FISHERIES, GAME AND FORESTS. 209 



now become accessible through the opening up of the country, five years of hounding 

 would destroy the abundance of game and reduce it to the condition of the outlying 

 country. The deer would be made wild and be driven to more remote and sheltering 

 districts. This has been the effect on the neighboring townships that six years ago 

 were as well stocked as our own; but to-day are covered with hounds in the season, 

 and will now bear no comparison with our own. 



I do not think that in hounding there are more deer killed per gun ; but the deer 

 are driven away from the richest and most accessible feeding grounds into condi- 

 tions unfavorable for their feeding, and therefore for their increase and even for their 

 preservation. 



To speak of either method as cowardly assassination, butchery, unsportsmanlike, 

 etc., is absurd. In each case you "lay in wait," "sneak up to," "take unawares," and 

 wound and kill, if you can. All hunting is cruel ; and if any is more so than another, 

 certainly the long and terrible chase by the hounds is so. 



The lumber camps on Township 12, Riversdale, have every season made use of 

 venison for table meat. For the past two years the principals, S. L. Clark & Co., of 

 Parishville, X. Y., have tried to stop it. They have agreed to discharge any man with 

 a gun or dog. Yet they do hunt. 



Mr. James McCortnic, Lewey Lake, Hamilton County, N. Y, [Hotel Proprietor and 

 Guide.) — The deer are increasing in this particular locality. The reason that less deer 

 were killed by hounding last fall, I attribute to the fact that the deer did not take to 

 water as usual during the fore part of the time allowed for hunting. So far as I am 

 informed this holds true in other localities in this part of the Adirondacks. I am of 

 the opinion that no change in the game laws would be of any benefit to the deer in 

 this section. The law as it now stands appears to give general satisfaction, and is quite 

 well observed. I might personally wish some changes; but these, perhaps, would not 

 meet the minds of all. So, I say, let well enough alone. 



Mr. James M. Wardner, Rainboiu Lake, Franklin County, N. Y, (Old Resident, 

 Hotel Proprietor, and formerly a Guide, Hunter and Trapper) — I am in favor of a law 

 prohibiting hounding altogether. 



Mr. Charles Fenton, Number Four, Lewis County, N. Y., (Pioneer Settler, and Hotel 

 Proprietor.) — For the past two years previous to this a great slaughter of deer was com- 

 mitted on Township No. 4. In the fall of 1893 fully three hundred deer were taken 

 out from this immediate vicinity, within a radius of four miles from my house. In the 

 fall of 1894 about two hundred were killed, which was about all there was. 



Failing to obtain a law from the last Legislature for the better protection of deer, 

 and threatened with their extermination in this section, I was forced to secure the 



