The whitetail deer is the most plentiful big-game animal in North America. It has adapted to man's continual encroachments of its habitat and has survived vigorous hunting pressure while other species that were once as widely distributed have steadily declined. With its superb senses and its ability to live near man, the whitetail is at once an available and infinitely challenging quarry. When a Bowhunter goes after a whitetail deer, he is matching wits with one of the smartest game animals in the country! 

 The deer genus was given the name Odocoileus by Rafinesque in 1832.  The naturalist had found a deer tooth as a fossil in a Virginia cave, and it is thought that he was naming the animal "hollow tooth," which should have produced the name Odontocoelus, but his Greek was poor and Odocoileus it became. 

The whitetail deer has always been the most important big-game animal on this continent.  Its range was much greater than the bison's, and it provided food for more Indians than did the bison.  The first white settlers eagerly switched from their staple diet of mutton to venison.  Both the hides and the meat were early items of barter, The citizens of the short-lived state of Franklin even paid their officials salaries in deer skins. 

Our deer population is probably at its all-time high at the present time.  The deer is a fringe animal and not an inhabitant of the deep climax forests.  As the white man moved into the various sections of the country, he reduced the predators with his gun and felled the forests with his axe and the deer boom began.  The deer increased in population until the middle 1800s when constant hunting by settlers and professionals began to make serious inroads into the deer population.  The 1890s saw the deer at their lowest numbers.  As the deer herds were reduced, conservationists struggled to alert the populace to the fact that this splendid animal was almost on the brink of extinction in many areas.  The northeastern states were the hardest hit.  Rhode Island and Connecticut had no deer at all.  New Jersey was down to less than 200; and in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont, deer were so scarce that the sighting of one made headlines in the local papers. 

Through more rigid laws, better enforcement and importation from other states, the pendulum started to swing again in the deer's favor.  Today we often have the problem of too many deer in some areas.  A deer is its own worst enemy and will rapidly destroy its own range by overpopulating it.  The same rigid laws that brought the deer back often work against the deer today by destroying them.  Deer must be managed and harvested for their own good.  The enlightened states now allow does to be taken when the herd has reached such proportions that it must be reduced to keep it in line with the available food.  The main factor influencing the population of any species is the availability of food and shelter, but in spite of overwhelming evidence that deer cannot be stockpiled, there are still some states that refuse to harvest their does and lose many deer each year by starvation.  Although our deer herd is currently at a peak, it has to decline.  Our exploding human population is gobbling up land at such a rate that the deer's range will be seriously curtailed in the future. 

Deer hunting is big business worth millions of dollars.  Many communities derive a large portion of their income catering to deer hunters.  In addition to the money spent on licenses, guides and lodging, there are the added costs of transportation, food, firearms, ammunition and clothing. 

The esthetic value of deer cannot be measured.  There are fully as many, if not more, people who just enjoy watching deer or photographing them as there are hunters.  Both groups are sure that the world is a better place because of the deer. 
 

Whitetail Deer Range:

Distribution: Whitetail deer generally inhabit forest, forest edge, and brushy areas from the southern edge of the coniferous forest in Canada to the southern border of the United States. They are absent from the drier regions of the West where, if present, they tend to inhabit stream bottoms. 

According to the latest figures compiled by the Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife for 1964, our total whitetail population is estimated in the vicinity of 13 million. Texas leads with 3,100,000, followed by Alabama's 1,000,000, Michigan's 1,000,000 and Wisconsin's 725,000. 

Travel: When lots of good food is available, the white tail deer restricts its movements to about 1 square mile. If food is scarce or the winter weather bitter, the deer forsake their usual haunts and retire to coulees, canebrakes, thickets and draws. These deer do not have even a limited migration. They prefer to stay near the spot where they were born and raised and where they know the countryside intimately. This reluctance to move is often their undoing. They die of starvation because they refuse to leave their home range for another where food may be plentiful. 

At one time, there was a seasonal migration of whitetail deer in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. By 1870, lumbermen had invaded the area and the forests began to fall. With the clearing of those forests with no underbrush, huge tracts of brushland came into being, providing excellent deer food. This is the only authenticated record of whitetail migration known. 

During the rutting season, the bucks forsake their usual haunts and travel far and wide in search of receptive does. This, however, is not a migration but merely a seasonal expansion of range. 

In following articles we will cover Species Anatomy & Physiology, Species Behavior & Habits, Species Habitat Requirements & Preferences with special attention to Diet, and finally, Hunting Tips & Techniques particular to the Species, all in the quest of better preparing ourselves in harvesting this wily creature, the Whitetail Deer...... 

In the next article of this series we review the general Anatomy and Physiology of the Whitetail Deer in Whitetail #2. 

Until Then Good Luck and God Bless.......Stu Keck