In America, as in England and on the Continent of Europe, private game preserves are so numerous it is impossible to mention more than a very few of them, unless one devotes a volume to the subject.  Probably there are more than five hundred, and no list of them is “up to date” for more than one day, because the number is constantly increasing.  I make no pretense even of possessing a list of those in America, and I mention only a few of those with which I am best acquainted, by way of illustration.

One of the earliest and the most celebrated deer parks of the United States was that of Hon. John Dean Caton, of two hundred acres, located near Ottawa, Ill., established about 1859.  It was the experiments and observations made in that park that yielded Judge Caton’s justly famous book on “The Antelope and Deer of America.”

The first game preserve established by an incorporated club was “Blooming Grove Park,” of one thousand acres, in Pennsylvania, where great success has been attained in the breeding and rearing of white-tailed deer.

In the eastern United States the most widely-known game preserve is Blue Mountain Forest Park, near Newport, New Hampshire.  It was founded in 1885, by the late Austin Corbin, and has been loyally and diligently maintained by Austin Corbin, Jr., George S. Edgell and the other members of the Corbin family.  Ownership is vested in the Blue Mountain Forest Association.  The area of the preserve is 27,000 acres, and besides embracing much fine forest on Croydon Mountain, it also contains many converted farms whose meadow lands afford good grazing.

This preserve contains a large herd of bison (86 head), elk, white-tailed deer, wild boar and much smaller game.  The annual surplus of bison and other large game is regularly sold and distributed throughout the world for the stocking of other parks and zoological gardens.  Each year a few surplus deer are quietly killed for the Boston market, but a far greater number are sold alive, at from $25 to $30 each in carload lots.

In the Adirondacks of northern New York, there are a great many private game preserves.  Dr. T.S.  Palmer, in his pamphlet on “Private Game Preserves” (Department of Agriculture) places the number at 60, and their total area at 791,208 acres.  Some of them have caused much irritation among some of the hunting, fishing and trapping residents of the Adirondack region.  They seem to resent the idea of the exclusive ownership of lands that are good hunting-grounds.  This view of property rights has caused much trouble and some bloodshed, two persons having been killed for presuming to assert exclusive rights in large tracts of wilderness property.