The pedigree of a male deer in east Tennessee

The pedigree of a male deer in east Tennessee

I think all of the deer around here are reintroduced deer from elsewhere. So are the turkeys, and now the black bear. I think they thrive in this area.

I also think our European ancestors ate most of the original deer that were here when they arrived, and even other critters like black bears and eastern Buffalo and even Elk. Leg of Cumberland Mountain Black Bear was part of the Christmas menu at the Maxwell House Hotel in 1879, for example.

The buffaloes you see today are often the western Buffalos. Our ancestors killed and ate all the eastern (often called woodland buffalos), too. We even had buffalos around Washington, D.C. at one time, or so is my opinion. Now the eastern buffalos are extinct.

Most of the reintroduced deer are from elsewhere in the State of Tennessee, and often from the mid-west, like even Wisconsin and Michigan.

Male deer are usually called “bucks”.

The logic of hunting quotas is pretty simple. One buck can impregnate a lot of female deer, and often do. So hunt the bucks mostly in order to best manage the population. In this animal case, the females are often very responsive. Hunters often call the sex act “covering up a doe”.

We now have coyotes who often chase young deer (often fawns) for food (like eating them). When Lewis and Clark went on their own exploration circa 1805 coyotes only lived west of the Mississippi River, or so is my opinion. Now even Armadillos live in South Carolina. Even coyotes and feral dogs are often breeding together, which suggests different times for our descendents, especially our future hunters.

I really like eating venison sausage with cheese and crackers, often when watching a sports event, like an American football game. I think most venison sausage can make a good gift, too. It is often mixed with some pork fat to add flavor to the usually smoked venison sausage.

So I wonder about the pedigree of the male deer in the following photo. Probably some frustrated hunter shot this obviously big buck, and it escaped from him or her only to die on the land I now live on.