Trappers capture, relocate whitetail

ROSEBURG, Ore. – Once on the endangered species list, Columbia white-tailed deer are now so thick hereabouts that Justin Hadwen was able to bring six of them down with a single squeeze of the trigger.

Of course, Hadwen bagged these deer by triggering a rocket-launched net rather than a rifle. And the deer cooperated by lining up along a pile of strategically placed apples, like cattle at a feed trough.

Nonetheless, it’s not every day that you bag six deer with one shot.

“This is the most we got this year so far,” Hadwen said. “I got seven one time last year.”

Hadwen, an assistant district biologist for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, is in charge of a “trap and transplant” program designed to help the Columbia white-tailed deer expand into more of its historic range.

The program began in the fall of 2004 and is scheduled to end in the spring of 2007.

Over 100 deer have been relocated so far into suitable oak riparian habitat owned by cooperating landowners west of I-5, including sites near Winston and just west of Roseburg.

When Lewis and Clark arrived in Oregon 200 years ago, Columbia white-tailed deer – a smaller version of the deer found throughout much of the East and Midwest – were found along the Columbia River and between the Coast Range and the Cascades in the Willamette and Umpqua river basins, and as far north as Puget Sound.

However, unrestricted hunting and conversion of much wetland habitat to agriculture led to the extirpation of whitetails through most of their range.

Only two small herds – one near Roseburg, and a smaller group located on a series of islands in Clatsop and Columbia counties and in Washington state near Cathlamet – remained when the federal government listed Columbia whitetails as an endangered species in 1978.

At the time, an estimated 2,000 to 2,500 animals lived in the Roseburg area and 300 to 400 lived along the Columbia.

A recovery plan that included protection of whitetails and the establishment of refuges for the deer helped produce a doubling of both populations by the mid-1990s.

The population in the Roseburg herd was estimated to be in excess of 6,200 animals last year.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service de-listed the Columbia whitetail in 2003 and turned management of the herd over to the state.

The state’s management plan includes broadening the geographic range of the whitetail to provide a hedge against any catastrophic loss the main herd might suffer.

The plan also allows for some hunting.