Deer of the Southwest: A Complete Guide to the Natural History, Biology, and Management of Southwestern Mule Deer and White

Preface

Preface Deer have long been the most popular big game animal in the Southwest. They were an important source of protein for Native Americans, and later served as an important staple for the residents of mining camps and military forts, and other early settlers who came west to carve an existence out of the dusty Southwest. Unfortunately, the deer herds and other wildlife suffered from this heavy use without the benefit of conservation laws and law enforcement to limit the harvest to levels that could be sustained indefinitely. The initial decline of deer abundance in the Southwest reached its low point in the 1890s when years of unregulated market hunting, overgrazing, and a severe drought brought big game populations crashing down. Conservation-minded people at the time lobbied successfully to enact laws to limit overexploitation of big game to levels that would allow recovery . Money generated from those who hunt under this regulated system now funds a large part of the world’s most highly successful system of wildlife conservation. Thus, abundant deer populations are important to everyone who enjoys wildlife. Remarkably, those interested in the deer of the Southwest are left wanting for up-to-date information. In the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s the Arizona Game and Fish Department (AGFD) produced three small books about deer in Arizona: The Mule Deer in Arizona Chaparral (1958), by Wendell Swank; The Kaibab North Deer Herd (1964), by John Russo; and The Arizona Whitetail Deer (1977), by Ted Knipe. Each of these books covered a single species or limited geographic area and discussed different aspects of deer biology, research, and management. The New Mexico Department of Game and Fish published a book on New Mexico wildlife management in 1967 and a small booklet in 1957 called The Deer of New Mexico (Lang 1957). In 1998 Carlos Galindo-Leal and Manuel Weber published a book in Spanish on the Coues whitetail of the Sierra Madres of northern Mexico (El venado de la Sierra Madre Occidental). Mule deer management in west Texas was also addressed more recently in an excellent publication by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (Cantu and Richardson 1997). However, there is no source for contemporary information on white-tailed and mule deer throughout the Southwest. Much has been learned about deer in the last several decades, but most of the recent information is buried in technical scientific papers, graduate theses, and annual reports of the state wildlife agencies. The present book consolidates and condenses historical and contemporary information pertaining to the deer of the North American Southwest and presents it in a consistent fashion that is solidly based in research and yet easily understood. The technical information is presented with as little jargon as possible. In the interest of readability, scientific citations were kept to a minimum. Scientific research can be used to anchor nearly every sentence in some areas of the book, but such a practice makes the text nearly unreadable. The purpose of this book is to provide biologists, natural resource managers, students, hunters, landowners, and nature enthusiasts a source for nearly all things related to southwestern deer in a format and style that is easy to digest. Deer do not recognize the international boundary, so available information from management and research in Mexico has been added where appropriate. The use of Southwest in the title refers to the southwestern region of North America, including not only the southwestern United States, but also northern Mexico. During the preparation of this book, many of the researchers and managers who spent much of their careers working with deer in the Southwest were routed out of retirement and badgered with questions. These questions sometimes yielded information that has not been captured in any previous publications and would otherwise have been lost to the deer world. Their comments, open discussion , and field notes bolstered many portions of this book. The historical deer information from the literature and experiences of past biologists has been intertwined with results from the most recent research on deer not only in the Southwest , but throughout the country. There has been some confusion regarding how many different kinds of deer live in the Southwest. Mule deer were called “blacktails” by some early pioneers, and rumors persist of a smaller version of the Coues whitetail called a “Mexican fantail.” Rocky Mountain and desert mule deer are described as different, but little has been written about how they differ. Biologists have written papers and drawn...