OCR Text |
Show Census Is Taken Of Wild Life On Fish Lake Forest The 1938 wild life census of Fishlake national forest, of which the Beaver mountain area is a part, as compiled from reports of forest rangers of the eight districts dis-tricts in cooperation with the state fish and game department, the C C C and the biological survey, sur-vey, shows the following wild life on or near the forest. Game animals: mule deer, 50,-000; 50,-000; elk, 800; bear, 10; snowshoe hare, 3000; fox, 50; "badger, 600; ieaver, 350; marten, 20 (on ,Nioche) muskrat, 150; skunk, 700, and weasel, 1200. Predatory animals: Coyote, 2000; bobcat, 700;. mountain lion, 150; porcupine, 6500. Game birds: Ducks, 450; dusky grouse, 200; sagehen, 2000; ruffed grouse, 200; quail, 1500; mourning dove, 2O00. Increases are shown in the following fol-lowing classes of wild life: Mule deer, 7000 more than in 1937; beaver, bea-ver, 100; muskrat, 50; mountain Jion, 20. Snowshoe hare and all classes of game birds increased'. Conspicious for their absence are such animals and birds as the moose, antelope, mountain sheep, mink, otter, wolves, wolverine, fool-hen, swan, ptarmigan and wild turkey. None of these interesting inter-esting animals exists on tbe forest. Reports from checking stations and ranges show 13,500 hunters bagged 8500 buck deer, 1200 doe deer, 60 elk and that predatory animals killed 3000 deer and 40 elk. Man in turn killed 1600 coyotes, coy-otes, 250 bobcats, 2000 porcupine and 25 mountain lions. Many sportsmen were worried that issuing permits for excess doe (Continued on last page) Wild Life Census (Continued from first page) in deer-congested areas would result re-sult in a slaughter of deer. Happily Happi-ly such was not the case. The doe hunt was conducted in an orderly manner and doe killed were claimed claim-ed and utilized on areas where permits per-mits for doe were issued. In some isolated localities, where there were few hunters and where permits for doe were not issued, some individual hunters occasionally occasion-ally felled a doe. Where there were many hunters, would-be game law violators were restrained from killing unlegal deer through fear of being apprehended for game violation or through fear of taking human life. This fact is reflected in the fact that 12 times as many hunters in 1938 took no more human lives than were taken in 1920. It is believed that deer have become be-come so numerous on many of the ranges within the Fishlake forest that little more increase is possible. |