Page 260 - Our Vanishing Wild Life

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238 OUR VANISHING WILD LIFE
had not dreamed there were so many available ; and they were slaughtered not wisely but too ill. It is not right that six members of one family should"hog"twelvedeerinoneseason. Atpresentnodeersupplycan stand such slaughter.
Assuming that the people of the United States cottld be educated into the idea of so conserving deer that they could draw two million head per year from the general stock, what would it be worth?
It is not very difficult to estimate the value of a deer, when the whole animal can be utilized. In various portions of the United States, deer vary in size, but I shall take all this into account, and try to strike a fair average. Insomesections,wheredeerarelargeandheavy,afull-grown buck is easily worth twenty-five dollars. Let him who doubts it, try to replace those generous pounds of flesh with purchased beef and mutton and veal, and see how far twenty-five dollars will go toward it. Every man who is a householder knows full well how little meat one dollar will buy at this time.
I think that throughout the United States as a whole every full-grown deer, male or female contains on an average ten dollars worth of good meat. Iknowofonelargepreservewhichannuallysellsitssurplusof deer at that price, wholesale, to dealers; and in New York City (doubt- less in many other cities, also) venison often has sold in the market at one dollar per pound
TwomilHondeerat$10eachmean$20,000,000. TheHcensesforthe killing of two million deer should cost one million men one dollar each; and that would pay 1,666 new game wardens each fifty dollars per month, alltheyearround. Thedamagesthatwouldneedtobepaidtofarmers, on account of crops injured by deer, would be so small that each county could take care of its own cases, from its own treasury, as is done in the State of Vermont.
There are certain essentials to the realization of a dream of two mil- liondeerperyearthatareabsolutelyrequired. Theyareneitherobscure nor impossible.
Each state and each county proposing to stock its vacant woods with deer must resolutely educate its own people in the necessity of playing fair about the killing of deer, and giving every man and every deerasquaredeal. Thisisnotimpossible! Notasageneralthing,even though it may be so in some specially lawless communities. If the leading men of the state and the county will take this matter seriously in hand,itcanbedoneintwoyears'time. TheAmericanpeoplearenot insensible to appeals to reason, when those appeals are made by their own "home folks." The governors, senators, assemblymen, judges, mayors and justices of the peace could, if they would, make a campaign of education and appeal that would result in the creation of an immense volume of free wild food in every state that possesses wild lands.
When the shoe of Necessity pinches the People hard enough, remem- ber the possibilities in deer.