North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[dwoodard@becon.org]

The use of dogs to hunt deer is legal in Ontario.

I'm told that many people do in fact use the dogs to run deer to 
exhaustion.

However, I discussed the question with a councillor of the Golden Lake 
Algonquin First Nation a few years ago. He told me that many of his people 
favour a small dog like a beagle (about the size of the Indians' 
traditonal dog breeds of pre-contact times) for hunting deer. It will
not run very fast in the woods, but it will keep the deer moving. The
idea is to move the deer through some kind of geographical choke point, 
like a neck of land between two lakes, where a few hunters can harvest
the deer from a considerable area of land and have a good chance of 
making kills.

My informant told me that an intelligent use of dogs greatly increases the 
productivity of deer hunting. I would guess that this kind of use of dogs 
goes a long way back, and not just among Amerindians.

Doug Woodard
St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada



 On Fri, 4 May 2007, Thomas Olenio wrote:

> Hi,
>
> What is the legal definition of ?running deer??  I would guess that it is
> indicative to hunters using dogs to run deer to exhaustion as part of the
> hunting process, not a dog chasing a deer away from crops.
>
> My inlaws would say that a terrified animal?s meat will taste off, so dogs
> used in hunting makes no sense.  Evidently the adrenaline sets off hormone
> changes that affect tenderness and taste.  Since they have slaughtered and I
> have not, I will yield to their experience.  Possibly this is why hunters
> prefer to take an animal down instantly (in addition to it being more
> humane)?

[snip]