A white flag is universally recognized as a sign of surrender. When you see a whitetail buck and three does bounding through a field toward the safety of the forest, their cottony tails erect, it is a sign of great success in wildlife conservation.
The white-tailed deer is wide spread, abundant and has become the entrée to hunting for a great many Americans to acquire free-range local food and unparalleled time in nature. Sure, fox squirrels, ring-necked pheasant, cottontail rabbits and several quail species are still staples that get hunters into the forests and out in the fields—but whitetails have become a big draw over the last few decades.
But not for Pittman-Robertson and the American system of conservation funding, this would not be possible.
To the uninitiated, given that white-tailed deer are so common over much of the central and eastern two-thirds of United States, it is quite difficult to believe that this common species stared into a dark abyss as the 20th century unfolded. Whitetails were extirpated in some locales, but not entirely extinct, persisting in small disjunct groups in remote areas away from people or protected on large tracts of private land.
It is the story thrice told but is worth remembering, white-tailed deer suffered from unregulated home subsistence and market harvest consumption. Add to that, loss of habitat and their numbers plummeted to the point that the species did not appear in published hunting regulations in many states—they were not a consideration, having long disappeared.
Not so today, as the fate of whitetails changed with the passage of Pittman-Robertson in 1937. The law dictated that an already existing federal excise tax on firearms and ammunition be steered exclusively to state fish and wildlife agencies for the express purpose to fund wildlife restoration. The firearms industry fully supported the move.
Pittman-Robertson yielded a reliable and consistent source of funds to buy land for public wildlife management areas (also called game lands), manage habitats, conduct biological research, and train future wildlife professionals in colleges. I was one such beneficiary when I worked in the Wildlife Division of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources while a Michigan State University student.
The earliest management endeavors involved trapping deer and restocking areas void of whitetails. Michigan harbored relict whitetail populations and became one source for restocking in several states once trapping and transport methods were learned.
All these decades later, whitetails still get the attention of wildlife professionals, funded by Pittman-Robertson to conduct routine harvest monitoring and population assessments, as well as leading edge research.
Texas Parks and Wildlife Department scientists are exploring the use of drones with heat-sensing cameras as a means to refine counting deer numbers at less cost.
Researchers at the Forest and Wildlife Research Center at Mississippi State University have studied and modeled habitat selection by whitetail bucks to inform future manage options.
The Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife recently bought several thousand acres of land expressly for whitetail wintering grounds, adding to four existing public wildlife management areas. Winters are hard on whitetails on the northern edge of their natural range.
Michigan Department of Natural Resources biologists teamed with the USDA to refine surveillance methods of bovine tuberculosis in whitetails.
Whitetail research is nothing new in Michigan. Wildlife biologist John Ozoga retired from the Michigan DNR after a storied career studying whitetails—as a scientist and a hunter. There will likely always be something new to learn about white-tailed deer and Ozoga captured that notion is his book, Whitetail Intrigue, writing, “The ways of whitetails will always contain just enough mystery to defy easy explanation.”
Hunting draws us into nature—into the intrigue—as a participant-observer. It is no small paradox; taking the life of an animal for food and sharing with others, as hunters are wont do, is life-affirming. Hunting is a full-immersion nature experience and one can get no closer to the natural world than consuming its bounty.
In this first breath of autumn, let us remember the benison we have as Americans in our system of conservation funding. Ruminate on that the next time you see a deer bounding over corn stubble waving its white flag.
– Alan Stewart, Director of Hillsdale College’s Nimrod Education Center
Al Stewart serves as Director of the Nimrod Education Center. He is also an Adjunct Instructor at Michigan State University. He is associated with the USA Olympic National Team that is located at Hillsdale College, and he serves as VP of the Glassen Foundation.