Elk-Arizona's Big Game

The 45-90 roared. Black powder smoke belched out of the heavy rifle and blotted out the view in front of the hunter. It was just as well. He had dropped the last native Merriam elk in Arizona. The year was 1898. The place, Mount Ord.

This was the climax of thirty years of wanton destruction brought by the coming of "civilized man" to Arizona. They had commercialized on elk. The rich, red game meat sold for seven cents a pound in the general stores and trading posts of the frontier. Hides were shipped east to market or left to rot in the forests. Even the ivory found its price.

Then one day years later, in 1912, a frontier doctor of Prescott, Arizona, was reading an article in "Field and Stream," a national hunting and fishing magazine. The article concerned the restocking of elk in a certain section of California.

Dr. R. N. Looney's greatest interest outside his practice was the outdoor sports, hunting and fishing, to be found in Arizona. His calls had taken him to the homes of old pioneers. There he had heard the hunting yarns concerning the great numbers of native elk that had roamed the fir, pine and aspen forests in earlier days. Now there were none of the big animals left. They had become extinct when the last one fell to the meat peddler's rifle in 1898.

The article on game management in the magazine gave the doctor an idea. The code of a true sportsman demanded that he do something about restoring elk to Arizona. He wrote the author for further details. On his next trip to Phoenix, he talked it over with his good friend, Geo. W. P. Hunt. The first governor of Arizona appointed a committee of three, with himself as chairman. MulfordWinsor, the third member of the committee, was to see to the financing of the project. The group would attempt to restore elk to the mountains and glades of Arizona.