:49:06,520 Speaker 1: to cultivate that you know, we are in the and 693 00:49:06,560 --> 00:49:11,200 Speaker 1: the Beasts or Ken. That was Ernest Thompson Seton's in 694 00:49:11,320 --> 00:49:14,080 Speaker 1: a famous line in his books, We and the Beasts 695 00:49:14,080 --> 00:49:17,279 Speaker 1: are Ken, So that I think played some role in 696 00:49:17,400 --> 00:49:22,720 Speaker 1: producing a whole new way that the Boone and Crockett 697 00:49:22,760 --> 00:49:26,280 Speaker 1: Club managed to get its ideas out into the world. 698 00:49:27,120 --> 00:49:27,600 Speaker 2: Yeah. 699 00:49:27,640 --> 00:49:29,919 Speaker 3: And I think one of the interesting things here too 700 00:49:30,000 --> 00:49:36,160 Speaker 3: is like tr himself goes through these goes through a change, right, 701 00:49:36,320 --> 00:49:38,640 Speaker 3: It's not it's that you see this change in the 702 00:49:38,640 --> 00:49:43,080 Speaker 3: policy and the private sector, the public sector, but it 703 00:49:43,520 --> 00:49:47,120 Speaker 3: begins with in a lot of cases, individual sort of 704 00:49:47,200 --> 00:49:50,560 Speaker 3: realizations or conversions, if you will, to a new way 705 00:49:50,600 --> 00:49:51,520 Speaker 3: of looking at the world. 706 00:49:51,719 --> 00:49:54,520 Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think tr is one. I think George 707 00:49:54,520 --> 00:49:59,000 Speaker 1: Berggrennell as another. He's just a critical figure in this 708 00:49:59,160 --> 00:50:03,239 Speaker 1: age way. Temple Hornaday, you know, as another one. I mean, 709 00:50:03,280 --> 00:50:06,920 Speaker 1: these guys came from you know, Hornaday came from a 710 00:50:06,920 --> 00:50:11,759 Speaker 1: different kind of background than people like Grennelle and Roosevelt did, 711 00:50:11,840 --> 00:50:16,120 Speaker 1: but he too was undergoing this kind of transformation. And 712 00:50:16,160 --> 00:50:19,239 Speaker 1: so it's it's really interesting historically to look back at 713 00:50:19,280 --> 00:50:25,200 Speaker 1: that and see these people began to alter their sense 714 00:50:25,320 --> 00:50:30,520 Speaker 1: of what they needed to do to make the natural world, 715 00:50:30,600 --> 00:50:31,760 Speaker 1: survive into the future. 716 00:50:32,520 --> 00:50:35,239 Speaker 2: Well Dan thinks, oh yeah, around we're be fun to 717 00:50:35,280 --> 00:50:35,440 Speaker 2: talk