Kenneth C. Walcheck is a retired wildlife biologist and frequent We Proceeded On contributor from Bozeman, Montana. He spent 21 years with the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Parks and remains an active Montana natural history researcher and hunter.
Contributions
One of the animals recorded by Lewis and Clark—and which became one of the staples of their mostly carnivorous diet—was the wapiti, or American elk (Cervus elaphus).
They didn’t get credit for it, but Lewis and Clark were the first to describe these wily canine predators.
In the 1750s the British Navy had begun issuing 50 pounds of portable soup for every 100 sailors on long voyages, partly to vary the daily diet of salt-cured meats, and partly in the mistaken belief that it would prevent scurvy.
The 1804-1805 Lewis and Clark journals provide the first reliable biological documentations of beaver (Castor Canadensis) for the Missouri and Columbia River corridors between St. Louis and the Pacific Ocean.
