270 TENTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE 



During the fall of 1874, when hounding was allowed, I was on one of 

 my hunting bouts when two fawns were driven into Wolf Pond by the dogs. 

 They proved to be a buck and doe, and I took them to my home at Wash- 

 ington in order that I might watch their habits, and so learn something 

 that might possibly aid me in my favorite pursuit of deer hunting. It is 

 needless to say I learned much, and became so interested that I made the 

 subject quite a study, and from those two caught in the Adirondacks I 

 have raised several hundred. Not being a believer in inbreeding I have 

 been careful to secure new bucks from time to time, doing so from those I 

 have obtained from the Adirondacks or from the Zoological Parks. 



As to the life of a deer, I am of the opinion they attain more than the 

 average age of most animals. Unfortunately, I cannot prove this. Of the 

 two fawns caught by me in 1874, the buck became so ugly I was obliged 

 to kill him; the doe lived to be twenty years old, and was hale and hearty 

 in every way up to the time of her death. She was gentle and almost 

 human, and loved by every member of my family, when to my grief she 

 caught her head through the bars of a fence, and in trying to extricate 

 herself broke her neck. 



During the spring of 1902 I brought a carload of deer from my home 

 at Washington and liberated them in the little park of thirty-one acres 

 here at Saranac Inn, which through your kindness I was able to obtain. 

 There were in all forty-eight deer. As the new park at the Inn was of 

 swamp land, rich in vegetation, my old guide thought there would be an 

 abundant supply of food for fifty deer. This, however, proved not to be 

 the case, and we were obliged to feed them. The following winter I lost 

 eight bucks and only one doe. The bucks were fenced off in the marsh 

 by themselves with one exception while the does and the one buck had the 

 largest range. The doe which died came from South America, and was 

 presented to me by Admiral Greer. The only way I can account for losing 

 so many bucks was from their drinking the swamp water or their eating 

 the witch-hopple with the sleet frozen to it. This latter reason, by the way, 

 is a notion I have gained through the old guides, who believe in it, and to 

 it I am something of a convert, because the deer have diarrhoea after such 

 conditions. 



My does last summer had ten fawns, and of the lot there were two sets 

 of twins. 



I was most fortunate with the deer last winter in contrast with the pre- 

 ceding one, losing but two does, one from old age, and the other from having 

 her back broken by a limb of a tree falling on her during a heavy wind. I 

 had no record of the age of the old doe just mentioned, but, as my man 



