en and women who
travel all over the United States, and think of the illimitable miles of
unbroken forest that you have looked upon from your Pullman windows in
the East, in the South, in the West and in southern Canada. Recall the
wooded mountains of the Appalachian system, the White Mountain region,
the pine forests of the Atlantic Coast and the Gulf States, the forests
of Tennessee, Arkansas and southern Missouri; of northern Minnesota, and
every state of the Rocky Mountain region. Then, think of the silent and
untouched forests of the Pacific Coast and tell me whether you think
five million deer scattered through all those forests would make any
visible impression upon them. That would be only about twenty-five times
as many as are there now! I think the forests would not be over
populated; and they would produce _two million killable deer each year_!

Last year, 11,000 deer were forced down out of their hiding places in
the Rocky Mountains, and were killed in Montana. Even the natives 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" twelve deer in one season. At present no deer supply can
stand such slaughter.

Assuming that the people of the United States _could_ 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. In some sections, where deer are large and heavy, a
full-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. I know of one large preserve which annually sells its surplus of
deer at that price, wholesale, to dealers; and in New York City
(doubtless in many other cities, also) venison often has sold in the
market at one dollar per pound!

Two million deer at $10 each mean $20,000,