I need some informations about the history of white tailed deer in Finland.

Well, they were brought here in 1934, so this year it's their 70th birthday in Finland.I believe there were five females and one male in the first shipment. They were sent here by the finnish emigrants from the US as a gift, and here they were first kept in a fenced are for a year or so, and then released to nature. Some decades later a couple more were brought here, but at the time there were already hundreds on whitetails living in the forests of southern Finland. In the early sixties they were so numerous, that first hunting licences were given. Today, there are lots of whitetails in southern Finland, and some 22 000 were shot last year, while about 27 000 still remained after the hunting season.

They are mostly hunted from blinds and food bait is often used. In some areas there are really lots of them. I know of a hunting club, which has about 12 000 hectars of hunting land, and they shoot more than 400 whitetails from there. Every year, that is.

The introduction of whitetails in Finland is one of those rare occasions, when a newcomer species hasn't had any negative effects on any of the local original species. Even more strange is that the whitetails in Finland originate from only one male, and this hasn't had any negative effects on the population. They are healthy, large and some males have great horns also. Big horns are rare, though, since the Finns are more of meat-hunters than trophy hunters, and most whitetails are shot at early age. I believe having heard, that the average life expectancy of a Finnish whitetail is less than four years, due to effective hunting.

thank you very much.

Oh, I almost forgot: there will be a book about the white-tailed deer of Finland published this year. I have seen the photos that will be in that book and they are magnificent. They would probably interest whitetail enthusiastists in the US as well. The book is also written in english (one book has finnish and english text.)

Yep, I will post it here. The book will be published in June and it turned out that unlike I first thought, there will be two separate prints: finnish and english.

Great, thanks!



Tomorrow our buck season opens so aprox. 200.000 German hunters including myself are extremely itchy and looking forward to that day some say is more important than their birthday.



However, everything is prepared, gun cleaned and sigthed in, high seat checked and twigs cut, stalking pathes cleaned from dry leafs, alarm clock set to 3:30 and, last but not least, hunting knife sharpened. Besides that, we can only wait and hope, that the weather cooperates. Some rain would be good.

Those whitetails were shipped from the State of Minnesota, which had a lot of scandanvian settlers migrate to there.

I think it would be ablast to go to Finland to hunt whitetail after hunting them in Minnesota and Wisconsin and Upper Michigan, where those animals imported migrated from.
What kind of size do they get. An average buck in Minnesota field cleans in the 180 to 200 lb range or more. I have taken one that field cleaned at about 270 pounds that the DNR figures must have weighed 340 to 350 lbs on the hoof.

It will be interesting to see the book once published. I enjoy reading things about Finland. Reading about Finland's struggle against Russia in the 1939-1940 Winter War is one of the most heroic military histories I have ever read.

Hopefully it will be available thru Barnes and Noble.

Cheers and Good shooting
seafire

Siberian Roe buck???

It may sound silly but are they white?

FB

Do you mean like ermines or snow hares?



Seriously, they never turn white but very big and so, I was told, do their antlers. I read about life weights of over 50 kgs. and antler weight of up to 1.200 grams.



This seems to confirm the theory that the colder it becomes, the higher the average weight of wild animals of the same species. For more information you might google.

Seafire: Nice to hear that you are interested in our history.
About the size of our whitetails, I think the biggest males weigh about 160-170 kg, average full-grown weight being about 100-110 kg.

Yeah, just like Canadian whitetails are larger than those in Texas, a Siberian roe buck is massive and keeps the same characteristics...I believe they are in the same areas as the maral.