THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
Audubon considered that the white -tail was a very local animal and 
generally found in the same range, and that it can usually be put up “ often 
not fifty yards from the place where it was started before.” All observers 
nowadays agree that it is very local in its movements and that where 
conditions are suitable it occupies a very limited range and may be said to 
be strictly non -migratory. 
The white -tail loves to lie up for the greater part of the day in the densest 
cover and to emerge in the evening and feed in open glades or along the 
grassy banks of some willow swamp. With its skulking habits, excellent 
sight and hearing, and quickness in taking cover, it is rather a matter of 
surprise that the white -tail should have ever become scarce in its old 
western ranges , for even to-day these long river bottoms are seldom invaded 
by man. White -tails seem also to court the society of man and do not move 
from the vicinity of ranches, nor are they scared by the woodman’s axe 
or the presence of cattle. Wolves, and cougars, too, such fierce and unre- 
lenting enemies of the mule deer, seldom molest them. It is therefore a 
little strange that their chief enemy, the man with the rifle, should have 
caused such destruction amongst them in the lone brakes of the Far West, 
whilst the species is able to hold its own so well in the more open forests 
of Quebec and Ontario, where hunters, both red and white, outnumber those 
in the west by ten to one. But taken as a whole, the white -tail is still fairly 
plentiful, and long may we hope it will continue so, for no other animal is 
capable of teaching young America to shoot like this one. In 1895 the official 
return of white -tails killed in the Adirondacks alone was 4,900 and to this 
may be added at least 2,000 illegally killed both in and out of the proper 
season. Mr Thompson-Seton put the numbers there at the present day at 
30.000, or three to the square mile. In 1899, 7,579 deer were killed in Maine, 
and the same author estimates the numbers there in 1906 as not less than 
75.000, or about two to the square mile, whilst Dr Hornaday thinks that 
there are 100,000, or three to the square mile. In Ontario and Quebec they 
are not so abundant as this, and all competent observers agree that the 
animal is not nearly so numerous in any of its ranges as it used to be. 
Morton, writing of the deer in New England in 1632, says, “ There is such 
abundance that 100 have been found, at the spring of the year, within the 
compass of a mile.” Immense numbers were to be found in Texas until 
1860, and it is said that old hunters often met with bands of 500 together, 
and that thousands could be seen in one day; and there is little doubt 
that in former times the numbers of white -tail reached a total of several 
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