40 RAISING DEER IN THE UNITED STATES. 



stone National Park. Thomas Blagden, of Washington, D. C, in- 

 forms the writer that elk taken from the Whitney preserve to Upper 

 Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks always ran from barking dogs, and 

 were frequently chased from the grounds of cottages near Saranac 

 Inn by this means; but possibly the presence of men with the dogs 

 had much to do with the fleeing of the elk. 



THE WHITETAIL, OR VIRGINIA DEER. 



Since the whitetail is the most widely distributed of American 

 Cervidse, there can be no question of its adaptability to nearly all sec- 

 tions of the United States. Testimony as to its hardiness in parks 

 and preserves is not so unanimous as in case of the wapiti ; but the 

 general opinion of breeders is that with suitable range, plenty of 

 good water, and reasonable care in winter the business of raising 

 the animals for stocking parks and for venison may be made as profit- 

 able as any other live-stock industry. It has the advantage that land 

 unsuited for cattle may be utilized in raising deer. 



Advocates of the Angora goat industry state that in the United 

 States there are 250,000,000 acres of land riot suited for tillage nor 

 as pasture for horses, cattle, or sheep, which are well adapted to 

 goats. Much of this land is equally well suited to deer and elk, 

 which do less injury than goats to the forest cover. 



Probably experiments in domestication have oftener been made 

 with white-tailed deer than with any other North American mammal. 

 The great beauty of the young fawns appealed to the earliest settlers, 

 who soon learned how easily they could be tamed and how readily 

 they attached themselves to those who fed them. The danger from 

 these same pets, especially the males, when grown, was soon learned 

 also. Thus the experiment usually ended with the maturity of the 

 subject, which was soon disposed of or banished to a safe inclosure. 



Deer parks were established in early times on a considerable num- 

 ber of the large estates, or manors, in Maryland, Virginia, and New 

 York. At least one of those in Maryland dated back to the seven- 

 teenth century. The early parks seem to have been generally stocked 

 with fallow deer brought from England. The Eevolutionary strug- 

 gle marked the destruction of nearly all the private deer preserves; 

 but a few of them, especially in Maryland, continued in existence, 

 and others were restocked after the end of the war. As few fallow 

 deer were imported later, and it was generally believed that our 

 native deer were unsuited for park purposes, private preserves did 

 not become numerous. The common opinion as to native deer was 

 expressed by the eminent authority on landscape gardening, A. J. 

 Downing, who in 1852 wrote as follows: 



All attempts to render our native deer really tame on home grounds have, 

 so far as we know, failed among us, though with patience the thing may 



