PROPOSED CLOSE SEASON FOR HAKES.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1160, 3 April 1884, Page 2

PROPOSED CLOSE SEASON FOR HAKES.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —I had hoped ere this to have seen some correspondence in your paper in regard to the action taken by the Sooth Canterbury Acclimatisation Society in recommending to Uis Excellency the Governor that a close season should be proclaimed for hares. Surely, sir, our Governor and his Ministers have better sense than to allow such a step to be taken. The time propose I for such closing will be the breeding season, and, if let alone, they will multip'y in such numbers that eventually thev will eat us out of house and home. In point of fact, the destruction they will cause will be so great that the small farmer will have to go elsewhere than New Zealand in order to get a living. It has cost me a lot of trouble and expense in endeavoring to keep them under in and around my land, but if they are allowed to exist without the farmer having it in his power to destroy them, our fields, and orchards will soon be eaten bare. As it is I have been compelled to place wire netting around my

garden to keep them out. I quite agree with the remarks made by Mr Tripp in his letter which recently appeared in the Timaru Herald, to the effect that should the Members of the South Canterbury Acclimatisation Society desire to have a day's hunting they should arrange matters that a close season could be proclaimed in and around Timaru, for a radius, say ot ten miles. I feel quite confident that if the Governor accedes to the request of the Society, the whole of the farming community in South Canterbury will protest ; but, as I said before, I firmly believe that the governing powers of the colony will have more sense than to permit it.—l am, etc., John Pye. April 3rd, 1884.