To determine the number of deer in a game preserve, a conservationist catches 874 deer, tags them and lets them loos. Later, 708 deer are caught, 177 of them are tagged, how many deer are in the preserve?

Question

Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

177/708 or 25% of the deer caught in the second round were tagged.

Which implies that the conservationist must have tagged 25% of the deer population in the preserve.
So the original 874 deers must represent 25% of the deer population.

.25x = 874
x = 874/.25 = 3496

So there must have been approximately 3500 deer.