HUNTING THE RED DEER 
Island four days of deer-shooting are per- 
mitted by law every autumn, when baymen 
and duck-shooters, as well as a goodly 
number of New Yorkers, journey to their 
Mecca near the property of the Southside 
Club. 
Arriving the night before, generally in 
parties of five or six friends from the 
same village, they select good positions 
before dawn. At daylight nearly every 
patch of favorable cover conceals one or 
more hunters, perhaps a whole line of them, 
armed with double-barreled shotguns. The 
hounds are then turned loose. Ere long 
an irregular volley announces that the 
first deer has stumbled into a party of 
gunners. A lively day follows, with dogs 
baying on all sides. Sometimes the fus- 
illade is terrific. Deer run madly back and 
forth through the forests of scrub oak, 
followed by the warning shouts of hunters 
who have missed to their friends farther 
ahead. Sometimes one will bound in 
safety past a whole line of inexperienced 
hands from the city, only to be finally 
brought down by some crafty old duck- 
hunter from the Great South bay. After 
a dozen or fifteen guns have been dis- 
charged in the general direction of one of 
those bobbing whitetails, the question 
often arises as to who killed the deer or 
who gets the meat. I recall one such 
occasion when four sportsmen from differ- 
ent parts of the Island each claimed the honor 
of firing the fatal shot. A heated discussion 
followed, the friends of each claimant 
rallying loyally to his support. But finally, 
after an hour of very lively argument, it was 
decided to divide the quarry equally among 
them; and of all the poor little yearling does 
I ever saw, that one was the thinnest and 
yet went the farthest. Any one who enjoys 
the chase only when his appetite is whetted 
by the spice of danger will find the real 
_thing on Long Island. Buckshot are pretty 
well distributed over the landscape and in- 
variably a few men are shot. A goodly 
number of deer are always killed on each 
of the open days. This fully illustrates 
what properly enforced protective laws 
have done for them within a short distance 
of New York City, 
_A few whitetails still remain in southern 
New Jersey, thanks to the inhospitable pine 
407 
barrens as well as to properly enforced laws. 
They are pretty generally distributed in 
favorable localities from northern Pennsyl- 
vania, along the Alleghanies southward, 
over the South Atlantic and Gulf States, 
Arkansas and the State of Oklahoma. 
The deer of the far South are in many 
places very abundant, frequenting the 
thickest swamps and almost impenetrable 
cane-brakes where hunting is next to im- 
possible without the assistance of dogs. 
They are also much smaller, growing pro- 
portionately smaller antlers than the animals 
found in the timber lands of Maine or 
Ontario. Indeed, I doubt very much if 
a mature buck from Florida would equal 
in weight a yearling doe from the North. 
The Southern bucks, however, seem to grow 
uniformly well-developed antlers, if small. 
In this respect, and in proportion to the 
size of the animals, the Southern heads 
seem to average up better than do those 
from localities where the winters are severe 
and food less plentiful. ‘There is little 
doubt that a weak and poorly nourished 
animal at the opening of spring will grow 
during the summer antlers inferior to those 
of another which has wintered under more 
favorable conditions. 
Few of the Western States are suited 
topographically to the habits of the white- 
tail. It is not a lover of the high mountains 
like the blacktail, nor of open plains like 
the prong-buck. Consequently throughout 
the country west of the Missouri it is by no 
means regularly distributed, but occurs 
locally in favorable regions to the Pacific 
Coast. In the foothills of the Rockies, 
along the heavily wooded river bottoms, 
among the swales and groves of cotton- 
wood or quaking asp, where tangled thickets 
afford good protection, it is still common. 
Throughout the Black Hills it outnumbers 
the blacktail, the two species coexisting, 
although in totally different haunts. Down 
along the creeks, among the _ thickets, 
swamps and bushes, one would find white- 
tails; while across, on some steep, heavily 
timbered hill perhaps not half a mile away, 
blacktails would certainly be found. The 
sharp and clearly defined line separating 
the hilly country from the rich alluvial 
bottom lands also separates by an equally 
defined line of demarkation the haunts of 
