The Great Decimation

Although small by today’s standards, Louisiana’s deer herd remained stable for thousands of year. However, when the French arrived in 1699, hunting deer for their hides quickly became big business and the herd suffered. At Natchitoches, professional hunters brought in more than 20,000 deer hides every few months, and a 1788 Spanish report revealed hunters collected 2,000 deer hides on the Ouachita River alone.The French used a .62 caliber (20 gauge) smoothbore flintlock fusil de chasse (“hunting gun”). It was 59 inches long, with a barrel-length walnut or maple stock and it weighed less than 7 pounds. The musket sported only a blade front sight, but an average hunter, using about 60 grains of black powder, could easily hit a deer’s vitals at 25 yards.

Colonial deer hunters took a heavy toll on the herd, but deer numbers did not drop dramatically until thousands of Americans moved into Louisiana during the 19^th century.  Plantation agriculture and countless homesteads destroyed deer habitat, and the use of dogs to hunt deer year around took a heavy toll. Rapid technological developments such as rifled muskets, double barrel shotguns, percussion caps, and centerfire cartridges also made hunters much more successful.

“If such destruction is continued it can mean only the extermination of deer along Cocodrie Bayou and if such slaughter takes place in one swamp . . . it may take place in a dozen others.”

Even with the improved weapons, however, some hunters continued to rely on ancient methods. In 1886, an Iowa newspaper reported that an anonymous Winn Parish man could actually detect deer by smell.

"It is said that, on a calm day, or when the wind is blowing toward him, he can smell a deer thirty to sixty yards. He is a popular hunting companion with the neighbors who know of his power. While riding or walking through the woods he will stop, throw his head very much as a dog does when he strikes a scent, and in this way he rarely fails to locate the deer if it is within gunshot distance of him."

Non-stop hunting by people trying to put meat on the table and market hunters supplying restaurants with venison and leather clothiers with hides began pushing the herd to the brink of extinction. So many deer were killed in the 19^th century that their hides sold for as little as a dollar each.  

In 1910, Florida’s San Mateo Item reported that hide hunters were slaughtering the deer along Cocodrie Bayou in Concordia Parish. The paper claimed that Cocodrie swamp was “the greatest natural deer park in the world,” but an estimated 500 deer had already been killed that season. Hide hunters, who paid just one dollar for a commercial license, were depleting the herd the locals depended on for food. “The people of Concordia Parish are naturally outraged,” the paper reported. “If such destruction is continued it can mean only the extermination of deer along Cocodrie Bayou and if such slaughter takes place in one swamp . . . it may take place in a dozen others.” Biologists estimate that Louisiana’s deer population dropped from several hundred thousand in 1700 to an estimated 70,000 animals by the early 1900s. In some areas, deer disappeared completely.

Fortunately, things began to change. A movement known as Progressivism swept the nation and pressured the government to correct such chronic abuses as pollution, corruption, and child labor. In 1900, Iowa Rep. John F. Lacey extended the progressive agenda to wildlife when he introduced the Lacey Act. The first federal law to protect wildlife, the Lacey Act helped curb the market hunters’ activities by prohibiting the interstate transportation of venison and other wild game.

[you may also like: The First Deer Hunters]

Louisiana climbed on the Progressive bandwagon in 1912 when it created the Department of Conservation and gave it the authority to regulate all activities regarding the state’s wildlife. In setting Louisiana’s deer season that year, the Commission outlawed the killing of does for the first time, required bucks to have antlers at least 3 inches long, and limited hunters to five bucks per season. The selling of venison was also prohibited (another first), but, surprisingly, spotlighting remained legal.

Unsurprisingly, politics eventually came into play when locals began complaining about state authorities controlling hunting seasons in their parish. As a result, the Department of Conservation set the 1946-47season 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.

Despite the new conservation legislation, Louisiana’s deer herd continued to plummet, and drastic action was needed to save it from extinction. The state’s amazing deer recovery will be examined in next month’s column.

Dr. Terry L. Jones is professor emeritus of history at the University of Louisiana at Monroe and has received numerous awards for his Civil War books and outdoor articles.