The Mountain Echo

Now Planning a Substitute for Beef

DEER and elk preserves may play an important part in reducing the high cost of beef. According to government experts who have made an investigation of the cost and methods of raising venison, declare that the game laws of the various states are preventing deer and elk farming and denying the country one of its chief sources of cheap and good meat. Deer and elk can be raised readily in nearly every state in the Union. They are easily controlled and cheaply fed. The increase of elk under domestication is fully equal to that of cattle.

The state and the government, through its Yellowstone park officials, have co-operated with individual ranchmen in caring for the vast herds of elk in the Jackson's Hole region in Wyoming. It is estimated that there are 30,000 elk in the Yellowstone park region, constituting the only great herd left. For two or three winters these elk have been fed, and have now come to look upon the feeding as a matter of course, and State Game Warden Nowlin of Wyoming, who has led the feeding experiments, says that the last of the great elk herds is becoming rapidly domesticated. Several ranchmen in the Rocky mountain country have conducted private elk preserves for years. Outside of the private elk preserves there are few herds left in the west.

Barret Littlefield, who lives near Slater, has several hundred elk on his great ranch. Every season he ships many carcasses of elk to the Denver market, besides supplying zoological gardens throughout the country. He has found it profitable to raise elk for the market—so profitable that he abandoned the cattle business years ago and has devoted himself entirely to the raising of venison. There are two other elk preserves in northwestern Colorado. J. B. Dawson, a Routt county pioneer, has several hundred head of elk on his ranch near Hayden.

In nearly every state in the Union the killing of deer is forbidden excepting in the fall and during a limited period. If deer and elk are to be raised for the market the venison farmer must be allowed to kill for the market, whenever the demand is there.