San Juan blacktails.

[JDHasty]

That pretty well gives me some idea of the size difference that can be expected.  It is very rare to shoot a smaller two point buck that doesn't go a hundred at the butcher shop on the islands in the south sound.

A mature buck from around here will generally go 115 or so.  That makes it look to me as though a San Juan Island deer is probably just over half the body size of our blacktails.  We dropped off a mature doe that went 85 lbs this year.  That weight on a good doe is about what we would expect. 

The question I have is:  Are you familiar with outsize blacktails from the San Juan Islands that go... say over a hundred at the butcher shop?  Not that I am interested in hunting the San Juan's, but just out of curiosity. 

Ever so often we see a real pig that is just so much larger that it is uncanny.  There is rumor that someone was breeding mule deer on Anderson in the mid 1900's, so that would maybe explain outsize bucks turning up there, but that is the only island in the south sound I have heard that about.  The real monsters I have contemporary knowledge about are not off Anderson so that does nothing to explain the massive one from Manchester or other islands.

Just for fun, I thought I would see if I could do an internet search and come across one of the stories, and shazzam it popped right up and this is not an isolated incidence of this rumor - I have seen it posted literally, and I mean literally, dozens of times and even heard that story being bandied about on The Rez (i.e. Frank's Landing and the Lower Nisqually Rez) long before the internet existed. So there just may be something to it.  When I was a kid, it was not uncommon to go down to the river and see a massive buck hanging at practically any time of the year.     

"Here's a little history, which I believe is true but I have no proof. I've lived in the Hawks Prarie area all my life and a friend is direct kin of original homesteaders. He has told me (I've heard the same story from others as well) back in the 30's a guy had a large high fence operation raising mulies. Old man dies and the Mulies are set free, they cross breed with the blacktails which create some monster blacktails.
 I have seen some huge buck around me place, missed one when I was in HS.
 He has a newspaper from the 50's with his grandpa on the front page with a 25" 4x4 shot in Hawks Prarie also has a pretty big rack from a relative, seems like that one was like 22" with a bunch of mass."

http://www.huntfishnw.com/index.php?topic=2080.0

Now, that's a lota' bone for any blacktail, but if you look at the antler bases on that three by five my buddy got in south Kitsap this year... blacktail racks can get pretty massive and the one he got was the smaller of two that were running together all summer.  That is s Kitsap, so that takes this story out of that equation.  Pure Columbia blacktail bucks do have the capacity to get pretty massive.  That one of my buddy's isn't anything to sneeze at.     

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I am not so convinced that this rack in question is not a mule deer rack that was from central Washington that was just "there," for whatever reason.  Like it was with the other racks in a hunting cabin, a simple DNA test could confirm if that is more likely than not the case.....or not.

But it very well could be a Pure Columbia blacktail rack off the island, I have seen some pretty skookum blacktails taken off the islands, a couple this year alone.  Palmation is also fairly common on the really big bucks off the islands.  So much so that I would say it is the rule, rather than the exception.  BUT, I have seen really pretty typical racks too.  However, I have seen massive blacktail racks on the lower Nisqually Rez too and most of them showed the same palmation. 

Really big island bucks typically show palmation.  But with palmation comes mass.  No? 

The really big Rez bucks were palmated too and The Rez is smack right up agin Hawks Prairie - so is this a case of interbreeding causing the palmation.  I don't much care.  The trophy is pretty skookum if it is a Columbia blacktill though - that is all I really would like to know.  If it is a bench leg cross, it is still nice, but nothing to get all excited about. 

 
     

[lokidog]

This is a buck from orcas island.  This is one of 3 the group killed and the largest.  At TNT meats it weighed 66# the other was 62#.  Thats with no head, hide, guts, lower legs.  Pretty much what someone could expect out in the san juans.

That seems like smaller than the average buck we have gotten here, but definitely smaller  than the big ones.  My son's this year would be 88# in same condition as above mentioned.  I always thought the Orcas deer would be bigger than ours.     I know the bucks I have seen on Lopez are mostly bigger.

[blackmouther]

Another friend of mine shot a very nice racked island buck south lopez that alive was around 120.  I have seen deer swimming in the island while trolling for salmon and anacortes city limits have some toads so quite possible the closer islands could have a fatty

[skagitsteel]

Well SkagitSteel, I'd like to see a picture of the 1/8 ton behemoth, even if he wasn't an island deer.  Better start a new thread for all the ooos and ahhhs that will follow.

Fun thread. Thanks for letting me play.  I'm out.   The time to hunt is nigh.

here is the thread
http://hunting-washington.com/smf/index.php/topic,184315.0.html

  Here is a trail cam pic of another buck up high I have seen on the hoof  year up high that would make the quarter century mark live weight pretty easily IMO.  For reference bucks in this area rut later and his neck was pretty close to this size in June, not very swollen yet on OCT 25

[lokidog]

There is a member that used to do some tagging/capture of Blacktails on Blakely Island, here is his memory of live weights from that study -

Yes, we weighed the deer that we tagged. I don't have any of the numbers at hand, but if I remember correctly, out of the 28 or so deer we tagged, the does were averaging around 80-90, and the bucks were around 120. We had one mature 3x3 buck at 135, and one mature 4x4 at 145 pounds, which was by far the biggest one we caught all season. I did see a few deer up on the north end of Blakely that I'd say were pushing 170-200 just by guesstimating them on the hoof (but then again, they had probably been eating out of vegetable gardens and flower pots all summer). These weights were taken in June-August. Not sure what that would convert to for a pre-rut weight in the fall. I might be able to get ahold of our data and produce some more accurate averages if you'd like - I'll have to check and see. Just let me know.

I think a 170-200 lb live weight deer here would be an anomaly though.

[fishnfur]

Good report Lokidog!  Great historical record.  That's one to put away in a box and save.

In my mind, ultimately, the physical characteristics such as antler size and body mass that are obvious to us when we judge an animal are controlled by genes that come from parents, grandparents, great grandparents, on and on.  Sometimes a gene or combination of genes may skip through several generations of animals without being expressed, or may suddenly become expressed upon the mating of two animals that when combined, delivers results considered unusual within that population. 

Those unusual results are nature's way of attempting to build a better mousetrap.  If the expression of those genes results in an animal that can survive better, or develop characteristics that make it more dominant than the average animal in that population, then that animal will likely be more successful in spreading its genes resulting in progeny that may have the capability to develop similar physical characteristics.  That may mean bigger body, it may mean smaller body, depending on the environment the animal lives in.

On many islands, where due to lack of predators, deer tend to overpopulate, it is the availability of food during the winter that becomes one of the major factors that determines survival.  It makes perfect sense to me that smaller deer survive better than larger animals, as they require less food to sustain them through the winters (This may be off base a bit, but for the sake of discussion, I'm running with it). That may also mean the genes for small bodies are more pervasive within the island population as a whole and results in many deer that are smaller than the average mainland deer.  These island deer either:

       1). do indeed have an spread genes for a small body

or    2). still carry a gene for normal (or large) bodies, and when expressed results in a deer which may survive and become big and dominant, but which may also die of starvation during a bad winter while it is younger, so we never see it expressed.

or    3). Have genes for normal body size and don't fulfill their growth potential due to lack of nutrition at a young age (as happens with humans).
   
or    3). occasionally capture genes for large bodies from deer entering the population from external areas ( via swimming) which keeps all variations in the mix.

Ultimately, the results seem to be a population of deer characterized by smaller than average bodies with an occasional normal sized animal (for the mainland) or even less often, a super sized deer that seems out of place (much like a seven foot tall human).

That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

[lokidog]

That has actually been my argument for the evolution/adaptation of smaller bodied deer, especially on the smaller islands.  There seems to be some travel between the islands, but I think it is less than people may think.  In ten years here, I have heard of one deer swimming to a nearby to Decatur Island when two dogs chased it off a beach.  It died shortly after arrival on that island, supposedly from exhaustion (the people that own that entire island are not hunters).  I have seen one carcass floating in the tide and I have seen one deer jump off a low cliff when I accidentally spooked it, but it just swam around the bay back to Decatur.

There is a study starting that will be doing genetic analysis of various deer populations in the San Juans using fresh fecal samples.  It will be interesting to see the results as they come out.

[Bob33]

"On many islands, where due to lack of predators, deer tend to overpopulate, it is the availability of food during the winter that becomes one of the major factors that determines survival."

I have hunted a San Juan island since 1981. The island is about 6 square miles and has an estimated deer population of 400. You can easily see visually that almost all available deer food sources are depleted to a height that deer can't reach. No predators, mild winters, and little hunting pressure allow populations to grow past a point where healthy nutrition is possible. Simply put, there are too many deer.

[lokidog]

Last year some kind of maybe stomach virus hit the deer here and thinned some out.  I've seen one young one already with the runs, though it is still alive two and a half weeks later.

[fishnfur]

RE: swimming:  This is a link to a Google book page that reports a sitka blacktail swimming 14.5 miles to an island it couldn't even see from shore.

I think it happens more than we might think.  Surely it is how the original population of the SJ Islands arrived.  If not, they walked across on receding glacial ice flows and stayed put 13,000 years ago.

[lokidog]

Of course they swim, but I know very few people who have seen one actually in the water.  I have seen them on James Island, had to swim there, I saw a nice buck this summer on Ram Island, all of about three acres with no surface water, it had to have swam there as well.  All I'm saying is that some people think they are out there swimming from island to island all the time, I don't think this is the case, especially between the islands that have more space between them.

[Griiz]

The buck in the attached image was a lowland blacktail from Jefferson County. If you look at the picture, you can see he was built like a bull and is my largest bodied blacktail, although I have shot a few that were close to his body size. He weighed 190lbs hanging with his skin, head, front feet, bloodshot and fat trimmed off. If you estimate the weight of the removed body mass, he was easily 250 plus pounds. I think like people, deer from the same species come in a variation of sizes, even from the same area of harvest.

[JDHasty]

The buck in the attached image was a lowland blacktail from Jefferson County. If you look at the picture, you can see he was built like a bull and is my largest bodied blacktail, although I have shot a few that were close to his body size. He weighed 190lbs hanging with his skin, head, front feet, bloodshot and fat trimmed off. If you estimate the weight of the removed body mass, he was easily 250 plus pounds. I think like people, deer from the same species come in a variation of sizes, even from the same area of harvest.

That's what I'm talking about. 

There really are some really massive blacktail bucks out there and this is an excellent example of one.  I've seen two and heard of a few more, they are not common at all, but they exist.  You say this one is built like a bull, that sounds a lot like the massive one I have seen the last couple of years, he looks like a Welsh pony standing next to another mature buck and a mature doe standing next to him looks positively diminutive.   

[lokidog]

The buck in the attached image was a lowland blacktail from Jefferson County. If you look at the picture, you can see he was built like a bull and is my largest bodied blacktail, although I have shot a few that were close to his body size. He weighed 190lbs hanging with his skin, head, front feet, bloodshot and fat trimmed off. If you estimate the weight of the removed body mass, he was easily 250 plus pounds. I think like people, deer from the same species come in a variation of sizes, even from the same area of harvest.

Now you're just being mean.....    

[Chukarhead]

Of course they swim, but I know very few people who have seen one actually in the water.  I have seen them on James Island, had to swim there, I saw a nice buck this summer on Ram Island, all of about three acres with no surface water, it had to have swam there as well.  All I'm saying is that some people think they are out there swimming from island to island all the time, I don't think this is the case, especially between the islands that have more space between them.

Funny you should mention that... I saw two deer swimming to a Columbia River island today.  Could have been Columbian white-tails, could have been blacktails.  I also saw several deer swimming inland salt waters in southeast Alaska over my years up there.  One buck was nearly 4 miles from land in the middle of Clarence Strait.  I mistook him for a floating tree until I realized he was pushing a wake.