(Narrator) This program is supported by grants from the Solan and Martha Dixon Foundation, The Alabama Wildlife Federation working for wildlife since 1935, The Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources State Lands Division and Protected Life Insurance Company, 100 Years of Service.

He is among the best known, most sought after of Alabama inhabitants He contributes millions of dollars to the Alabama economy, yet he doesn't even carry a wallet.

Without him, conservation efforts in the state would suffer.

And yet, he's not a card-carrying member of any conservation organization.

He has no driver's license but he's been known to take to the highways.

Although he has no formal education, he plays a key role in educating Alabama's children.

And, like so many Alabamians, he is abandoning his rural roots for suburban living.

(Doug Phillips) Hi, I'm Doug Phillips, and like many Alabamians, I'm fascinated by the White Tail Deer.

This majestic animal exemplifies much of what's good about our state.

the buck and the doe are strong proud animals who hard to make their living off the land.

Unfortunately, the decline of our native landscapes is making it increasingly difficult for the White Tail to find its way in this modern world without adapting to a very unnatural way of life.

Join me for a visit with the White tail Deer.

We'll find that we share a long history.

We'll see that our lives are bound together today, and we'll consider what the future for the White Tail has to say for the future of all Alabama.

This program is about a land unknown to many people.

A land that in many ways that has maintained its native and natural wonders.

A place of bountiful backcountry, forests, streams, and wildlife more diverse than can be found in much of the inhabited world.

come alongf with me as we explore the wild wonders of this land.

Come along as we discover Alabama.

Welcome to Discovering Alabama, and welcome to deer country.

From top to bottom, Alabama is deer country.

Current estimates are that between one and a half to two million White Tail Deer inhabit the state.

That's quite a number when you consider that back in the early 1900s the White Tail may have been on the verge of extinction.

But then the relationship between man and deer is long and complex.

native Americans depended heavily upon White Tail Deer for food, clothing and tools.

The deer benefitted from Indian land management practices, such as the burning of forests for agriculture.

In what biologists call benign symbiosis, man and deer lived in a balanced coexistence.

(Noel Grayson) First off, you know they're going to eat the meat.

You know that they were doing it so that they would have something to eat.

The next one was bone tools that they could use to make stone tools.

They would use the sinew for sewing, for tying on stone tools, broad hedge, the arrow heads, they used it for moccasins.

These are deer skin, they use them for clothing and as you know, the skin itself was made into leggings, was made into shirts, takes five skins to make one man's shirt, took five skins and one deer for each leg.

The bones, a few people know that there is actually a sewing needle in all that they used in the forearm of the deer, and they'd use tons of it.

They used all of it.

(Doug Phillips) The number of humans in prehistoric times was not so great that it oculd overwhelm the numbers of deer.

But that began to change with the arrival of European settlers.

The Europeans came in great numbers, and with new technologies.

They needed more protein than their domesticated animals could supply, and their weapons gave them tremendous advantages over the simpler tools of the indigenous peoples.

Soon, though, the Native Americans discovered the power and prestige of wealth attained from selling venison and deer skins.

They joined the ranks of European market hunters who saw the White Tail Deer as a valuable commodity.

By the early 1800s, the White Tail Deer population was reduced, some say, as much as fifty percent.

Benign symbiosis was being replaced by Manifest Destiny.

For a few years between the early to mid 1800s, White Tail Deer numbers rebounded a bit.

But by the 1850s, the population of the United States was booming.

Rural subsistence hunting was on the upswing.

After the Civil War, White Tail market hunting reached record highs with the advent of repeating rifles.

White Tail numbers were at an all time low by 1900.

Alabama had an estimated deer population of around ten thousand animals.

Something had to be done, or, as hard as it is for us to believe now, Alabama would be a state without White Tail Deer.

(Claude Jenkins) The restocking of White Tail Deer in the south started shortly after the Pittman-Robertson act was passed in 1937.

Most of the restocking was completed by the late 1960s.

The restocking of White Tail Deer in the south was very successful.

In fact, we're observing today the results of that restocking effort.

(Doug Phillips) And so with new laws, regulated hunting practices, and conservation efforts, the White Tail has made a comeback.

But that's hardly the end of the tale.

(Steve Ditchkoff) The state did a fantastic job of restocking White Tail Deer in the '40s, '50s, and '60s.

As a result with the fact that we didn't harvest does for a long time, populations got out of control.

Currently, populations in the state of Alabama are probably greater than where we want them to be.

Populations that are maintained at high densities, populations that have sex ratios that may not be what we would consider normal, maybe experiencing higher levels of social stress/ Populations at high densities may also be experiencing nutrition stress.

(Doug Phillips) Quite an irony; we've gone from near extinction to an overpopulation of White Tail Deer.

But, is it just overpopulation, or are there other forces at work?

As urban sprawl continues to occur across Alabama it's sure to bring more profits (Bill Gray) and we're going to have to learn to be able to deal with that effectively.

We're trained and we're set up to deal with managing deer for people that want the deer, and want to meet some end or management objective.

The urban wildlife management, urban deer management, urban deer problems its not something that's often very pleasant.

You wind up with polarized camps.

Some folks want the deer all gone, some don't shoot them, and it turns into a people management problem.

(Doug Phillips) The twentieth century brought an increasing number of deer at the time of decreasing natural habitat.

Not good for the deer or habitat.

White Tail Deer, being a large animal, have the real potential to alter ecosystem structure.

(Steve Ditchkoff) They're browsers, which means they're going to select what's available, the highest quality foods first, but when you get deer numbers higher than carrying capacity and you have limitations in food resources, they're going to start to consume whatever's available.

As a result there is some evidence that there are parts of the state where there's some plant species that are not there anymore due to over-browsing by White Tail Deer.

Habitat loss is a huge, huge concern not only for deer populations, (Lesley de Souza) but for wildlife in Alabama as a whole.

habitat loss is a huge problem and managing and protecting habitat is going to influence not only deer populations, but its going to influence other organisms that are in the same ecosystem because its important that we not only consider what's happening to the deer populations, but how this habitat loss is going to be driving other organisms to extinction potentially.

(Doug Phillips) As the White Tail eats itself out of the house and home, so to speak, in the wild it begins to look for less traditional sources of nourishment.

(Bill Gray) When you move into area that was for thousands of years the home of deer, you should probably expect to see deer, and you should probably expect them to eat your landscape.

I don't know what the solution is, but its a problem that's going to have to be managed.

Again, I think thats probably going to be the most pressing problem that we deal with in the future.

Its going to be deer-human conflicts in urban settings.

Along with the decrease in natural deer habitat, came an elimination of the large natural predators, like the Eastern Cougar and the Red Wolf.

These days, the large predator is likely to be a Dodge Ram or a Toyota Tacoma.

(Rhonda Stricklin) I guess it is surprising, the number of deer crashes.

When you look at the data, there really are a lot.

They really can do significant damage.

We are at the Research and Development laboratory at the University of Alabama.

The thing that goes on in our lab is that we develop software.

We can look at several years worth of data and we can isolate just the animal crashes, it will allow you to do that.

And we can give you information about what month they happened what time of day they're more likely to happen, what roadways they're more likely to happen on, specific numbers and things like that.

Its pretty obvious to see when the crashes occur, when you need to really be on the look out in the fall, October, November, December, January, there was a much higher number of deer crashes.

And if you look at the graph of the time of day they happen, its dusk and dawn.

If you want to go to our website you can get a lot of this data yourself, and you can actually play with the CARE software yourself, and you can also go to the crash backs where we've compiled information, and you can get specific information for your county, your city, and just for the state of Alabama in general.

The white-tailed deer is perhaps the most majestic creature in the Alabama woods.

To have this magnificent animal considered a hazard, a nuisance, a pest, well, it ain't right.

[music begins] The question we must address in the 21st century is not just one of increasing white-tailed deer populations, The deeper question is: how do we return to a state of benign symbiosis?

A state where deer and man can coexist.

A state where the relationship is mutually beneficial.

Many believe the answer lies in our ancient past.

Hunting is the biggest management tool that we have to manage populations, especially of deer, throughout Alabama.

You know, if they go left unchecked, if hunting ended, we're going to have an explosion of deer.

There's going to be crop damage issues, a lot of car/vehicle issues out there.

If populations go up unchecked, and also something that people generally don't think about is just general good ecosystem health.

You're going to have a herbivory problem, you're going to have extremely excessive browsing pressure, you won't get regeneration.

Some of your, there are several environmental issues that would come to light if we didn't have hunting.

There are other techniques being investigated but hunters right now is the primary technique we've got for managing deer populations.

You know, hunters have a huge responsibility in managing the deer resource.

Whether they realize it or not, they are providing an ecological service to society.

Hunters need to make a paradigm shift from a sport of self-gratification to recognizing their role as ecological managers.

It's that self-gratification added to that that attracts PETA and you know, those kind of folks.

And so hunters in Alabama and elsewhere need to make that shift.

Another sort of irony, the white-tailed species once hunted to near extinction, now depends on the hunter for assistance for its survival in the wild.

You know, the successes that we have achieved with conservation, habitat preservation, has come directly from the sportsmen themselves.

Because every dollar that's spent for a hunting license for a fishing license, goes directly to preservations.

We should be proud as hunters to let everyone know that we are hunters, because we are responsible for the great abundance of wildlife that we have now.

We are the conservationists.

That's where it all started back in the 30s.

It was the outdoorsmen who carried that burden to protect hunting and fishing and preservation in the US and in the great state of Alabama.

[music begins] It's easy to personify the white-tailed deer, easy to attribute human characteristics to this remarkable creature.

After all, the white-tail needs many of the same things we do.

Buck, doe, and fawn need a safe place to call home.

Good deer habitat includes a diversity of cover.

Cover for bedding down and for giving birth.

Thick cover for escaping danger.

Together with some open spaces and protected travel corridors.

Like us, the deer needs fresh water.

The deer needs an abundance and variety of nutritious food.

A healthy buck needs a home range of around 600 acres.

While a doe can make do with about 300 acres.

The white-tailed deer may not be able to scan a check card at the local store, but he does contribute millions to the Alabama economy.

[music ends] It's a very important species, scientifically, ecologically, economically.

White-tailed deer is the most important game species in Alabama, and perhaps the South, from an economic standpoint.

Land use certainly has changed over the years.

Thirty years ago, landowners were primarily interested in generating revenue from timber resources, today, wildlife values in a forested system.

It's just a more important consideration.

[insects chirping] The dollars spent on hunting are easy to quantify, but there are other contributions that make the white-tail vital to the well-being of our state.

I think we all have the desire for the outdoors.

Now it may not necessarily be in hunting, but I think we all need to be in the outdoors and it's just part of where we came from.

You know, my job, it's a very stressful job, it's pretty intense, and getting in the outdoors allows me to put that on the shelf and to, I guess, revitalize you know, my interest and my enthusiasm for my work.

It's been demonstrated, from well-designed studies that stress has a lot to do with illness, and particularly with heart disease.

There's not a lot of stress sitting in a tree stand, or turkey hunting.

I mean, it's great therapy [music beings] Certainly, conservation efforts to protect deer habitat lead to wooded wonderlands that we all can enjoy.

Less well-known, but every bit as important are the contributions the white-tailed deer makes to the enlightenment of our children, bringing the aims of education and conservation wonderfully together, it's only natural then that the aims of educators be supported by conservationists.

such as the Alabama Wildlife Federation, a leader in the historically successful work of restoring white-tailed deer populations in the south.

Today the federation provides a variety of outdoor education programs at its new nature center in Millbrook, just north of Montgomery.

At the nature center, as at other outdoor learning sites in Alabama, students learn science, history, and many subjects through the study of wildlife, natural habitats, and environmental stewardship.

[music ends] The activities that we do, that children are allowed to do here at the nature center are hands-on, minds-on activities.

The number one thing that teachers and students like about the Alabama Nature Center is they get outdoors, they're in an outdoor, giant 350 acre outdoor classroom.

[birds chirping, kids talking] The unique environment here at the Alabama Nature Center is one that when school groups pull up, the teachers are just as excited and as enthusiastic as the students about being here.

And the teachers are encouraged to actively participate along with the students throughout the different activities.

It's a learning place for all ages.

[music beings] (Dr.

Doug Philips) The Alabama Nature Center often teams with other conservation organizations in assisting schools in the development of on-site outdoor classrooms, And in conducting such outdoor education programs as Project Community and Discovering Our Heritage.

Well I always wanted to be in wildlife.

That's what I went to school for, I knew this was what I wanted to do as a kid, I loved to hunt, fish, those are my most fondest memories, hunting, fishing with my dad.

And, I've always had that interest, that love for the outdoors, and now coming here, in extension, I'm in more of an educational role rather than a research role, and I definitely chose that pathway in my career at this point because I've, I realize the value of education and getting folks to understand not only about deer, turkeys, or quail, but also about habitats in general.

I think a primary thing that we as biologists have to do is to get that word out there, education, is teaching other people about some of the effects that are going on right now in Alabama.

Because I think some people are so disconnected and to achieve balance, I think we first have to educate.

It should be really part of the curriculum in our schools, to make sure that we give our kids an exposure to the outdoors.

You know, that outdoor experience is something that we need.

It's really a necessity, it's really not an option.

And I really feel the only place that we can guarantee that everyone is going to get a chance to sample that is through our school systems, our public school system.

An enjoyable walk in the woods, and educating our children to the world of wonder in the woods, just a couple of the contributions that white-tailed deer make for all of Alabama.

And you don't have to be a hunter to appreciate these values.

You know, it's funny because I still get, people will, I still see surprise on people's face when I tell them I like to hunt.

It's not just hunting, though, it's about being outdoors.

[rushing water] It takes years to develop skills in the outdoors.

It takes persistence; it takes dedication, and these are the kind of skills that we acquire from those outdoor experiences, and we can take those same skills and use them in our everyday life.

[birds chirping] Benign symbiosis.

Maybe an unfamiliar term but easy enough to understand.

Deer needs man; man needs deer.

[music begins] Discovering Alabama is a production of the Alabama Museum of Natural History, The University of Alabama.

[music ends] This program is supported by grants from: The Solon and Martha Dixon Foundation.

The Alabama Wildlife Federation, working for wildlife since 1935.

The Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, State Lands Division.

And Protective Life Insurance Company, 100 years of service.