The Bennington evening banner. (Bennington, Vt.) 19??-1961, 1909-04-10

a DtNttI right W MAKE laws regarding
deer than the farmers who pasture
these same deer and who own the
land that Native or any one else
shoots over. 1. for one, am mighty
glad that the farming element in the
Green Mountain state have seen fit to
send as representative some of their
own kind and that they will continue
to send more in the years to come.
When tramping and hunting over
some one else's land always feel that
| am in way beholden to the farmer
who owns it, and | never before knew
that because a man titled the soil,
that of necessity it made him weak,
incompetent" or an idiot"
Another point which | wish to men
tion in regard to law that legalizes
the shooting of bucks only, is this:
1t causes the Illegal killing of many
does each year by mistake as II is al
most impossible to get near enough,
or where one can see plain enough to
distinguish between a doe or a buck.
In the February number of Sports
man is a report from II. G. Thomas,
Vermont's fish and game commission
er, stating that about 500 deer were
his hands in. terror
illegally killed in the six days open
season. These deer must have been
mostly does, and do not suppose they
ever know of one deer in five that is
illegally killed, for the majority of the
hunters where they shoot a doe by
mistake will take care of it in the
night and see that the meat is not
wasted, which is better than leaving
the carcass in the woods to rot; but
does the hunter who shoots a doe by
mistake, whether he saves the meat
or let's it rot in the woods, stop hunt
ing? OF course not, and here's the
rub He keeps on hunting and trying
to shoot a deer legally under the
most trying, deplorable deer extermin-
ating law ever made to protect deer,
the law that legalizes the killing of
buck only, and then not unless ii has
horns three inches long.
| have always prided myself on
Gods gift to me of as good a pair of
eyes as human being ever possessed
and yet II is fact that with the many
deer | have shot in my time not one
in seven could | ever tell the sex of
until | had killed it and reached it's
side, and can truthfully say that had
waited until | had positively known
their sex before shooting, would new
er have got one in ten of them.
On several occasions during my
deer hunting career, have shot large
does that were running at full speed
in the woods when | would have stalk
ed my life | was shooting at buck,
their long ears fitting through the
underbrush completely fooling me.
Now | wish to state right here in
print where all can see it, that if |
had happened TO be hunting in Yer
mont or any other state where is was
Illegal to shoot a doe when this hap
pened. ! certainly would not have
stopped hunting | should have felt
that | had just as good a right to hunt
and kill a buck as | had in the first
place and | wonder how many "goody
goody" men there are in the world to-
day who hunt deer, that would stop
hunting and go and tell the authorities
that they had shot a doe: that is, If
no one whom they were afraid of
knew it, | am free to confess that
have not attended Sunday school long
enough yet to do so.
| have no doubt ii would be easier
to distinguish between a buck or doe
If | hunted in the open fields near
village and farm buildings. where
many deer are sailed and fed all sum
mer in order 10 have them handy 70
shoot in the fall, but I do my hunting
where nearly all sportsmen hunt,
which is in the woods where one must
pit his skill of wood craft and snap
shooting against the deers cunning.
/ also do not doubt but that some
hunters in Vermont shoot from two to
three deer each fall trying to live up
to the law and, get a deer that the
states eXterminating law will sane
ton The statement is fully corrob
GRATED by the large number of does
and young deer with horns less than
three inches long found in the woods
dead each year after the open season
L sincerely hope that such men as
f. h. Howe of Bennington and Fl. G.
Thomas, the commissioner, together
with those 'idiotic farmers" as Ma
tive" terms them, will keep pegging
away until they get one decent deer
law passed in the Green Mountain
state, law chat allows a person to
shoot one deer of any kind regard
less of its sex, or whether its horns
are three inches long or only two and
inches long; then when
he has got his one deer, hang up his
rifle and quit the woods until the
next open season. This is a perpetu-
ating law
Then if the constantly increasing
of shooters who hunt deer
90 tharp fbiuupd ot,t fon
much, put a closed season on and let
them increase, they would not de
crease There would not be over two
thirds as many killed as under the old
eXterminating. nothing-but-a law.
EX-Native of Vermont.
Marlboro, New Hampshire
Application for Liquor License.
Bennington, VT April 90