There are laws to protect the deer but some of them are not implemented properly. In Maine it is allowed to take a deer for so that the herds are prospered. There are some laws that already banned the hunting of these deer so that their populations are maintained.
We had no regular hunter as some of the camps had, but one of the men had made a salt lick a short distance from camp and, as he worked all day, the only time that he could visit the lick was at night. I went with him one night when he killed a deer. We were equipped with a miner's acetylene lamp and a .45-90 rifle. We waited on a platform in a tree until a deer showed up and then he shot the animal. There was no pretense of sport in the killing. It was simply the killing of an animal for its meat in the surest and easiest
way. Since then I have seen many refinements added to this type of hunting. The acetylene lamp has been re placed by the electric spotlight. The tree platform has been replaced by the mobile, cushioned seat of a car and the old .45-90 is only a relic beside the guns of today. Only the poor bewildered deer is the same as it stands in the light, waiting to be butchered.
The use of dogs as an aid to deer hunting, while permitted in some areas, is forbidden in most states.
Here in Maine, the use of dogs has been outlawed for a long time and as a result I have had little experience with this type of hunting. We have a few poachers who have deer dogs and who use them occasionally, but as the penalty is usually death to the dog and a fine to the owner, no man who values a dog will use him for this purpose.
I have watched a few of these dogs in action and I can see where there would be a certain amount of sport in this type of hunting, if it were legal and if the dogs were properly trained. Slow-trailing dogs that do not drive the deer out of the country would seem to be the best deer dogs. The deer circle ahead of these slow dogs arid the sport would be similar to fox hunting. Most every one will admit that fox hunting is considered a good sport.
I knew of one poacher who owned two dogs that he had trained to hunt deer. They were very fast dogs and they were trained to drive deer to the man's house where he waited to shoot them. This man's boys would take the dogs by a circular route to a point some distance from the house and then turn them loose. If there was a deer between the dogs and the man's house, that deer had very little chance of turning back past the dogs and it usually ended up hanging in the man's shed. He didn't consider this as sport, only an easy way to obtain meat for his family and to supplement his income during the deer season when he sold a few deer to unsuccessful sportsmen.
When a hunter goes for hunting, he has to use the equipments for his safety. Nowadays the equipments used in hunting have so much improvement. |
