The first returns from this trial have now come in, from the county game wardens of Vermont to the state game warden. Mr. John W. Titcomb. I will quote the gist of the opinion of each.
The State Commissioner says: "This law should remain in force at least until there is some indication of a decrease in the number of deer." Warden W.H. Taft (Addison County) says: "The killing of does I believe did away with a good many of these tame deer that cause most of the damage to farmers' crops." Harry Chase (Bennington County) says the doe-killing law is "a good law, and I sincerely trust it will not be repealed." Warden Hayward of Rutland County says: "The majority of the farmers in this county are in favor of repealing the doe law.... A great many does and young deer (almost fawns) were killed in this county during the hunting season of 1909." R.W. Wheeler, of Rutland County says: "Have the doe law repealed! We don't need it!" H.J. Parcher of Washington County finds that the does did more damage to the crops than the bucks, and he thinks the doe law is "a just one." R.L. Frost, of Windham County, judicially concludes that "the law allowing does to be killed should remain in force one or two seasons more." C.S Parker, of Orleans County, says his county is not overstocked with deer, and he favors a special act for his county, to protect females.
A summary of the testimony of the wardens is easily made. When deer are too plentiful, and the over-tame does become a public nuisance too great to be endured, the number should be reduced by regular shooting in the open season; but,
As soon as the proper balance of deer life has been restored, protect the does once more.
The pursuit of this policy is safe and sane, provided it can be wrought out without the influence of selfishness, and reckless disregard for the rights of the next generation. On the whole, its handling is like playing with fire, and I think there are very, very few states on this earth wherein it would be wise or safe to try it. As a wise friend once remarked to me, "Give some men a hinch, and they'll always try to take a hell." In Vermont, however, the situation is kept so well in hand we may be sure that at the right moment the law providing for the decrease of the number of does will be repealed.
Hippopotami And Antelopes. —Last year a bill was introduced in the lower House of Congress proposing to provide funds for the introduction into certain southern states of various animals from Africa, especially hippopotami and African antelopes. The former were proposed partly for the purpose of ridding navigation of the water hyacinths that now are choking many of the streams of Louisiana and Mississippi. The antelopes were to be acclimatized as a food supply for the people at large.
This measure well illustrates the prevailing disposition of the American people to-day,—to ignore and destroy their own valuable natural stock of wild birds and mammals, and when they have completed their war of extermination, reach out to foreign countries for foreign species. Instead of preserving the deer of the South, the South reaches out for the utterly impossible antelopes of Africa, and the preposterous hippopotamus. The North joyously exterminates her quail and ruffed grouse, and goes to Europe for the Hungarian partridge. That partridge is a failure here, and I am heartily glad of it, on the ground that the exterminators of our native species do not deserve success in their efforts to displace our finest native species with others from abroad.
The hippo-antelope proposition is a climax of absurdity, in proposing the replacing of valuable native game with impossible foreign species.
CHAPTER XXV