The Return of the White-tailed Deer.  James B. Trefethen,  February, 1970.  American Heritage.  Volume 21, Issue 2

"Most of the eastern Indians led a semi-nomadic existence, moving on every few years under the pressure of enemy attack or because of exhausted crop fields. All the woodland tribes used fire extensively—to clear garden patches and homesites, to minimize surprise attack, to drive game, or to improve hunting. Burned lands encircled most Indian villages for miles, and any land abandoned or not intensively cultivated was soon revegetated with ideal deer food and cover. Indeed, the Indian probably helped create many more deer than he killed."

Even in 1542, Southern California's air quality was in question August 22, 2015 The San Luis Obispo Tribune

... During the 19th century, many recent arrivals from the East and Midwest thought the fires were deliberately started by Native Americans to facilitate their killing of wild game ...  historical documents, indicate that Native Americans employed extensive burning of chaparral and shrub lands as a means of land management. They sought to turn the former into native grasslands to promote the proliferation of deer, antelope and small game...

Native American use of fire dogedaos.com

... The most significant type of environmental change brought about by Precolumbian human activity was the modification of vegetation. … Vegetation was primarily altered by the clearing of forest and by intentional burning... The burning of large areas was useful to divert big game (deer, elk, bison) into small unburned areas for easier hunting and provide open prairies/meadows (rather than brush and tall trees) where animals (including ducks and geese) like to dine on fresh, new grass sprouts ...

Fire Ecology and Management of Southwestern Forests Ecology and Management …, 2021

... Prior to Euro-American settlement, Native Americans used fire and co-existed with the landscape’s fire regime, but colonists brought different perspectives and land uses, excluding fire from most southwestern forests for well over a century. Severe fires are becoming larger, threatening people and structures as well as ecosystem sustainability...

Fire and agroforestry revive California indigenous groups' traditions October 11, 2018 Mongabay.com

... For centuries, the Karuk tribe has nudged this interlocking ecosystem toward producing these beneficial plants through practices known as agroforestry... we cultivate them with fire ... Fire clears oak groves of encroaching conifers and kills the weevils that ruin acorns. It renews the meadow grasses for grazing deer and elk...

Can more fires create less smoke? October 15, 2018 Oregon, The Edwardsville Intelligencer

... Tribes in the Pacific Northwest have used fire as a tool to shape the landscape for thousands of years. The touch of flame kept huckleberry and camas fields abundant. In areas where tribes hunted deer and elk, fire created a mat of forage plants on the forest floor, a favorite food for the ungulates. Burned areas recycle nutrients more efficiently and help to control the spread of invasive species...

A history lesson on early hunters February 5, 2018 Ohio, Bucyrus Telegraph Forum

... Ohio was mostly heavy forest, but there were prairies here and there with rich grasses and reeds that deer, buffalo, and elk loved, and the Indians burned them frequently to remove growing seedlings and saplings of brush and trees and fertilize new growth of prairie grasses...

Native Peoples' Relationship to the California Chaparral  MK Anderson, JE Keeley - Valuing Chaparral, 2018

... many tribes of California  ... natural fires with deliberate burning of chaparral to maximize its ability to produce useful products... Areas were burned in ways designed to create a mosaic of open grassland and recently burned, young and mature stands of chaparral with different combinations of species and densities. This management conferred on chaparral plant communities a degree of spatial, structural, successional, and biotic diversity that exceeded what would have been the case in the absence of human intervention...  [the article contains many references to research about how this helped improve the deer herd] ...

Setting Fires and Restoring an American Landscape April 23, 2018 Illinois, New York Times

... For thousands of years, indigenous Americans ignited the landscape. Fire, they knew, brought bison and deer to hunt, and berries and tubers to harvest.  European colonizers took these strategies and practiced them for centuries — but things changed in the early 20th century... The United States Forest Service started the Smokey Bear campaign, which portrayed all fire as destructive...

Karuk ecological fire management practices promote elk habitat in northern California. 2022 - Journal of Applied Ecology

... After a century of fire suppression and accumulating fuel loads in North American forests, prescribed burns are increasingly used to prevent conditions leading to catastrophic megafire. There is widespread evidence that prescribed fire was used by Indigenous communities to manage natural and cultural resources for thousands of years...  Our results suggest that transitioning to prescribed burns that more closely follow Karuk traditional ecological knowledge will promote elk habitat in the region...

Tribes used fire to maintain area's habitat October 17, 2018 Oregon, Ashland Daily Tidings

... could see where the meadow had been but pines and brush had grown over the meadow through the years... a place where indigenous peoples would come on a seasonal basis to gather camas and tarweed and go elk and deer hunting. They used fire to maintain it, to create the ideal habitat... [Southern Oregon University Laboratory of Anthropology]

Climate change stokes fiery future for California September 17, 2018 Santa Rosa Press Democrat

... fire shaped the drought-prone landscape for thousands of years, as Native Americans used it to maintain meadows and forests that provided deer, elk and acorns for food as well as grasses for basketry...

Ashland, As It Was: Ashland, Ore., Forest Plan Reduces Wildfire Danger August 5, 2019 Oregon, ijpr.or

... Until settlers began arriving in the 1850s, the indigenous people used low-intensity fire to herd [and feed] deer, reducing fuel content in the watershed.  As settlers pushed aside the Indians, the forest thickened, becoming susceptible to wildfires...

San Juan Islands, Kwiaht studies islands' deer populations October 21, 2017 Washington, Islands' Sounder

... Early European explorers saw herds of deer swimming between the islands pursued by Coast Salish hunters in canoes; and observed Coast Salish villagers burning underbrush to improve deer habitat ..,