NEBRASKAland Magazine is dedicated to outstanding photography and informative writing with an engaging mix of articles and photos highlighting Nebraska’s outdoor activities, parklands, wildlife, history and people.
Issue link: http://mag.outdoornebraska.gov/i/581251
26 NEBRASKAland • NOVEMBER 2015 from the loin of a black tailed buck …" Clyman wrote in his journal after shooting a mule deer while camped in the Gering Valley near Scotts Bluff. The following day, he wrote of the Wildcat Hills: "where these hills were finely stored with game Such as Black tailed deer antelope mountain sheep & some times Buffalow [sic.], elk and grisled bear." Reports of deer from other settlers in Chase County can presume to be of mule deer. The easternmost report came from Dakota County, and a 1957 report by the Nebraska Game, Forestation and Parks Commission, the precursor to the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, lists Nance County as the southeastern extent of its range. Still expanding their range at the time, they may not have been present in all of the areas they inhabit now. Settlers needed food to survive on the plains, and deer proved to be an easy target for those wanting to feed their families or for meat to sell on the market. Their numbers surely had dwindled by 1880. Winter that year was harsh, and deer succumbed to storms, hungry settlers and wolves. Soon, few deer, be it whitetails or mulies, remained. A survey in Sioux County in 1901 noted that the mule deer was rare, or even extinct. Myron Swenk, in his 1907 report "A Preliminary Review of the Mammals of Nebraska" for the Nebraska Academy of Sciences, wrote that a few whitetails remained in the Pine Ridge, but the mule deer had disappeared. The only other mention of mule deer was of 25 found in Thomas and Hooker counties. It was that same year that the Nebraska Legislature, which in 1873 had restricted the harvest of deer to four months in the fall and winter and in 1897 to only November and December, closed the season on deer, elk, antelope and beaver altogether. With that protection, and likely with some movement of deer into Nebraska from surrounding states, deer numbers slowly increased. Surveys in the winter of 1939-40 estimated between 2,000 and 3,000 deer, mostly mule deer, were found in the Pine Ridge and a few more in the Platte and Niobrara River valleys, but few, if any, elsewhere. While whitetails had been the last deer standing in the Pine Ridge, most of the forest there had been cut for building or fuel, and only the steepest slopes were still timbered, making the region more suitable to mule deer. By 1945, the population had grown enough in the central Sandhills that deer were causing damage to trees and leaving an extensive browse line on the Bessey Division of the Nebraska National Forest near Halsey. In response, the state held its first modern deer season. Five hundred permits were issued and 361 deer harvested, all but two of which were mule deer. 0 The mule deer was first recognized and accurately described by Lewis and Clark but not formally described until 1817. It was first mentioned on Sept. 5, in the vicinity of the Niobrara River, when the descriptive term "black-tailed deer" was applied to several deer seen by one of the crew members. Illustration from The deer of all lands, 1898, Richard Lydekker. Adult bucks harvested per 100 square miles in 2014. Source: Nebraska Game and Parks Commission. Mule Deer Buck Harvest by County 6-10 11-25 1-5 26+