MANNERS & MORALS: Biggest & Bloodiest

MANNERS & MORALS

For 17 days Colorado's valleys and pine-clad mountain slopes had echoed the whap-whap of rifles. The big game season was on, and it was Colorado's biggest ever. About 100,000 armed men roamed the fields, hundreds poked their guns through barnyard fences to take pot shots at anything that moved.

Many were experienced huntsmen, but the high price of meat had also attracted fledglings to the field. When the season ended, the bag was the biggest in Colorado's history: 68,000 mule deer, 12,000 elk, 99 bears — along with countless cattle, horses and sheep, 17 dead and 13 wounded hunters.

Colorado's sportsmen were appalled at the bloodletting. Many ranchers had armed themselves to protect their herds from two-legged raiders more dangerous than mountain lions. Said one rancher: "A house or a barn isn't protection enough any more; you've got to have a concrete pillbox."

The slaughter was too much for Cleland N. Feast, director of Colorado's Game & Fish Department. Last week, he sat down to write a new set of hunting laws for the next session of the state legislature. They would call for mandatory prosecution for manslaughter of any hunter who kills another, stiff penalties for those guilty of careless or drunken hunting. Besides this year's high toll, Feast had another good reason: three years ago his 19-year-old son lost an eye in a field accident. Said Feast: "He was hunting with an expert, yet [the expert] got two pheasants and my boy with one shot."