Success! I finally found literature from January 1983 in which Shimano might have made the introductory announcement of the XT m700 Deer Head group. It was on a Touring component brochure. At the time we have that Shimano definitely began making m700 components sometime in the Fall of 1982, we have located a February '83 stamped cantilever brake (HB) and this brochure might have been the first printed material about it by Shimano. Shimano XT might likely be an 1983 model production group and their History page might be wrong to claim '82, as no '82 bike used it as these were made for '83 model bikes, and even then, adoption might have been slow that year. Of the few manufactures using some Deer Head components in 1983 where MountainBikes and Moots carrying groupsets and Specialized with Stumpjumpers using their cantilevers.
Curiously, the bike in the brochure is a 1982 Stumpjumper and appears to be a TIG with a biplane fork (March to June built) bike. Somewhere, I read Shimano worked with California and Colorado bike companies in the development of this group set, and MountainBikes, Moots and Specialized could have been these.
