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By Root 4290 0

A member of the Boone and Crockett Club, Casper Whitney, had been quoted in Outing as suggesting that Alaska adopt a single commissioner for forests, fish, and game—an idea that Roosevelt had promoted in New York. Roosevelt agreed that this was the “ideal” solution to stop the slaughter of caribou, elks, and seals. What Alaska needed, Roosevelt believed, was one first-rate advocate of protecting wildlife and forests (like the Boone and Crockett Club’s president, W. A. Wadsworth), who would be in charge of managing the territory’s natural resources. Any time three, four, or five men were on a playing board, Roosevelt told Whitney, game laws tended to be watered down. “I wish to Heaven it were possible to get Congress to act about Alaska,” Roosevelt wrote. “As far as I know they simply provide for free rum, by voting to prohibit the sale of liquor there, and I do not know that they know anything about the game laws. Well, things are a little discouraging at times.”62

Being back at Oyster Bay gave Roosevelt time to read. Two of his favorite new titles were Thomas Huxley’s Autobiography and Graham Balfour’s The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson.63 The novelist Hamlin Garland had sent Roosevelt his recent collection of outdoors stories, Her Mountain Lover, and found a truly receptive audience in the vice president. “Your account of the Alaskan trail appealed to me very strongly,” Roosevelt wrote to Garland on April 4. “I suppose I am utterly illogical, but it always gives me a pang to think of the fate that befalls the pack horses under such conditions. I am very glad you brought your pony home and rode it. I find it just as you say—that is, about three days restores me to my case in the saddle; though I am sorry to say I have grown both fat and stiff so I should now hate most bitterly to try to manage what we used to call on the range a ‘mean horse.’”

Then, changing the subject Roosevelt told Garland about his recent hunt for cougars, noting that he hadn’t shot deer or elk. His tone was that of a hunting addict, pleased that he had found a cure, able to restrain from shooting even when big game was smack in front of him. As a fellow writer Roosevelt knew that Garland had singular gifts, and considered his novel A Son of the Middle Border a masterpiece. “As I grow older I find myself uncomfortable in killing things without a complete justification,” Roosevelt continued to Garland, “and it was a real relief this year to kill only ‘varmits,’ and to be able to enjoy myself in looking at the deer, of which I saw scores of hundreds every day and never molested them.”64

There was also a loose end to take care of—getting Merriam the cougar and lynx skulls and skins, which were still being prepared at C. G. Gunther’s Sons; an impatient Roosevelt resented their taking so much time. He also compiled with great exactitude the relevant naturalist data collected in Colorado. Unfortunately, Roosevelt got a blast of bad publicity because the owners of C. G. Gunther’s Sons invited the press into their Manhattan shop to see Roosevelt’s kills. Jokes were already widespread about Roosevelt disappearing into the wilds of Colorado before his inauguration as vice president, and being more interested in cougars than foreign policy. “Gentlemen,” Roosevelt began his curt note to C. G. Gunther’s Sons. “I am exceedingly sorry you have written to the press asking them to visit the collection. I had no objection to anyone seeing it who wanted to; but the one thing I was especially anxious to avoid was advertising, or seeming to advertise, it in any shape or way. It is most annoying to have had papers like Life, the Journal etc. notified. Will you please send on the skulls at once to Dr. Hart Merriam, together with the two largest lynx skins? & begin to make up the other skins; and show them to no one from this time on, unless he had my written authority.” 65

When Merriam received the specimens, from C. G. Gunther’s Sons, he sent a congratulatory message to Roosevelt, saying that “your series of skulls from Colorado is incomparably the largest, most complete,