> This is interesting, because you also stated that Pleistocene
> deer were larger and fatter than modern deer.  Deer, however, are
> forest dwellers; they eat the bark of saplings and shoots.  They
> do not flourish in steppe-tundra conditions.

Reindeer live on the tundra of the Arctic.
The steppe-tundra was also a very wet lush land ( unlike my beloved Texas)
with grasses and small shrubs.  Steppe-tundra deer could not live in forests
because their antlers were 12 feet in width.
The steep-tundra environment no longer exists anywhere on Earth.  It was
full of Pleistocene megafauna such as mammoths, wooly rhinos, giant ground
sloths, giant camels, etc. all of which began to become extinct beginning
about 50,000 years ago to 4,000 years ago when the last mammoths died out on
Wrangle Island.  They existed in numbers that far exceeded animal
populations seen anywhere on Earth today.
Sixty percent of all large mammal species became extinct during this event.
Knowing what we know about the steppe-tundra climate, it is reasonable to
assume that they must have had huge fat stores to survive the deep snows of
an ice-age winter.

Ray Audette
Author "NeanderThin"
http://www.neanderthin.com