STATE 1908 1909 1910
Maine 15,000 15,879 15,000
New Hampshire (a) (a) (a)
Vermont 2,700 4,736 3,649
New York 6,000 9,000 9,000
New Jersey (a) 120
Pennsylvania 500 500 800
Michigan 9,076 6,641 13,347
Wisconsin 11,000 6,000 6,000
Minnesota 6,000 6,000 3,147
West Virginia 107 51 49
Maryland 16 13 6
Virginia 207 210 224
North Carolina (a) (a) (a)
South Carolina 1,000 (a) (a)
Georgia (a) 367 369
Florida 2,209 2,021 1,526
Alabama 152 148 132
Mississippi 411 458 500
Louisiana 5,500 5,470 5,000
Massachusetts 1,281
                 ------ ------ ------
 Total 59,878 57,494 60,150

(a) No statistics available.

At this date deer hunting is not permitted at any time in Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska and Kansas,—­where there are no wild deer; nor in Rhode Island, Connecticut, Delaware, Tennessee or Kentucky.  The long close seasons in Massachusetts, Connecticut and southern New York have caused a great migration of deer into those once-depopulated regions,—­in fact, right down to tide-water.

THE MULE DEER.—­This will be the first member of the Deer Family to become extinct in North America outside of the protected portions of its haunts.  Its fatal preference for open ground and its habit of pausing to stare at the hunter have been, and to the end will be, its undoing.  Possibly there are now two of these deer in the United States and British Columbia for every 98 that existed forty years ago, but no more.  It is a deer of the bad lands and foothills, and its curiosity is fatal.

The number of sportsmen who have hunted and killed this fine animal in its own wild and picturesque bad-lands is indeed quite small.  It has been four-fifths exterminated by the resident hunter and ranchman, and to-day is found in the Rocky Mountain region most sparingly.  Ten years ago it seemed right to hunt the so-called Rocky Mountain “black-tail” in northwestern Montana, because so many deer were there it did not seem to spell extermination.  Now, conditions have changed.  Since last winter’s great slaughter in northwestern Montana, of 11,000 hungry deer, the species has been so reduced that it is no longer right to kill mule deer anywhere in our country, and a universal close season for five years is the duty of every state which contains that species.