I believe it was a 1936 Mn. Hunting regs. (3 small pages) I was shown by an Old timer neighboe. IT said this year It is illegal to take Antelope or Caribou in Mn.

So we had those back when. In what numbers, thats the question. No mention of Muleys.

One was just shot by Wadena this past season and that is in the central part of the state.

I once read that the ancestor of the whitetail was the first deer to cross into NA from Asia. It spread across the continent but populations became separated due to a subsequent ice age. The separate populations mutated into the blacktail and the whitetail. When the ice retreated the whitetail spread back westward, crossbred with the blacktail, and produced the mule deer. I have not been able to find this account again and suspect it is just one theory of how north American deer species came to be what they are today.

One interesting characteristic about the mule deer that I just read is that body size does not vary with environment to any significant degree. This is clearly not the case for whitetail as they follow Bergman's rule, which states that "within a broadly distributed taxonomic clade, populations and species of larger size are found in colder environments, and species of smaller size are found in warmer regions." It suggests to me that whitetail are more adaptable than mule deer and therefore more likely to spread into new and different environments.

Hi 330 a great resource and just all around great guy in MN is Blaine Klemek he works as a biologist for the DNR he is passionate about deer and really any critter he came out to my place I had a 40 acres and he did a story on dark eyed cuckoos for the paper as I had a cuckoo bird nest? I'm like what is that, now I know pretty cool bird really rarely seen but often heard... If anybody knows the ways or wanders and ancestry of MN wildlife it's him... Last I knew he worked the office over by White Earth... If you do, tell him trapper Brad says hi...

All the theories as to North American deer origin are subject to change as new DNA evidence is discovered. But, a DNA study I read not too many years ago concluded that the blacktail deer was the original deer in on this continent. Then as the ice sheet came down from the north it resulted in the blacktails of the west coast being separated from their kin to the east which then developed into whitetail and mule deer. I don't recall how the whitetail and mule deer split, but I'm sure it addressed that subject.

Even where you find both whitetail and mule deer in the west in the same general area, they are usually divided by topography. The whitetail being found in the valley bottoms, and the mule deer in the hills.

If I was going to hunt mulish in Wyo. I'd be looking at that migration route in the video!
mt

I saw and photographed 3 caribou in MN near lake Bronson in April of 2000 so they haven't been completely gone for that long. These were more than likely out of Canada and probably didn't stick around long.

Minnesota had plenty of caribou and very few whitetail north of basically I 94. This was not bush country but big timber country and caribou ate base tree lichen and those types of foods. The many ponds and lakes held moose.
It all changed with the log off by the railroad barons. The whitetail moved north with the change to bush and brought disease as well. We also had a lot of elk native to MN before the whites.
The MN SCi chapter tried bringing caribou back in MN around 75. 28 head all died in short order from a disease carried by white tails. No one knew this would happen back then.
MN historical society and museum has some early pictures of the prairies which are now the western suburbs of Minneapolis with large herds of elk to be seen. There were no trees to the west then, just grass except along the natural flowing waterways. Explains the great waterfowl migrations that used to be thru MN as well
But now no more.

Osky

Then again, maybe they just don’t have the brains god gave geese?

Osky

Whenever they try to move east, the white-tailed deer shame them endlessly for the prissy way that they hop like a girl when they run, and they slink back from whence they came.

After WW1 the mule deer were shot out of Manitoba with their behaviour of looking back at the top of the hill.....anyone who served and survived WW!; knew where to shoot those 303 British guns

160user there was a movement of woodland caribou that year and it is only 100 miles from their native range THEN. They are around Black Lake Nopiming Prov. Park now 51 latitude straight north.

There is a large population in SW Manitoba now and we cant hunt them....