Chapter 15
If you were studying deer, they took you everywhere.
Berkeley 1932–1933
Cowan at Berkeley
With deer skulls, 1935. Image Cowan_PP_044 courtesy of University of Victoria Special Collections.
Cowan & Columbian Black-tailed Deer
Odocoileus hemionus columbianus Comox, 1930. Photograph by Hamilton Mack Laing Image J-00272 courtesy of the Royal BC Museum, BC Archives.
Illustration of Tails of Black and White tailed Deer
1932. Illustration by Cowan. Image Cowan_PH_373 courtesy of University of Victoria Special Collections.
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Cowan collected anecdotal accounts and then measured and analyzed his specimens to map the ranges of what he proposed as a circle of nine coastal “races” of black-tailed deer, between which there is limited gene flow. The deer he was most familiar with was the Columbian Black-tailed Deer (columbianus), coinciding with the range between his own summer and winter habitats of Vancouver and Berkeley. The notion of a wandering buck ranging over this low-lying oak woodland ecosystem backed by the Coast Mountains would have been a credible scenario to Cowan, given the travelling back and forth over the same landscape to see Joyce. There were only a few minor barriers like rivers to cross (deer are adept swimmers).
