190 
RECOMMENDATIONS OF COMMISSIONERS. 
DEER. 
Your Commissioners tind that the deer, whilst still found in comparatively 
large numbers in some portions of the Province are not nearly so plentiful as 
they were some years ago. 
This is easily accounted for, the clearing up of the land, the improvements 
in modern fire-arms, the ravages of wolves, and the ceaseless and indiscriminate 
slaughter in and out of season, appear to have well nigh exterminated this noble 
animal. The extent to which yard-hunting and crust-hunting is practised is 
ineredible ; not only are the bucks killed for food purposes, but small fawns and 
does heavy with young are remorselessly butchered, either out of pure brutality 
or for the sake of the almost valueless skin. 
Tt is generally admitted, that to distinguish between a buck and a doe, or a 
doe and a fawn, when the animal is running at full speed, and a momentary 
glimpse is only obtained, is a difficult matter, but your Commissioners desire to 
impress upon all true sportsmen the necessity of sparing the smaller and weaker 
animals as far as possible, even if the sacrifice. should cause them the loss of 
a shot. 
In some counties in the Province the deer are almost extinct, and your Com- 
missioners recommend that deer killing be entirely prohibited for a period of five 
years in the counties south and west of the northern boundaries of the counties 
of Bruce, Grey and Simcoe, as far north as the Severn River and the eastern 
boundary of Ontario. 
The use of hounds for the purpose of hunting deer has proved one of the 
most vexatious questions presented for the consideration of your Commissioners, 
and although the answers of the witnesses examined in regard to this subject, 
show a large preponderance in favour of the use of dogs, it must be remembered, 
as before pointed out, that many of the answers were given solely from selfish 
motives, and are wanting therefore in weight and accuracy. 
It was also evident to your Commissioners during the course of their in- 
quiries, that those hunters who have been accustomed to hunt with dogs and 
favour that mode, made a special endeavour to have their view of the case pre- 
sented to your Commissioners, whilst those who objected to the use of 
hounds contented themselves for the most part with making individual protests, 
or by addressing letters privately to the different inembers of the Commission. 
Your Commissioners are themselves evenly divided in opinion on this ques- 
tion, five being of opinion that dog hunting is neither injurious to the deer nor 
the cause of extermination, whilst the other five are of opinion that to the use 
of dogs is principally attributable the steadily growing scarcity, as well as the 
awful slaughter of the deer. 
The still hunters who disapprove of the use of dogs assert that deer chased 
by dogs are rendered unfit for human food after the long chases to which they are 
