CALIFORNIA PISH AND GAME 



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ing deer. On July 1, 1927, I was able to approach within a few feet of a 

 doe that had a tail on which a broad black stripe extended up the entire 

 dorsal surface clear to and above the base of the tail (see Fig. 48). By 

 no stretch of the imagination could such a tail be considered as belong- 

 ing to a mule deer. I investigated further and found that the meta- 

 tarsal gland of this particular doe was very short, being not more than 

 3| inches in length. Taking another instance, on December 6, 1927, on 

 the floor of Yosemite Valley, I examined at close range and photo- 

 graphed another adult doe which had a broad black tail (see Fig. 61) 

 characteristic of the Columbian black-tailed deer. This doe likewise 

 had the short metatarsal gland of the black-tailed deer. 



One other point should be emphasized, and that is that all the 

 deer that I have been able to examine on the east side of the Sierra 



Fig. 60. Photograph of deer tails in the flesh (dorsal view). (a) Rocky 

 Mountain mule deer from Crank Spring, Modoc County, (b) Hybrid chiefly black 

 tail, South Pork Merced River, Mariposa County, (c) Columbian black-tailed deer 

 from Mineral, Tehama County. Mus. Vert. Zool. No. 5840. 



Nevada had characteristic and typical mule deer tails. On the western 

 slopes near the summit of the range, we find that the tails of deer are 

 practically all of the straight mule deer type, but as I extended my 

 examinations down the western slope of the Sierra I found an increased 

 number of deer which showed a tendency toward the black-tailed type 

 of deer. This has been particularly noticeable in the Yosemite region 

 and also in the Stanislaus National Forest on the Tuolumne River 

 where several thousand deer were killed during the foot-and-mouth 

 epidemic. A very large proportion of the poisoned deer showed strong 

 tendencies toward the black-tailed type. 



The black-tailed tendency is not restricted to adult animals but 

 was also noted in a pair of spotted fawns (see Fig. 62) on the floor of 



