HUNTING THE RED DEER 
Its Geographical Distribution, Habits and Cunning 
BY WM. ARTHUR BABSON 
HE Virginia, or white- 
tailed, deer, together 
with its allied races, oc- 
cupies more territory 
throughout the United 
States and the bound- 
'fg-s| aries of its range are 
pe&4ic| More widely separated 
1 | than any other species 
of the Cervide. Consid- 
ering the country as a 
whole, it is the most 
abundant and the most 
generally sought after by hunters. No “big 
game’”’ animal, unless it be the black bear, 
has been able to adapt itself so readily to 
the proximity of man and to thrive within 
the very borders of civilization. Living by 
choice in the densest forests and heavily 
thicketed swamps, frequenting the very 
localities most difficult to hunt legitimately, 
wonderfully acute in the presence of danger, 
alert, cunning, hardy and prolific, it is safe 
to say that no species of antlered game 
when hunted persistently can hold its own 
so well in the land. 
The whitetail has not only lived to see 
the total disappearance of the bison, wapiti, 
caribou and the moose (except in Maine 
and northern Minnesota) from the different 
localities east of the Mississippi, where these 
animals formerly occurred, but it has sur- 
vived so persistently in its old haunts that, 
to-day, it is nearly as generally distributed 
over the Eastern States as in the sixties. 
Territory lost in some regions has been 
gained in others. Not many years ago 
deer were far less numerous in Maine than 
moose or caribou. ‘To-day they are won- 
derfully abundant, while the caribou within 
the last decade have disappeared entirely. 
The caribou have not been exterminated 

by overhunting, but have retreated. by 
choice to the more remote forests of Quebec - 
ca tail. 
and New Brunswick. Old hunters have 
often told me that their departure from 
Maine was due to the quarrelsome disposi- 
tion of the buck deer and their extraordinary 
increase in recent years. It is possible, 
however, that the open, primeval forests 
of the past, being now largely replaced by a 
thick tangle of second growth well adapted 
to the wants of deer, but poorly to those of 
caribou, have caused the latter to seek 
food elsewhere. 
The deer of New England, protected 
equally by well-enforced laws, by the dis- 
appearance of their natural enemies and by 
the inexhaustible natural food supply of 
deciduous trees which followed the lumber- 
man, are pushing constantly northward and 
eastward. I have found them fairly com- 
mon in the Temiscouta region of Quebec, 
along the St. Francis and its tributaries; 
also in New Brunswick along the streams 
and ponds drained by the Mirimichi. 
Mr. Edward Scudder, of Newark, N. J., 
who spent last autumn hunting on the 
peninsula of Gaspé, tells me that deer have 
even reached the country around the upper 
waters of the Little Cascapedia, where a 
few years ago they were unknown. Along 
our northern tier of States, in the big 
woods of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, 
lower Ontario and the Adirondacks, the 
animals are still numerous. With good 
protection they have increased in Vermont, 
New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Strag- 
glers have even penetrated into the wilder 
parts of Connecticut and occasionally the 
densely populated little State of Rhode 
Island. 
No species of animal responds more 
readily to protection than does the white- 
Consequently it has been possible 
to preserve it in a wild state in such com- 
paratively narrow and well-settled tracts 
as Long Island and Cape Cod. On Long 
