Differences in the physical size of male white-tailed deer from varying parts of West Virginia were known to exist a considerable number of years before any sophisticated attempts were made to explain them. Prior to 1940, the state\u27s deer herd had been making a slow, but increasingly steady, comeback from a period of extreme scarcity around the turn of the century. To supplement the original remaining stock, shown in Figure 1, page 2, a deer restocking program was initiated in 1923. In 1937, federal legislation, in the form of the Federal Aid to Wildlife Restoration Act, gave added support to the restocking program. State legislation had also contributed to the increase in the number of deer by passage of what is now commonly known as bucks-only regulations
