Having sketched the history of forest and land conservation, it would be appropriate to similarly narrate the movement to conserve wild life. Until a half century ago the American attitude toward wild life was almost wholly one of indifference. The frontiersman killed a deer per meal and gave little thought for the morrow. Only the Indians were preservers of game, as the saying, "No Indians not much game; heap Sioux, plenty of buffalo, elk and deer," so aptly attests.[280] It has already been explained how this difference in racial behavior eventuated in almost perpetual strife between white and red men. There were occasional exceptions, as in the case of Daniel Boone. In 1775 he proposed a measure for the protection of game in Kentucky because it was already necessary for him to travel a score of miles from home to find buffalo.
The pristine American wild life heritage was on a par with the endowment of forest and land. The toothsome white-tailed deer was omnipresent in the East and much of the Middle West. Other species of deer, elk, moose, bison, and antelope were in great abundance. Reports from Lewis and Clark, Zebulon Pike, J. J. Audubon, B. L. Bonneville and others prove that no pioneer ever pushed so far, or entered regions so difficult or remote, that he did not find a host of birds and beasts awaiting his pleasure and profit.[281] Man has always had a predatory disposition toward wild life, but this was not so serious in the ages of club, stone ax, and bow and arrow. American animal abundance was contemporaneous with these times.
Wild life conservation became an imperative issue only after the invention of flintlock, breechloaders, repeaters, automatics, and fixed ammunition. These weapons in the hands of commercial hunters, unscrupulous sportsmen, and "game hogs" threatened extinction of many species of life. Most devastating of all threats was the impact of the market hunter; no bird, mammal, or reptile species can long withstand such exploitation. Professional gunners who pursue creatures for money are invariably skillful, diligent, and persistent.[282] Often the sportsman is equally skillful and efficient in slaughter. The Earl of Dunraven left this description of a chase in the vicinity of Fort Laramie: