R.S.P.C.A. AND STAG-MINTING
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—Your correspondent " Land Agent " would seem to have been singularly unfortunate in his experience of deer parks. The fallow deer are successfully shot in Richmond Park and red deer in Windsor Great Park, to mention two well-known and much frequented examples. I- know of many private parks where both kinds of deer are annually thinned and the R.S.P.C.A. undertook and successfully superintended the shooting of an entire herd in a south country park which the owner desired to clear of a large number.
Readers of the Spectator might be interested to inquire more closely into the method of thinning adopted by the Devon and Somerset Hunt Committee during the War rears when hunting was in abeyance. The secret has never been dis- closed, but as the Hunt authorities assert rifle shooting to be impossible, and all other known methods to be more
cruel than hunting, the withholding of the means adopted by the late " harbourer "—Mr. F. Goss—for the success of which he was publicly thanked by Lord Fortescue, suggests that those who do not wish hunting to be stopped are anxious the public should not know this—presumably—humane solution lest the sheet anchor of their defence of hunting should be found to have disappeared.—I am, Sir, &c., EDITH WARD.
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