Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/742011
through the broad Beaverhead River valley area in southwestern Montana. Today the valley is home to the town of Dillon and the University of Montana Western, and is a mecca for hunters and fishermen. Interestingly enough, it wasn't quite so inviting for Lewis and Clark. The popular title of The Journals of Lewis and Clark is something of a misnomer because the journals also include plentiful entries by Sergeant John Ordway, Sergeant Patrick Gass, and Private Joseph Whitehouse, as well as fewer entries by others. There are almost 5,000 pages of the original journals, and it is refreshing for those of us who rely on spellcheck to see how colorful and imaginative the spelling is by mule deer fawn. Couple this with heavy hunting pressure on older (think dominant) mule deer bucks, and extensive but less successful hunting pressure on older (dominant) whitetail bucks (less successful due in part to their more secretive habits and their propensity for becoming completely nocturnal when pressured), and hybridization may be, to a certain extent, a factor. However, that alone is not enough to explain the mule deer's decline. Perhaps there is another, less quantifiable, possibility. I n mid-August of 1805 the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery passed of parasites might be to blame, specifically the meningeal worm, yet that particular parasite isn't even found in some of the areas where whitetails have replaced mule deer. Some people blame hybridization, but— at least on the face of it—hybridization can be discounted, partly because it occurs relatively rarely, and partly because it produces an animal not well-suited for survival or even reproduction. However, as Dr. Geist points out, while breeding between mule deer bucks and whitetail does is uncommon due to incompatible breeding behaviors, breeding between whitetail bucks and mule deer does is more common, and every mule deer doe taken out of the available pool means one less 110 • S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S