Your Scribe has just finished a biography of Babe Ruth, and one anecdote that intrigued me was the one about the time that Babe bagged three deer on a fall hunting trip.

Author Leigh Montville writes that Babe draped them on his expensive Stutz Bearcat (auto), and drove them home to New York City.

The sight must have startled New Yorkers, just as the prospect of seeing a moose on Congress Street would startle Portlanders today.

(An aside: I regrettably have to thwart the "local angle" of the story by stating that the hunting trip was in New Brunswick. But Ruth and Co. must have driven through Maine to get back to N.Y.!).

Here are some factoids on deer hunting in Maine.

The first source is General Knowledge of Your Scribe, and others come from the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

- About 25,000 deering are taken each November.

- The herd in Maine is estimated at 255,000.

- The first bag limit was declared in 1873 - each hunter could take three deer.

- From 1893-1902, deering hunting was banned in southern Maine due to scarcity of animals.

- Top weight of a big buck is about 400 pounds; average weight of an adult buck is 200-300 pounds.

- It takes a deer about five years to mature. When fully grown, they can run at the rate of 40 miles per hour.

- A little less than 12 percent of hunters get their deer in each autumn, which is implied by several numbers above. It you find my calculations are wrong, please keep it to yourself.

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