1997 Iowa Habitat Stamp - Whitetail

"Being a lover of Iowa’s natural resources and wildlife and realizing the importance of habitat to wildlife, I consider it an honor to have designed the 1997, 1998 and 1999 Iowa Habitat Stamps. At one time the area, which was later to become the state of Iowa, was the home to a variety of big game including whitetail deer, elk, bison, mountain lion, gray wolf, black bear and grizzly bear. The 1997 Iowa Habitat Stamp design features Iowa’s only remaining, big game mammal, the whitetail deer. Some estimate that pre-colonial Iowa probably had a deer population that ranged between 500,000 and a million animals. Through unregulated meat and market hunting and habitat destruction, the whitetail deer were almost entirely eliminated from the state at the turn of the century. In 1935 the state deer population was estimated at 500 animals. The first modern deer season in Iowa was held in 1953 with a harvest of just over 4,000 deer. In 1995 the after-season deer population was estimated at 20