80 HOOFED ANIMALS 



speaking, it is a United States species, for it inhabits at least 

 a portion of every state and territory save Delaware, Oregon, 

 Nevada, California and Arizona. To-day it is most abundant 

 in the Adirondack^, Maine, Vermont, northern Minnesota 

 and Michigan. Closely related forms of White-Tailed Deer 

 are fairly abundant in Florida, on the lower Rio Grande 

 and in northeastern Washington. 



As might na.turally be expected, this wide distribution, 

 throughout such a diversity of country and variety of avail- 

 able food, has produced such variations in size that several 

 subspecies have been described. Of the latter, the most 

 important is the dwarf Arizona White-Tailed Deer, ex- 

 tending from southern Arizona southeastward into Mexico 

 to Latitude 25°. This animal, like the Florida White- 

 Tailed Deer, seems to be nothing more than a diminutive 

 race of the more robust northern type, with very small ant- 

 lers, and the short, scanty pelage which is necessary to the 

 comfort of deer in the tropics. 



In such forests as those which cover the Adirondack 

 Mountains of northern New York, where small lakes are 

 numerous, there are three methods of hunting deer. 



Hounding deer consists in beating through the forest sur- 

 rounding a body of water, with a pack of hounds, and chas- 

 ing the deer until they leap into the water, where they are 

 shot at very short range by men in boats or posted on the 

 shore. It is no credit to any one, save an invalid or a cripple, 

 to kill a deer in this manner, any more than to kill a buck out 

 of season, whose antlers are in the velvet. Any person, no 

 matter how stupid, can be paddled up to a swimming deer 



