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New Mexico Mule Deer

A look back, and a look ahead

essay by Craig Springer

Found in: | Outside | Wildlife |

With three small kids in my house, thinking about the future has become as commonplace as breathing. Any parent knows that you see the world through a new lens when you have children.

My kids are an embodiment of the past, yet they hold so much hope for the future. They descend from a long New Mexican lineage, their paternal line going back four generations; their maternal line dates to colonial Spain. When their great-great grandfather, Theodore Springer, showed up in the 1870's, New Mexico was a raucous and wild frontier �? a land that the government back east viewed as provincial and populated with miscreants. The Easterners were right in some ways. And on some accounts, things haven't changed today.

Another truth is how the Anglo-American pioneers made a living. Theodore came to New Mexico from the Colorado gold fields to extract its mineral wealth. He set down roots in a mountain mining town, roots that would go as deep as the ephemeral boom towns would allow. In the absence of grocers, Theodore and his contemporaries had to live off the land as best they could. That meant killing deer without the bounds of law.

Historic records of mule deer in New Mexico show a highly varied record, that deer were in abundance in some areas, yet other settlers and travelers were hard pressed to find venison. These historic records may simply show that mule deer were, by nature, more abundant in some localities than in others, just as is the case today.

The 1870s did see a decline in mule deer numbers; not long after Theodore set up camp here, the territorial legislature acted upon the decline creating the first game law in February 1880. The law effectively closed deer to hunting from May to September, but allowed that "provisions of this act shall not be applicable to travelers or other persons who may be in camp, and whom necessity may compel to kill one or two animals for their subsistence." The law allowed a fine of up to $200 and 30 days in jail; the fines were to be split between the informant and the county treasury where the poaching occurred.

Given the sparse population and lack of law enforcement, you have to doubt the effectiveness of such a law. In 1889, the territorial government set up bounty payments on predators and in 1897, it passed an overarching game law that created a "buck-only" hunt and a season limited to only three months. The laws were generally ignored, the deer continued to decline, culminating in a protracted closed season. When my grandfather Lucius was born in 1903, the territorial legislature opened mule deer to hunting for the first time in five years. The New Mexico Game and Fish Department was created that same year, consisting of one conservation officer and a secretary.

My grandpa spent his youth in the Jemez Mountains growing up in the mining town of Bland, New Mexico. Necessity never made a bargain, and by necessity, settlers in Bland had to tuck their homes into a tight mountain canyon. With a youth spent in the mountains, Lucius no doubt had a good deal to talk about. I didn't know him well, but my dad relates to me a yarn about his dad killing a buck mule deer on the run with a lever-action 30-30 rifle. Lucius said he dropped the deer by shooting it in the spine on the nape. So be it, and true or not, it doesn't matter. But fact is, the year he turned 21 and came down from the mountains, the mule deer population in New Mexico had sunk to an all-time low. Biologists estimated the deer herd at a mere 40,000 animals in 1924.

But then there was a turn-around. In the 1930's, deer numbers began to rise for a variety of reasons. Hunting laws became more enforceable and hunters began respecting a growing conservation ethic. Homesteading laws made by eastern lawmakers set up divesture of public lands to fail in the West. Desert homesteaders couldn't make a living on the land, they abandoned their homesteads, and they moved on. A cease in their subsistence hunting relieved some hunting pressure on mule deer. Land use practices like logging, grazing, and fires created habitat for mule deer. Deer numbers went up, and about the time just before my dad went off to the Korean War, he enjoyed good numbers of deer, about 250,000 animals across the state, and probably better hunting than his ancestors.

Hunters like my dad's age have seen deer numbers in New Mexico ebb and flow. He saw them peak at around 300,000 in the 1960s, and today a lament comes from nearly all quarters, that mule deer are hard to come by these days. Rarely anymore do I see them in my piñon-juniper woods in Santa Fe County. That mule deer are in decline isn't even a topic for debate by some.

But by no means is the Game and Fish Department to be blamed. I have to be forthright; I am part of the problem. My paltry acreage of piñon-juniper woods, along with that of all my neighbor's speak to the problem. We've all got a few acres and great mountain views. I can see the edge of the Great Plains that start in central New Mexico. The ponderosa and mixed-conifer forest of the Sandia Mountain loom large to the west of where I write. And the purplish snow-tipped Sangre de Cristo Mountains rise over the prairie to the north. About 30 other families make this place where I live their home. This land, former ranch land, is more than habitat for humans. The piñons and junipers edging up to meadow make a home for mule deer, at least for now.

One of the greatest challenges facing mule deer, remarkably, is human encroachment. Urbanites spread out on deer habitat, often in good winter range. That's seemed to be the case in New Mexico for a very long time. U.S. Biological Survey (precursor to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) scientist, J. Stokley Ligon, acknowledged the same problem in a report to the New Mexico State Game Commission in 1927: "The early settlers all over New Mexico had to rely on game for food, with the result that the game was often exterminated locally. Abuse of ranges about settlements, also, often caused deer to drift away from inhabited areas."

The American West is seemingly so vast and largely unsettled still, yet areas outlying the urban are filling in as folks like me head out of town. As my part of New Mexico and other nice places in the West continue to fill in with people, mule deer will get crowded out. They are adaptable to a point, but new roads, rangeland conversion, and housing tracts make it more of a possibility. It may be up to private land owners like me to do what they can to make human habitat compatible with that of mule deer.

The New Mexico Game and Fish is reacting to the known decline in mule deer. Their management plan calls for habitat improvements, and increased law enforcement to curtail poaching. The deer biologists will also improve aerial surveys and harvest data. The biologists have some work cut out for them, but I know if they are as attached to our natural heritage as hunters are passionate about conservation, things will improve.

Mule deer face another insidious menace, chronic wasting disease. This brain aliment, similar to mad cow disease is incurable and always fatal.

A mutant protein called a prion destroys nerve tissues and literally causes mule deer to waste away. To date, only a few New Mexican mule deer has tested positive for CWD, animals found in the southern part of the state, near White Sands Missile Range. What is perplexing is that the nearest known area for CWD to occur in central Colorado. How the White Sands animals acquired the disease is shrouded in mystery, the same mystery associated with CWD. Scientists are unsure how CWD is transmitted, especially given the vast distances between known occurrences. This malady could create serious problems for mule deer range-wide, and to economies associated with hunting and wildlife watching.

Though I've never fancied myself much of a big game hunter, I'm always pleased as punch to see mule deer bounce out of my woods with their pogo-stick gait. I'll be satisfied knowing a 300-pound beast slips through the piñons on my property. I'll do what I can �? I owe it to my three children and their heritage �? their future New Mexico, to conserve our natural heritage embodied in mule deer.