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Weight of game animals

Question:

BTW, Texas is playing ecological Russion roulette with exotic species introductions. Exotics carry a whole host of parasites and diseases that have evolved independently of the ecosystem they’ve been put in. One of these days, it will blow up in their faces. Ask Florida.

I agree that exotics introduction is not a good thing, but I’m curious… What happened in Florida? Chris Barnes                                 (409) 846-3273 (home)

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- Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – surprise!), but also for some reason by latitude (they run bigger farther North; I don’t think anybody’d figured that one out, last time I looked, though there were speculations). The reason is the plant food is more nutrious the closer to you get to recently glaciated areas. In the northern hemisphere, it is toward the north pole. Hence the reason Alaskian moose, bear, etc. are so huge. In areas that have never been glaciated like the African savanna, plants have had the time to evolve counter-measures to predation (like incorporating silica or toxins into their cells). When the Brits were colonizing Africa, hunters tried transplanting some white-tailed from the U.S. The deer starved to death despite having full stomachs. They couldn’t digest the plants.

Then why is New Zealand overrun with transplanted whitetails?  And conversely why is Texas such a favorable habitat for many exotic species that thrive here, such as Axis deer, Sika deer, blackbuck antelope, greater Kudu, Nigali antelope, black rhino, zebra, giraffe, ostrich, eland et al..  These animals live in free range conditions eating plants that do not exist in their native habitats.  White tailed deer will starve to death in this country if the forbs they eat are overgrazed or severe drought etc., destroys the types of plants they live on.  White tailed deer could survive in Africa if they were put in an area that had sufficient forbs.

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- Hide quoted text — Show quoted text – surprise!), but also for some reason by latitude (they run bigger farther North; I don’t think anybody’d figured that one out, last time I looked, though there were speculations). The reason is the plant food is more nutrious the closer to you get to recently glaciated areas. In the northern hemisphere, it is toward the north pole. Hence the reason Alaskian moose, bear, etc. are so huge. In areas that have never been glaciated like the African savanna, plants have had the time to evolve counter-measures to predation (like incorporating silica or toxins into their cells).

This is an interesting theory, but it does not hold water.  First, the size to latitude gradation exists between sites that were glaciated. For example, my cousin’s southern Vermont deer are obviously smaller than my Eastern Ontario deer. Second, black spruce did not suddenly appear just after the last ice age.  Instead, it followed the receding glaciers from its old southern range to its present northerly range. Besides, the deciduous plants that fill the temperate carolinian forest are more recently evolved than the relatively ancient gymnosperm conifers that fill the boreal forest. One factor that comes into play is that big creatures cope better with cold because they have a small surface to volume ratio. Coastal Alaskan brown bears are twice the size of their barren ground brethren from the same latitude because the coastal bears get to feast on seafood.  Plants have nothing to do with it. Clearly, many factors determine the size of animals, but I do not think that the purported nutritiousness of the relatively unproductive boreal forest is one of those factors. Keep your stick on the ice, Thos.

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Whitetail deer, for instance, vary not only by quality of habitat (where they eat better, they grow bigger: surprise!), but also for some reason by latitude (they run bigger farther North; I don’t think anybody’d figured that one out, last time I looked, though there were speculations).

Back when I was in Wildlife Biologists school, this was considered to be a consequence of  long ,cold winters acting in conjunction with surface-area/mass ratios.   The bigger you are, the easier it is to a) stay warm and b)muscle the little freezing guys out of the lunch line. Jim Johnson – Hide quoted text — Show quoted text –         I don’t know whether anything of the sort is true for turkeys, but I do know they run smaller than the barnyard variety — they get lots more exercise, and nobody fattens them.         It might be interesting to study some game cookbooks from different centuries, looking both for size of serving (people have gotten bigger!) and for number of birds per person or servings per haunch, or whatever: that might give hints whether particular species have changed appreciably in size over time. Anybody shepherding a doctoral candidate they want to keep busy?  :-) RR Neuswanger, PhD, NRA Life      Fight spam, the cholesterol Balto-Fennic & Germanic           of the Internet! see AcqBibSuppProj (ABSP)             http://spam.abuse.net Library of Congress, Washington, DC 20540-4120                      I speak for me.  Only.

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[snip] For whitetail deer, …. BTW, not many people think of it, but in any mammal, the skin is the largest organ in the body ….. It’s about 16% of the body weight in most cases.

The red deer hinds we shot weighed about 100lbs give or take a pound of two.  And a 100lbs hind (head, feet, viscera removed but heart & lungs still in) had a hide that weighed exactly 10lbs.  In charging me for the carcase, the professional stalker charged one pound sterling per pound of body weight, and the invoice lists "one deer carcase, 110lbs in skin = L110". –Jonathan Jonathan Spencer — forensic firearms examiner Mountjoy Research Centre, Durham, England, DH1 3UR tel: +44 191 386 6107   fax: +44 191 383 0686

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I’m looking for information on the average weight, on the hoof, dressed and usable meat, of common game animals. The local library seems fairly scrimpy and I haven’t had much luck searching the web.

        One problem is the amount of variation. Whitetail deer, for instance, vary not only by quality of habitat (where they eat better, they grow bigger: surprise!), but also for some reason by latitude (they run bigger farther North; I don’t think anybody’d figured that one out, last time I looked, though there were speculations).         I don’t know whether anything of the sort is true for turkeys, but I do know they run smaller than the barnyard variety — they get lots more exercise, and nobody fattens them.         It might be interesting to study some game cookbooks from different centuries, looking both for size of serving (people have gotten bigger!) and for number of birds per person or servings per haunch, or whatever: that might give hints whether particular species have changed appreciably in size over time. Anybody shepherding a doctoral candidate they want to keep busy?  :-) RR Neuswanger, PhD, NRA Life      Fight spam, the cholesterol Balto-Fennic & Germanic           of the Internet! see AcqBibSuppProj (ABSP)             http://spam.abuse.net Library of Congress, Washington, DC 20540-4120                      I speak for me.  Only.

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I’m looking for information on the average weight, on the hoof, dressed and usable meat, of common game animals. The local library seems fairly scrimpy and I haven’t had much luck searching the web. — Craig Arrogance seeks to knows all the answers, Wisdom seeks to understand the questions.

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I’m looking for information on the average weight, on the hoof, dressed and usable meat, of common game animals. The local library seems fairly scrimpy and I haven’t had much luck searching the web.

For whitetail deer, 1.39 times the field-dressed weight is the live weight.  The net yield of meat in traditional "bone-in" cuts is half the field-dressed  weight. BTW, not many people think of it, but in any mammal, the skin is the largest  organ in the body (and yes, the skin is an "organ" in the same sense the liver is). It’s about 16% of the body weight in most cases.  The viscera collectively are roughly one-third of the live weight. A 100-pound field-dressed carcass (head and skin on) is from a deer weighing roughly 140 pounds live.  You will get about 50 pounds of meat off that deer. The Elitist

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