46 KAISING DEER IN THE UNITED STATES. 



John W. Griggs, of Goodell, Iowa, has succeeded in crossing the 

 mule deer with several races of the whitetail. The hybrids were ob- 

 tained by isolating the pairs in separate yards. As long as the dif- 

 ferent species or races are kept in a common pasture, each kind herds 

 by itself and no sexual association between the different kinds takes 

 place. Under such circumstance or in the wild state crosses are ex- 

 ceedingly rare. Mr. Griggs obtained his hybrids by placing a buck 

 of the mule deer with whitetail does before the rut began, and the 

 offspring proved to be highly satisfactory as to size and stamina, 

 and also were perfectly fertile. As was to be expected, however, 

 offspring in the second generation of hybrids varied much in form, 

 size, and other characteristics, and on the whole were not so satisfac- 

 tory as the first generation. He thinks that his hybrids with the mule 

 deer have stronger constitutions than the Virginia deer and are less 

 liable to disease. 



Charles Goodnight, of Goodnight, Tex., writes that he crossed the 

 mule deer with the white-tailed deer with great success, making a 

 valuable and beautiful animal with greater size and better meat than 

 the common deer. The hybrids were fertile also, and Mr. Goodnight 

 would have continued his experiments further, but, having no shrub- 

 bery or trees within his range, he found it unsuited to deer and liber- 

 ated his herd. 



HABITS AND MANAGEMENT OF VIRGINIA DEER. 



Deer are polygamous like cattle. The rutting season is in Novem- 

 ber, the period of gestation is 205 to 212 days (about seven months), 

 and the fawns are born in May or June. The young does breed 

 usually when about seventeen months old, and have but one fawn the 

 first time; afterwards they commonly have twins. The fawns are 

 spotted, and remain so until the hair is shed in the fall. 



The white-tailed deer is even more a browsing animal than the elk ; 

 and yet it can and often does manage to get along in summer on 

 grass alone. In a cultivated pasture it eats rank weeds and wild 

 grasses in preference to timothy or blue grass. Observation of deer 

 feeding in a pasture several hundred feet away is insufficient to 

 determine accurately what they are eating. A writer in The Ameri- 

 can Field states that he often saw mule deer apparently eating grass 

 in the Colorado parks, and he had no doubt that they did so until a 

 hunter informed him that they would not eat grass unless they 

 could obtain no other food. Afterwards he had a number of times 

 examined the stomachs of deer he had killed, and only once found 

 what was unmistakably grass. a 



a American Field. XXII, 609, Dec. 27. 1884. 



