282 EXTINCT AND VANISHING MAMMALS 



the cutting of the timber and the great increase of the human 

 population" of the area. On account of its ready adaptability 

 it can maintain itself in varied cover and persist even in prox- 

 imity to settled districts if given a reasonable chance. With 

 two young at a birth its numbers readily come up with pro- 

 tection, so that even where much hunted it will continue in 

 the face of considerable persecution. In the Great Smoky 

 Mountains National Park it is said that there were believed 

 to be "not more than a score of deer" remaining in this region 

 when it was established in 1931, but already they show some 

 evidence of coming back (Campbell, 1939). Kellogg (1939) 

 summarizes records showing the "incredible number" of deer 

 formerly found in parts of Tennessee and the importance of 

 their meat and hides to the early settlers. By the latter part 

 of the last century they had been so reduced in many areas of 

 the State that the "Cumberland Mountain range has been 

 almost entirely depleted of its stock of deer. " Action of the 

 legislature in 1895 prohibiting their killing for five years in 

 five of the counties of Tennessee and the later prohibition of 

 their hunting in the Great Smoky park will doubtless save the 

 remnant. In 1882, according to Brayton, the deer was then 

 "rarely met with in Ohio," and the same story holds elsewhere 

 of its great depletion in the eastern States. Even in Alabama, 

 Ho well (1921) tells that they "once ranged in large numbers 

 over all" parts of the State but are "now exterminated in all 

 but the wilder and more inaccessible" districts. 



As a good example of what may be done, however, is the 

 result reported by F. B. Chapman (mimeographed report of 

 the Ohio Wildlife Research Station, release 105, 1939). Deer, 

 almost if not quite extirpated from Ohio by 1904, were re- 

 introduced in 1922-30, and under protection they have so 

 increased that by 1939 they numbered more than 2,000, dis- 

 tributed in 31 counties, in spite of a certain amount of poaching 

 and occasional accidents and disease. The sex ratio is found 

 to be about four or five does to one buck. As might be ex- 

 pected, the abundance of deer is roughly proportionate to the 

 amount of forest cover. 



Estimates of the deer population of the States in which this 

 race occurs were given by the U. S. Biological Survey in Janu- 

 ary, 1939, as follows: New Jersey, 8,000; Indiana, 400; Ohio, 

 2,000; Iowa, 450; Virginia, 15,000; Kentucky, about 700; 



