Anticosti White-tailed Deer | Online Record Book Preview

Odocoileus virginianus ssp.

DESCRIPTION a moderate sized whitetail with bucks weighing up to 150 pounds. The deer have a relatively pale coat with hollow hair and smaller antlers than their northern cousins.

DISTRIBUTION consists of the (equivalent 3,000-square-mile) Anticosti Island. The Island is larger than Delaware and Rhode Island combined.

STATUS The island of Anticosti is owned by Quebec and has no game species that are native to the island. In the early 1890s, a French candy baron, Henri Menier, purchased the island and established a great private hunting preserve. Between the years of 1895 and 1920, Henri introduced wildlife including elk, moose, caribou, snowshoe hare, mink, grouse, red fox, frogs, beaver, buffalo and whitetail. The whitetail has prospered on the harsh but fertile island. The only predator of the Anticosti whitetail is the harsh winter. The herds have grown to more than 66,000 deer with a density of twenty deer per square mile.