3IO ECONOMIC MAMMALOGY 



FAMILY CERVIDAE THE DEER FAMILY 



In Africa the various antelopes, grouped together, are very impor- 

 tant game animals. In North America the bison and the pronghorn 

 antelope once swarmed over the vast western plains, but they have been 

 reduced in numbers almost to the vanishing point. At the present time, 

 considering the world as a whole, Cervidae is the most important 

 family of large game animals, including deer, moose, elk, caribou and 

 reindeer, distributed over most of North America, Europe and Asia. 

 The deer is one of our most beautiful and graceful American mam- 

 mals, rivalled only by the pronghorn antelope. The wapiti, or American 

 elk, is a stately creature. The moose is the most majestic American 

 animal, not excepting even the bison. The caribou, with its long, 

 slender, branching, reindeer antlers, is a sight worth a long trip to see. 

 Because of their esthetic value, their beauty and the interest they 

 arouse whenever they are seen, the ruthless slaughter of deer and their 

 relatives should have been stopped long ago. 



It is scarcely conceivable that such animals were ever killed by thou- 

 sands for their hides alone, the flesh being left to decompose, yet such 

 is the case. Before game laws for Alaska were enacted, many thousands 

 of .deer were killed there for their skins, which sold for a few cents 

 each, 1 there being no market for the meat. In Montana in 1876 they 

 were being "most recklessly slaughtered for the hides alone." 2 In Texas 

 75,000 deer skins were handled at one trading post from 1844 to 1853, 

 and 5000 sent out in one shipment in i853, 3 most of the deer having 

 been killed for their hides. This takes no account of the skins handled 

 by other traders in that region. "During the hide-hunting days, deer 

 were killed by the thousands in all parts of the state [California]. One 

 San Francisco firm in 1880 handled 35,000 hides taken from Siskiyou, 

 Trinity and Shasta counties. Two men are reported to have killed 

 3000 deer in one year in northern California and southern Oregon. 

 Such killing would certainly have led to extermination in a compara- 

 tively short time, but fortunately the price secured for the hides was 

 very low, about 50 cents each, and as deer became scarcer it was no 

 longer profitable; hunters were forced into other work. Deer were 



1 Osgood, The game resources of Alaska, Yearbook U. S. Dept. Agric. for 1907, 

 p. 478. 



"Grinnell (G. B.), Kept. Chief of Engineers, U. S. Dept. War for 1876, Part 

 3, P- 640. 



8 Strecker, The trade in deer skins in early Texas, Journ. Mammalogy, vui, 

 106-110, 1927. 



