solitude.

The worst shooting that I ever did or saw done at game was at running
white-tailed deer, in the Montana river bottoms.

For the reasons given, the white-tail exists and persists in a hundred
United States localities from which all other big game save the black
bear have been exterminated. For example, in our Adirondacks the moose
were exterminated years and years ago, but the beloved wilderness called
the "North Woods" still is populated by about 20,000 deer, and about
8,000 are killed annually. The deer of Maine are sufficiently numerous
that in 1909 a total of 15,879 were killed. With some assistance from
the thin sprinkling of moose and caribou, the deer of Maine annually
draw into that state, for permanent dedication, a huge sum of money,
variously estimated at from $1,000,000 to $2,000,000. In spite of heavy
slaughter, and vigorous attempts at extermination by over-shooting, the
deer of northern Michigan obstinately refuse to be wiped out.

There is, however, a large group of states in which this species has
been exterminated. The states comprising it are Ohio, Indiana, Illinois,
Iowa, and adjacent portions of seven other states.

As if to shame the people of Iowa, a curious deer episode is recorded.
In 1885, W.B. Cuppy, of Avoca, Iowa, purchased five deer, and placed
them in a paddock on his 600-acre farm. By 1900 they had increased to 32
head; and then one night some one kindly opened the gate of their
enclosure, and gave them the freedom of the city. Mr. Cuppy made no
effort to capture them, possibly because they decided to annex his farm
as their habitat. When a neighbor led them with a bait of corn to their
owner's door, he declined to impound them, on the ground that it was
unnecessary.

By 1912, those deer had increased to 400, and the portion of this story
that no one will believe is this: they spread all through the suburbs
and hinterland farms of Avoca, and _the people not only failed to
assassinate all of them and eat them, but they actually killed only a
few, protected the rest, and made pets of many!_ Queer people, those men
and boys of Avoca. Nearly everywhere else in the world that I know, that
history would have been ended differently. Here in the East, 90 per cent
of our people are like the Avocans, but the other 10 per cent think only
of slaying and eating, sans mercy, sans decency, sans law. Now the State
of Iowa has taken hold, to capture some of those deer, and set them free
in