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A Texas Rancher Cloned Deer For Years. Some Lawmakers Want To Legalize It.
The Lone Star State has long muddled the line between hunting and farming. Now cloning may help game ranches breed big bucks.
AUSTIN, Texas A Republican legislator wants to legalize deer cloning, and is accusing Texas wildlife officials of using the COVID-19 pandemic to undermine a breeder’s attempts to spawn big bucks.
In a state that often blurs the distinction between hunting and farming, many game ranches have looked to science ― from supplemental protein to artificial insemination ― to grow bigger game for the deep-pocketed customers willing to pay well over $10,000 to shoot them. The proposed law, from state Rep. Matt Krause of Fort Worth, would legalize cloning to help in that endeavor.
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IMAGE: This map of wildlife management units in the state of Pennsylvania shows the five areas where deer were captured for this study. Values in parentheses indicate the percentage of forest. view more
Credit: Diefenbach Lab, Penn State
Juvenile white-tailed deer that strike out to find new home ranges despite facing more risks survive at about the same rate as those that stay home, according to a team of researchers who conducted the first mortality study of male and female dispersal where deer were exposed to threats such as hunting throughout their entire range.
Dispersal occurs when a juvenile leaves the area where it was born and moves to a new location where the young animal establishes its adult home range, explained Duane Diefenbach, Penn State adjunct professor of wildlife ecology. The instinctual dispersal of young deer from the area where they were born to a new home range protects the species gene pool from inbreeding with close relatives.
Hunting: How does Maine rate as a deer-hunting state?
Nationwide, the proportion of yearling bucks in the harvest has been on a steady downward trend.
By BOB HUMPHREY
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Maine allotted a record 110,000 any-deer permits in 2020. Hunters harvested 33,157 deer last fall, the most in the state nearly two decades.
David Leaming/Morning Sentinel
How you rate a state in terms of its deer hunting is often a matter of perspective. Those who haven’t hunted outside of Maine may have a very different opinion of their home turf than those who have. Objective criteria exist, but there are far too many variables and differences between states to make direct comparisons.