For decades after the establishment of the UC Hopland Research & Extension Center (1951) an abundance of Columbian black-tailed deer research was done on the property. Researchers including William Longhurst, Frank Anderson, Guy Connolly, Albert Halter, Dale McCullough, Floyd Weckerly, Raymond Barnes and others conducted numerous studies and published many manuscripts on the subject of black-tailed deer.
October and November are the primary breeding months for the local deer population. Here you see a nice mature buck that was quite interested in a doe last week. The gestation period is around 190 days, and most fawns will drop in mid-April to mid-May. This population is part of the subspecies Odocoileus hemionus columbianus which ranges from coastal British Columbia and southward through western Washington, Oregon, and California to about Santa Barbara. This subspecies also inhabits the Cascade Range and the northern part of the Sierra Nevada Range of mountains.
