Whitetailed Deer 77 



In the season of 1895 the official returns^^ showed that 

 4,900 Deer were killed in the Adirondacks. It is notorious 

 that official returns are far below the actual slaughter, for we 

 must add, further, the number of those killed illegally during 

 or out of season, as well as those killed and not found; also a 

 proportion destroyed by natural enemies. We may believe 

 that 4,900 Deer reported means 6,000 or 7,000 actually killed. 



I have heard hunters estimate that, under the most favour- 

 able circumstances, the Deer do not .add more than a quarter 

 each year by actual increase. If, therefore, more than a 

 quarter are killed in a season, a falling-off results. But the 

 Adirondack Deer are holding their own; that is, those killed 

 are less than a quarter of their numbers. I should, therefore, 

 estimate them at 30,000, or, roughly, 3 to a square mile. 



The official report for Maine gives 7,579 Deer killed in 

 1899, which we are to believe makes a destruction of about 

 15,000 Deer. But they have ample room and are steadily in- 

 creasing, so that I put the numbers existing in Maine to-day 

 (1906) at not less than 75,000, or about 2 to the square mile. 

 In doing so I find I have been properly conservative, as Dr. 

 W. T. Hornaday, in 1904, gives'^ the estimate of Deer in Maine 

 at 100,000, or 3 to the square mile. 



All records agree, however, that in numbers the Deer in 

 the Adirondacks and Maine now are as nothing to those of 

 days gone by. Thus Morton says*® of those in New England, 

 about 1632: "There is such abundance that 100 have been 

 found, at the spring of the year, within the compass of a mile." 

 But even this, we learn from the accounts of innumerable 

 travellers, was far surpassed by the incredible hosts of the 

 Middle States east of the Mississippi and of Texas. In the 

 last-named State, about 1850,1 am assured by many old hunters 

 that 500 in one band were met with commonly in the half- 

 open country. Thousands could sometimes be seen in a day; 

 they were there in tens of thousands. 



In the mountains of Colorado I have seen Mule-deer so 



>* First Annual Report, 1896, N. Y. S. Com. F. G. & F., p. 192. 



"American Natural Histor)-, 1904, p. 131. "' New English Canaan, 1632. 



