16 EAISING DEER IN THE UNITED STATES. 



NATIVE DEER OF NORTH AMERICA. 



North America is comparatively rich in species of deer. All of 

 them are valuable food animals, and nearly all have been of great 

 commercial and economic value during the development of the 

 country. While their commercial importance has been greatly les- 

 sened as their numbers diminished, they still play an important 

 part in furnishing food in newly settled parts of the United States 

 and Canada, as well as in feeding the native tribes in the far North. 

 Except in States that have extensive forested areas and have pro- 

 tected deer for a series of years, they are rapidly disappearing be- 

 fore the encroachments of agriculture. The remnant are valuable 

 chiefly because they are a natural resource which may be indefinitely 

 developed if carefully husbanded. It is believed that with partial 

 domestication and careful management in state and private game 

 preserves, deer of most of our species may again become abundant. 

 Considering the difficulties, attempts to domesticate them have been 

 fairly satisfactory. 



THE CARIBOU. 



Several species and local races of the caribou, or reindeer, inhabit 

 the northern part of North America. According to habitat, they 

 fall naturally into two groups. The more northern, ranging beyond 

 the forests, is best represented by the barren-ground caribou (Rangi- 

 fer arcticus). The second group inhabits the forested area south of 

 the other, and its most important representative is the woodland 

 caribou (Rangifer caribou). Although they differ little from the 

 wild Old World reindeer (Rangifer tarandus) in habits and gen- 

 eral appearance, no attempts to domesticate the American reindeer 

 seem to have been made. The larger woodland caribou is said to be 

 exceedingly wild and timid, and for this reason its suitability for 

 domestication has been questioned. The barren-ground species, al- 

 though small, appears to be much less wild. 



Prof. S. F. Baird was strongly of the opinion that American cari- 

 bou of both groups are as capable of domestication as the European 

 species, and he suggested that such a step would be of vast benefit to 

 Indians of the North. Its success would at once place these people 

 beyond the vicissitudes which are so rapidly sweeping them off. In 

 the end they might " become a pastoral people, and possibly, in time, 

 as agricultural as the nature of the seasons would admit." a 



In the same paper from which the above quotation is taken Pro- 

 fessor Baird suggested further that the domesticated European rein- 

 deer might itself be successfully imported and propagated in North 



° Report U. S. Com. Patents (Agriculture) for 1851, p. 108, 1852. 



