History of deer restoration in Tennessee

[Poser]

This is a pretty interesting read:

https://www.tn.gov/assets/entities/twra/attachments/deerrestoration.pdf

of note:

deer restoration efforts began in 1940 with deer purchased from WI, MI, MD and VA. In the first post restoration hunting season, 1949, there were 113 deer killed statewide. These days, statewide deer harvests numbers are between 160,000 & 200,000.

Of particular interest, 75 blacktail deer were purchased from Oregon during 1966-67 and released into the wild as an experiment, however, they did not survive and there appears to be no remnants of their gene pool present in the modern Whitetail population.

The restoration efforts concluded in 1985 and, by 1988, all 95 counties of TN had open Whitetail seasons. If you look at the release maps, it seemed to take about 10 years for released deer to spread out around the surrounding counties in sustainable numbers.

 

[rayporter]

good story.
i have heard some of the same for Arkansas. the ridge here is supposed to have Wisconsin deer from a similar program.

i have coffee with a few older gents [ they got like 20 yr. on me.] and they tell of working in the cotton fields and if a deer track was seen every one quit and tracked the deer till they got it. even if it took 3 or 4 days.

 

[Poser]

good story.
i have heard some of the same for Arkansas. the ridge here is supposed to have Wisconsin deer from a similar program.

i have coffee with a few older gents [ they got like 20 yr. on me.] and they tell of working in the cotton fields and if a deer track was seen every one quit and tracked the deer till they got it. even if it took 3 or 4 days.

Yeah, its pretty amazing when you talk to the old timers who tell stories about how seeing a deer track would be the talk of the town and killing a deer was guaranteed to get your picture in the paper. I frequently hunt a river bottom system in West TN that has deer densities of 15-20 per square mile with a 3 doe a day bag limit for the entire length of the season. 40 years ago, there were absolutely no deer and squirrel hunting was how most hunters spent their Fall months. These days, people complain if they don't have 100 deer sightings in a season.