Other Furbearers 



Several other furbearers occur in the bottomland forest of Pools 

 24-26 of the Mississippi and Illinois Rivers. Furbearers that occupied 

 high semi-dry bottoms were adversely affected by inundation. Yeager 

 (1949: 60, 61) indicated that striped skunks, both red and gray foxes, 

 and opossums were evicted from flooded bottoms at Calhoun Point, which 

 is in Pool 26 at the confluence of the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers. 

 No quantitative data are available for furbearers inhabiting the bottoms 

 of Pools 24-26. Fur harvest records for the Missouri counties bor- 

 dering the project area are given in Tables 50-53. However, these 

 figures include data for areas other than the bottomlands bordering the 

 Mississippi. It is felt that inundation of bottomlands in Pools 24-26 

 as a result of the nine-foot channel had an adverse effect on furbearers 

 that occupy this habitat. 



White-Tailed Deer 



As a result of forest clearing and hunting pressure, white-tailed 

 deer had been extirpated from Illinois and Missouri in the early 1900' s. 

 By the 1930' s as a result of reintroductions and immigration, the 

 deer population began to increase until it had recovered sufficiently 

 to allow sport hunting to reopen in the 1950 's in most counties of 

 Illinois and Missouri. The first deer were observed on the Mark Twain 

 National Wildlife Refuge (Calhoun and Batchtown Divisions) in 1950. 



The bottomland forest of the lower Illinois and Mississippi Rivers 

 provides some of the best habitat for deer in the western portion of 

 Illinois. The heavily wooded section near Beardstown has one of the 

 largest populations found along the length of the Illinois River. Deer 

 kill figures for counties bordering the Illinois River were obtained 

 from Forrest Loomis, deer biologist for the Illinois Department of Con- 

 servation (Table 54) . They include deer killed in both upland and 

 bottomland areas. Actual numbers of deer inhabiting bottomland forest 

 are not available, but the comparative distribution of deer populations 

 along the Illinois valley are reflected in the distribution of the kill. 



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