ml.U       11 ar                   -  - --! 
 
Model 70 
Shown here caliber 
.300 H & H Magnum. 
Also comes in .375 H 
& H Magnum. Other 
suitable caIhker 
 
I Up tu 4H% 
MORE 
POWER 
 
Than .30 lGuv't.'DG 
 
, _Il-kAL-s4au J1  iub Lour 511O[S m- 
stead of five. Winchester Proof-Steel barrel, 
receiver and major parts-world's strongest 
firearms steel. In .375 caliber has extra weight 
barrel, recoil pad. Winchester Soeed lock. 
 
Model 71 Lever Action .348 
In lever action, Winchester Model 71 as thoroughly 
dominates its class, for all big game. Very popular 
in Alaska and consistently successful in taking large 
bears. With its two .348 Winchester Cartridges- 
150-grain and 200-grain- is exceptionally well 
adapted for all big game. Muzzle velocities, respec- 
tively 2880 and 2520 f.s. 
Ask your dealer to show you his Winchester 
Rifles. And whatever your choice is, get for your 
rifle Winchester Staynless Non-Mercuric Cartridges, 
for maximum velocity, energy and dependability. 
For illustrated folders, giving extensive details of 
these great rifles, please address Dept. 17-C. 
WINCHESTER REPEATING ARMS CO. 
New Haven, Conn., U. S. A. 
 
into port with his ship. He said that 
he had found where the sea otter fre- 
quented on the California coast, and 
he asked for bidarkas and Aleuts to 
hunt them, proposing to divide the 
catch with the Russian fur company. 
He got 25 bidarkas and fifty Aleuts 
under the supervision of a trusted 
Russian overseer. 
The share of the Russian company 
on the venture was 1100 skins. Con- 
tracts were made with other Yankee 
shipmasters till the catch amounted 
to 23,528 skins and the Russian com- 
pany profited by a share of twelve 
thousand. 
THE Russian company then placed 
a post at the Russian River in Cali- 
fornia, in 1812, called Ross. From this 
they could more closely hunt the coast 
and take the remaining otter as well 
as to gather the remainder of the fur 
seals on the Farallon Islands, where 
they placed a detachment of Aleut 
hunters. 
Between 1812 and 1824 the Russian 
hunters effectively took all of the otter 
north of San Francisco Bay. They 
were forbidden by the Spanish to 
enter the bay to hunt, but finally 
were able to make an agreement with 
them to hunt on shares and under 
this arrangement the waters of San 
Francisco Bay were stripped of the 
coveted animals, with the exception 
of a small colony at the home of Gen- 
eral Vallejo who protected them until 
1847, when poachers removed the last 
of them. Then there were no more in 
California. 
I N RUSSIAN America the sea otter 
was relentlessly pursued until the 
coming of Baron Von Wrangel as 
Chief Manager of the Company. In 
1806, Rezanof, on his visit to the Col- 
onies, urged a rest for the furbearers. 
Rezanof was the son-in-law of Shele- 
kof and it was he who finally accom- 
plished the organization of the Rus- 
sian American Company. The Com- 
pany was deaf to the distant entreaty. 
The Directors were seeking present 
profit, so his warnings were unheeded. 
The Promishleniks said, "The sea ot- 
ter will all be gone when the cod fish 
are all caught at Archangel." To ex- 
plain the scarcity, they said, "The ot- 
ter have migrated." The harried ani- 
mals had sought no new home. They 
were rapidly being destroyed. 
In 1830, when Wrangel assumed 
charge, he at once demanded a change 
of policy in the killing. He had enough 
influence to secure his desires. He 
pounded a modicum of sense into the 
Chief Management. Under his orders 
the kill of both the sea otter and the 
seal was reduced. He caused islands 
from which the foxes had been en- 
tirely destroyed to be restocked. He 
instituted a rotation in hunting the 
otter; no district to be hunted on two 
consecutive seasons. 
Wrangel's policy was continued for 
more than twenty years, and until the 
transfer to the United States in 1867. 
The replenishing of the waters was 
evident in the later years and an in- 
crease in the number taken was pro- 
 
posed. The take had been but 928 
annually from 1842 to 1862. 
The United States received the 
benefit of the conservation of the fur 
by the Russian American Company 
for a quarter of a century. The sea 
otter had almost reached their former 
plenty. The seal herd on the Pribilof 
Islands had been restored to an esti- 
mated five million animals. 
Did the United States learn from 
the experience of the past? It had re- 
ceived a treasure-house of raw ma- 
terial, but its real value was not 
understood, except in the item of furs, 
which was well known to the traders 
in peltry. 
Under the Russian system nearly 
every skin was saved. No firearms 
were allowed to be used. The Natives 
hunted by the surround, using spears 
and arrows. The great waste was in 
the killing of females and young ani- 
mals. A wounded animal seldom es- 
caped. The weapon encumbered it. It 
was pursued, surrounded, harrassed 
till, gasping for breath, it was forced 
to come to the surface of the water. 
Then it was killed and the skin taken. 
The new system rejected the care- 
ful regulation of the weapons used. 
Firearms were allowed. Wounded ani- 
mals escaped to die later and be lost. 
Many of the killed sank and disap- 
peared. There was no cessation in the 
pursuit to allow for recuperation. The 
price of skins in the market raised. A 
fine skin is said to have brought 95 
pounds sterling-nearly a thousand 
dollars-in London in 1880. 
Fleets of schooners scoured the sea. 
The riflemen aboard shot the animals 
in the water. Bidarkas, with men to 
man them, were on the decks ready to 
be slipped into the water at the first 
glimpse of an otter's head on the hori- 
zon. Men with long range rifles pa- 
trolled the beaches, watching to see a 
head offshore, trusting to find the 
body if it washed ashore. 
T HE Government tried to restrict 
the hunting to the Natives. Their 
subsistence mainly depended on it. 
Then white men married Aleut wom- 
en to claim the right to hunt as a 
Native. 
A report to the Government in 1884 
states, "White hunters, tempted by 
the great value of otter skins, come 
here and marry the simple girls, force 
them to accompany them on their 
hunting trips, to do their cooking for 
them and to work for them. They 
bring two or three children into the 
world, then leave the families to get 
their living as best they can, while 
they return to enjoy the earnings with 
other wives in civilization." 
In the eighties mankind ran riot 
among the sea otter, the seal, the 
whale and the walrus in the northern 
seas. It called from Kipling the dec- 
laration, "No law of God or Man, 
runs north of Fifty-three." 
It was not a pursuit for a weakling. 
The North Pacific and the Bering Sea 
are not calm waters. Fighting Bob 
Evans said of it in "A Sailor's Log," 
"I am willing to admit that Bering 
-Please turn to page 31 
The Alaska Sportsman