Scorecard

THE SPORTINGEST GAME

The North American mammoth was one of the largest of all elephants, sometimes growing to a height of 12 feet. He became extinct 8,000 years ago, and precious little else is known about him. However, thanks to a new sport that has attracted a following in Portales. New Mexico, we are beginning to pick up a few facts.

Bone hunting is the new diversion around Portales, where residents have banded themselves into the Llano Archaeological Society and spend their spare time hiking the Great Plains area in search of potential archaeological sites that are in the paths of new roads or other planned construction.

A while back Jess Collins, a relief mail carrier, spent a busman's holiday tramping through a gravel pit at Blackwater Draw and came upon the partly exposed skeleton of a mammoth. Your common variety of amateur archaeologist would have grabbed a shovel, thereby ruining the value of the find for science, but the bone hunters of Portales know better. Collins summoned experts from the Museum of New Mexico.

Expert digging unearthed the bones of five mammoths, and enough artifacts to give a picture of every major time period on this continent.

Blackwater Draw, it was revealed, was one of the best water holes in the Staked Plains area. Hunters of every era killed game there and left behind bones and weapons. Dr. Fred Wendorf, the Museum's chief archaeologist, has concluded that tribesmen of the period hid in long grass near the pond until the mammoths were wading, then picked out a single beast for attack and killed him with their best weapons—puny, stone-tipped spears.

"The mammoths were not bogged down and helpless," Dr. Wendorf said. "We can tell that by the position of the bones. They were able to charge their attackers, and it must have taken a lot of courage to hunt them."

THE INSIDE TRACK

?American track and beauty fans may get another look at Germany's Jutta Heine this summer. She will run here if the proposed U.S. dates do not conflict with the German championships.

?Wallace Butts, athletic director at the University of Georgia for 24 years and its former football coach, has resigned, though it is not yet announced. Butts had been accused by the athletic board of trying to undermine confidence in Coach Johnny Griffith.