Albino Deer

pike
If they pass the law protecting albino deer what would the effects be on the herd if any?

Doc Wild
Good point Blaabs63. It would be nice to assume that we have surpassed superstition as our guiding light for wildlife management practices. However…….

Pike, with the recessive gene in a herd and protection having been placed on harvesting those animals, the likelihood of the animal’s eventually breeding to another recessive partner increase and will ultimately begin to spiral the herd health down with the higher frequency of offspring possessing the recessive gene.

This is a similar philosophy to genetic drift to some degree, where once a gene is removed from the breeding population and very limited, to non-existent bloodline augmentation is available, the gene will not replace itself and the ultimate outcome would be the demise of the herd.

This is much more common in “island” populations (isolated populations) than that of normal interactive herds like most of us encounter with our whitetail deer. It would truly take an extreme circumstance to have a detrimental effect. But the increase in mortality and frequency of albinism would become more evident.