Reddit reviews Mineral Licks, Geophagy, and Biogeochemistry of North American Ungulates

https://www.amazon.com/Mineral-Geophagy-Biogeochemistry-American-Ungulates/dp/0813811511

The book in the link discusses animal trails and mineral licks in early colonial period from historic records it gives some interesting details of large ungulates specifically bison in the east. Given that extensive eastern woodland in some areas was a secondary woodland established after native farming communities died of disease which spread in advance of colonial contact human pressure on ungulates would have been an issue, especially in corn farming cultures which presumably supported fairly high human populations.

The range of the grizzly, or as a European would say brown bear was presumably more extensive. Brown bears are naturally found through temperate forest in Europe, obviously no black bears in Europe but would grizzly be excluded by black bear?

Goats and big horn sheep may well have been best adapted to western mountains and drier conditions for sheep. Pronghorn is an open grassland species. Otherwise the east had a roughly equivalent fauna. Presumably bison would have maintained some open grassland into the forest zone, European bison are forest animals so perhaps woodland bison may have existed in lower numbers which could be more easily extirpated by increasing farming human populations.

I suppose the very interesting question is the extinction of lineages such as horse from North America which feral populations succeeded so well in. So much of the large ungulate fauna from earlier time periods had been lost it is a depauperate fauna in a historic sense.

The presence of large ungulates and their impact mirrors debates in Europe introduced by Frans Vera on the amount of forest and impact of grazers. The eastern forest had open areas such as Barrens, geology and soil restricted tree growth.