The daily morning journal and courier., 1900-01-08

lLe area over WHICH they range ullulS'
 turbed is as large as Ireland, they being
 only got at from the rivers or along the
 railway line, which cuts through the
 heart of the country, but has no spur
 roads to quarter up the territory
 Therefore the deer are practically safe
 from molestation when they are few
 miles back from the rails, along which
 the settlers ambush themselves, and
 shoot down the graceful creatures as
 they cross the line on their annual mi
 grafton southward to the forests in
 which they find shelter to pass the win-
 ter
 When the island fishermen return
 from Labrador in the fall, where they
 had been engaged all summer in their 1 quest for cod, they organize shooting
 parties to go up country and get SUD-
 ply of deer meat They are methodical in
 the extreme, every proceeding display
 ing a businesslike grasp of the situa-
 tion. In their boats they make their
 way up the great rivers which give ac- cess to the interior, and at suitable points they encamp. On board the | boats are barrels filled with salt, and 1 large bundles of slaves to be made into other barrels as required. A likely | deer-track is chosen, and the men post | themselves at intervals along it, and when a herd of caribou pass a well-di- rected volley lays most of the animals
 dead. With the expertness alone possi- ble to men who have in practice every trade, they soon skin and cut up the deer, the barrels of salt are emptied of their contents and the meat is packed theiein, and as the slaughter grows the other barrels are prepared, until the supply of salt Is exhausted. They
 then reload their boats and return
 home, taking a carcass or two for inn
 uted among friends.
 Other parties who cannot reach the
 deer ''barrens' by boat, go by train,
 paying freight inward for their barrels and salt, and outward for the meat they may get. These hunters are dropped off at any place along the line they may desire and go to work in much the same fashion as their neighbors.
 Scarcely day passes without from fifty to eighty carcasses of deer being brought out by the trains from the up- lands for conveyance to the remoter coast settlements by schooner or mail boat. Magnificent heads and antlers are loaded into baggage vans and freight cars to adorn some fisherman's cottage or to be sold to a wandering trader next season for song. Splen- did hides are likewise bundled into the cars to be roughly cleaned and dried at home, where they make excellent floor spreads, and are often used by the poorer classes to sleep on. It Is roughly estimated that between two and three thousand caribou are killed in the is- land every fall by the fishermen, and venison is as common to them during the winter as it is delicacy to the moneyed personages of the United States.
 As the fall advances the deer steadi- ly work south, and from December until February they are only to be found in the thick forests back from the south coast. Into these regions the set tiers rom that shore penetrate about New Years, when the ground is frozen sufficiently to admit of their crossing the bogs and marshes without damage and here they organize great battues of the deer, which are shot down lite- rally by the hundred. That this is no exaggeration is shown by the fact that last January the coastal mall steamer Grand Lake brought to St. John's in two trss All and 576 carcasses of cari- bou killed by the south coast settlers, hauled out to the shore on dog teams. and thence shipped to this port to be sold in the open market for what they will fetch. The carcasses are bundled < ashore, taken to the premises of the | several consignees and unceremonious- ly dumped off the sleds into the snow piles which cucumber the streets at that season Here they remain until sold, being cut up with saws, so thor oughly frozen are they, and 1t is not un- common to see the carcasses stood on end in the snow in rows of ten or twen- ty like so many truncated lamp posts as a sort of advertisement of the deal CTS wares
 Venison is so plentiful in St. Johns turing the winter that it sells for two )r three cents pound, about one-fifth he price of beef. Consequently it is n great demand. among the poorer classes, who purchase it extensively. On the approach of the close season, when it is unlawful to have it in ones possession for sale, the charitable soci- ,tes purchase the unsold stocks at about one cent pound, and distribute he meat among the destitute, who are dad of this succulent meat to eke out heir scanty fare. In the south coast it is in such abundance hat it is fed to the dogs, and last win CT one enterprising trader bought up wo hundred carcasses which were un- old al the arrival of the close season md took them in a schooner to St. Pierre, where he made a ready sale of hem to the French fishing vessels to ,e used as bait for periwinkle traps in he cod fishery on the Grand Banks.
 It is only fair to say that this culmi- lating outrage upon the lordly monarch If the forest was punished by the per- being fined one hundred dol ars, it being an offense to export deer neat from the colony. But so long as he regulation is not offended against 1t 5 possible to do almost anything with ut fear of detection or punishment. In heory an alien hunter may not kill