re: In 1939 our Pow Pows could kill 5 bears/year! But only got 3 days/week at da camp :(

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Incredible… those baws got a camp full of meat without wearing any Sitka or Mossy Oak.

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As a result, the Department of Conservation set the 1946-47 season to run no more than 45 days between November 1 and January 10, but it allowed each parish police jury to decide which 45 days hunting would be allowed. This became the norm, and police juries continued to control hunting seasons for years to come.

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By the late 1940s, most of the deer were concentrated in 16 parishes, but even there the herd density was just 1 per 74 acres. There were so few deer, in fact, that only 15 percent of the state was open for hunting in the 1948-49 season, and less than 1,000 deer were harvested.

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For the first round of stocking, the Department of Conservation acquired 200 deer, with half of them coming from the Texas Aransas National Wildlife Refuge and half from private preserves near Minden and Hammond. Encouraged by the results, biologists took additional deer from Marsh Island, Chicot State Park, and even Wisconsin.

The stocking program lasted from 1949 to 1969, with 3,378 deer being released in 9 regions. The deer population exploded as a result and hunting improved. While less than 1,000 deer were harvested in the 1948-49 season, 16,500 were taken in 1960-61.

Among the stocked herd were 363 Wisconsin deer. In the 1960s, hunters (including the author) encountered large, pale-looking deer that were generally dubbed “blue deer.” They were believed to be the Wisconsin deer or their offspring, but biologists disagreed and pointed out that the deer trapped in Louisiana were, on average, larger than the ones acquired from Wisconsin.

Today, there is probably no genetic trace of the Wisconsin deer left in Louisiana’s herd. Mississippi, which used 353 Wisconsin deer and 2,491 native deer in its restocking program, has found no genetic evidence of the former surviving today. Louisiana imported a similar number of Wisconsin deer, but their DNA was diluted by 3,025 native deer.

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