000. The licenses for the
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,
all the year round. The damages that would need to be paid to farmers,
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
million deer per year that are absolutely required. They are neither
obscure 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 deer a square
deal. This is _not_ impossible! Not as a general thing, 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, it can
be done in two years' time. The American people are not 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, remember the
possibilities in deer.

[Illustration: WHITE-TAILED DEER
If Honestly and Intelligently Conserved, this Species could be made to
Produce on our Wild Lands Two Million Deer per annum, as a new Food Supply
From the "American Natural History"]

The best wild animal to furnish a serious food supply is the
white-tailed deer. This is because of its persistence and fertility. The
elk is too large for general use. An elk carcass can not be carried on a
horse; it is impossible to get a sled or a wagon to where it lies; and
so, fully half of it usually is wasted! The mule deer is good for the
Rocky Mountains, and can live where the white-tail can not; but it is
_too easy to shoot_! The Columbian black-tail is the natural species for
the forests of the Pacific states; but it is a trifle small in size.

THE EXAMPLE OF VERMONT.--In order to show that all the above is not
based on empty theory,--regarding the stocking of forests with deer,
their wonderful powers of increase, and