Seward daily gateway., 1924-01-14
ALASKA MOOSE ARE
 NQW PER|SH|NG
 FROM BUTCHERS
ALASKAN TELLS OF SLAUGHTER ING MOOSE IN kENAi-450
 MOOSE KILLED YEARLY
From Literary Digest

Ruthless and law breaking hunters and hordes of rabbits bid fair to ex- terminate the great moose herds of the kenai peninsula of Alaska, the largest animals of their kind in the world. They are being killed off by moose butchers" and starved out by rabbits, which live on the same food as the larger and clumsier animals, and can get at it quicker. A contrib utor to American Forestry, Washing ton, signing himself An Alaskan" tells us that real emergency exists. The crime of eXterminating our buffa- 10 when the West was young was com mitted openly, he says, without de- fiance of law; for there was no law. The crime of murdering our moose in Alaska is today being committed in defiance of laws enacted thru our Congress and made sport of by the Moose butchers of Kenai. We read:
 The moose of the Kenai Peninsula are world-famous as the largest in existence The spread of their ant lers is enormous, the record pair measuring a little more than seven weight inches Altho found thruout other wooded sections of Alaska, the moose range in greatest numbers ana reach their highest development in the Kenai Peninsula. 1 do not pretend 10 speak for what is happening to moose in other parts of Alaska but here in the Kenai country the area occupied by these noble animals of the wild nas decreased very material lv in the last few years, due to over killing and to starvation.
 T will speak of the overkllllng first. Our game laws are supposed to be enforced by the territorial gov ernment. They permit each hunter to kill two moose a season. The hunt ing season opens August 20, but the moose butchers kill when and as many as they please. Up until last spring there has not been a game
 
 warden in the moose country since the warden at Kenai was removed and not replaced, eighteen months De- fore Our restaurants are serving moose and other wild game meat, both in and out of season. One can find moose meat at almost all tlmeS of the year at the road-houses, tle camps. and restaurants in and around Anchorage, Seward and Seldovla. It is the hindquarters of moose which have been brought in by the market hunters. by natives and whites and sold for whatever they will bring In most instances the forequarters of the animal have been left in the woods.
 "Kenai has a population of some three hundred people, whites and na- tives and that many more dogs. They all live on moose meat. The govern ment teacher at Kenai told me that the people there kill about 45O moose every year, of which 90 per cent are COWS. I myself, have seen whole quar- ters of moose meat lying around the village, where the dogs had eaten their fill.
 "The arch-enemy of the Kenai moose is the market hunter-the moose butcher. He works on large scale. in summer and fall, throughout the Cook Inlet section. The sale of his meat taken from the wild animals in or out of season, is so common that no one excepting a few individuals, honestly seeking to promote game preservation, pays any attention to it. On March 10 last meeting of natives and whites was held in Kenai for the purpose of stimulating interest in wild-life preservation. At this meet irg man who had lived among us for sixteen years arose and said:
 " The game laws of Alaska are be- ing violated every day. The moose are decreasing rapidly in the Kenai Peninsula and in all the Cook Inlet Country Hundreds of moose are be- ing killed here each year without | more than half of them being taken | out of the woods. Moose meat is right l