ABSTRACT
The recovery of North American white-tailed deer populations is one of wildlife management’s greatest success stories. In every state and province within the range of the white-tailed deer, numbers have gone from abundance prior to European settlement, to historical lows between 1850 and the early 1900s, to probable record numbers in recent years (McDonald and Miller, 2004) (Chapter 11). The decline and then recovery occurred at a time when humans were impacting the landscape at scales never before experienced. Throughout much of the white-tailed deer’s range, forests were cut, most accessible land was grazed or farmed, and humans were scattered on small parcels of the rural landscape (Figure 14.1). The decrease in deer resulted partly from the human-induced environmental changes. However, overexploitation as a result of local consumption and market hunting probably played a major role.
