This discussion made me go back and find the notes of my conversation with Jim Hefflefinger about 8 years ago. I found that I had "misrembered" some of what we discussed. That prompted me to go back to his book and reread the discussion of taxonomy and subspecies, which I had not bothered to do until now. When I consulted the book yesterday, I was just looking to confirm a quote that I remembered.
During the years that I worked as a deer biologist, Odocoileus hemionus crooki was the accepted name for the desert mule deer that inhabit west Texas, southern New Mexico, southern Arizona, southern California and northern Sonora. It turns out that, according to the conventions that govern the assigning of latin names in the Linnean system used by biologists, the subspecific epithet crooki was found to be invalid. O. h. eremicus is now the accepted subspecific name for these desert-dwelling mule deer throughout their range.
Some authors have called the mule deer that inhabit southwestern Arizona, southeastern California and northwestern Sonora the "Bura" or "Burro" deer. Several specimens (including the type specimen) were collected from the Sierra Seri in western Sonora in 1895. They were reported to have shorter hair, a black dorsal stripe, lighter forehead markings and wide-form antlers. However Donald Hoffmeister, author of the Mammals of Arizona, measured a number of specimens taken within 50 miles of the locality of the type specimen. He found that their skull measurements did not differ from those of other mule deer. Most biologists do not recognize the existence of the burro deer as taxonomically distinct from other mule deer populations.
Now, I realize that was probably way more than any of you wanted to know on this subject and for that, I apologize.
