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WAFWA Mule Deer Working Group

What's in a Name?

Of Shipwrecks and Captives

The West that Was . . . No Longer Is

Losing Ground

The Mounting Pressure of Development

A Place for Predators

Precipitation - A Driving Force

Wilderness Breakup

Elk and Mule Deer Interactions

Mule Deer Regions - No Two are Alike

Plant Communities in Trouble . .

Mule Deer Diseases

Supplemental Feeding - Just Say No

Learning By Doing

Managing Deer Herds with Harvest

Our Summary

WAFWA

Of Shipwrecks and Captives – A Name in the Making

Giving an animal a scientific name doesn't sound like the stuff movies are made of, but the story behind the genus and species of mule deer includes tales of a shipwreck and a trader held hostage by Native Americans.

A naturalist that lived in the 19th century is credited with giving mule deer their scientific name, Odocoileus hemionus (Odocoileus means hollow tooth, while hemionus means half-mule). Constantine Samuel Rafinesque (1783-1840) was traveling from Sicily to the United States in 1815 when his vessel shipwrecked off of Long Island Sound. Rafinesque settled in North Carolina, where he read the journals of a Canadian trader named Charles Le Raye who was held captive for almost 14 years by a party of Native American Sioux. The journal contained a wealth of information on natural resources and geology from the Midwest to the West Coast.

In his journals, Le Raye described "A kind of deer (on the Sioux River), called mule deer. It is smaller and of a darker colour than the red deer, having large branched horns. The ears are very large, the tail about five inches long with short dark hair, and at the end a tuft composed of long black hair."

Rafinesque called this "new" species, Cervus hemionus, and likened it to a relative of the already named "black tail deer," Cervus melanurus. At the time, Rafinesque classified mule deer and black-tailed deer as different species, but today they are recognized as different forms (subspecies) of the same species.