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Deer, Deer, Deer, and More Deer
From Shelby Forest in the river bottoms of
the west, to the peaks of the Smoky Mountains, the Tennessee deer herd
now numbers more than 1,000,000 animals.
A long way from the 1950's when the TWRA began its restoration efforts. There were so few
deer in the state that deer had to be imported from other states. With the annual harvest
now exceeding 160,000, the program is by far and away a success. The middle and western counties
of the State offer the best deer hunting with an expanding population in the East. The peek
of the Tennessee herds rut is usually mid to late November each year.
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The state has over 200,000 deer hunters that
take to the Tennessee deer woods each year. Tennessee deer hunters are now
enjoying a better than 45% success rate with over 90,000 hunters harvesting at least
1 deer during the past deer season.
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You can follow the success of the program with the chart above beginning
with 1952 when less than 1,000 deer were killed statewide to todays annual kill of over 160,000
deer. As you can see, this is indeed a wildlife management success story.
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For a little closer look at where all these deer came from and get an idea of how the deer restoration
program took place, just click here.
A Little Deer Trivia
- Beats per minute of an adult deer at rest ~ 37
- Heart rate of a newborn fawn at rest ~ 177 per minute
- Square inches of the "receptive area" inside a deer's cupped ear ~ 24
- Weight of hair comprising the winter coat of a 140-pound buck ~ 2.8 lbs
- Weight of hair comprising the winter coat of a fawn ~ 1.7 lbs
- Minimum number of pellets in a pile indicating that the deer producing the
droppings was probably a buck ~ 75
- Milligrams of cholesterol, respectively, in 3.6 oz cuts of chicken (with skin),
ground beef, pork, and venison ~ 83 85 101 66
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