White-tailed deer


The white-tailed deer, also known commonly as the whitetail and the Virginia deer, is a medium-sized species of deer native to North, Central and South America. It is the most widely distributed mainland ungulate herbivore in the Americas; coupled with its natural predator, the mountain lion, it is one of the most widely distributed terrestrial mammal species in the Americas and the world. Highly adaptable, the various subspecies of white-tailed deer inhabit many different ecosystems, from arid grasslands to the Amazon and Orinoco basins; from the Llanos to the high-elevation terrain of the Andes.

Distribution

In North America the white-tailed deer is very common in states to the east and south of the Rocky Mountains, including southwestern Arizona, with the exception of the American West Coast and Baja California Peninsula, where its ecological niche is filled by the black-tailed deer or the mule deer from that point west except for mixed deciduous riparian corridors, river valley bottomlands, and lower foothills of the northern Rocky Mountain region from Wyoming west to eastern Washington and eastern Oregon, and north to northeastern British Columbia and southern Yukon, including in the Montana valley and foothill grasslands. The westernmost population of the species, known as the Columbian white-tailed deer, was once widespread in the mixed forests along the Willamette and Cowlitz River valleys of western Oregon and southwestern Washington, but current numbers are considerably reduced, and it is classified as near-threatened by the IUCN. This population is separated from other white-tailed deer populations.
Texas is home to by far the most individual white-tailed deer of all U.S. states, Canadian provinces, or Latin American countries, with an estimated population of 5.3 million, with both wild deer and farmed herds, the latter raised for large rack size and breeding. High populations of white-tailed deer are known to exist on the Edwards Plateau of Central Texas, as well as in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. The conversion of land adjacent to the Canadian Rockies to agricultural use, and partial clear-cutting of coniferous trees, has been favorable to the white-tailed deer and has extended its distribution to as far northwest as the Yukon. Populations of white-tailed deer around the Great Lakes have expanded their range north and westward, also due to conversion of land to agricultural use, with local caribou, elk, and moose populations declining. White-tailed deer are crepuscular, meaning they are most active at dawn and dusk, sporadically resting throughout the day and night.
Globally, the white-tailed deer has been introduced to New Zealand, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick, the Greater Antilles of the Caribbean, and some countries in Europe.

Taxonomy

Some taxonomists have attempted to separate white-tailed deer into a host of subspecies, based largely on morphological differences. Genetic studies, however, suggest fewer subspecies within the animal's range, as compared to the 30 to 40 subspecies that some scientists have described in the last century. The Florida Key deer, O. v. clavium, and the Columbian white-tailed deer, O. v. leucurus, are both listed as endangered under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. In the United States, the Virginia white-tail, O. v. virginianus, is among the most widespread subspecies. Several local deer populations, especially in the southern United States, are descended from white-tailed deer transplanted from various localities east of the Continental Divide. Some of these deer populations may have been from as far north as the Great Lakes region to as far west as Texas, yet are also quite at home in the Appalachian and Piedmont regions of the south. These deer, over time, have intermixed with the local indigenous deer populations.
Central and South America have a complex number of white-tailed deer subspecies that range from Guatemala to as far south as Peru. This list of subspecies of deer is more exhaustive than the list of North American subspecies, and the number of subspecies is also questionable. However, the white-tailed deer populations in these areas are difficult to study, due to overhunting in many parts and a lack of protection. Some areas no longer carry deer, so assessing the genetic difference of these animals is difficult.

Subspecies

There are 38 subspecies; seventeen of these occur in North America, ordered alphabetically

North and Central America

  • O. v. acapulcensis – Acapulco white-tailed deer
  • O. v. borealis – Northern white-tailed deer
  • O. v. carminis – Carmen Mountains white-tailed deer
  • O. v. chiriquensis – Panamanian white-tailed deer
  • O. v. clavium – Key deer
  • O. v. couesi – Coues's / Arizona white-tailed / fantail deer
  • O. v. dacotensis – Dakota or northern plains white-tailed deer
  • O. v. hiltonensis – Hilton Head Island white-tailed deer
  • O. v. leucurus – Columbian white-tailed deer
  • O. v. macrourus – Kansas white-tailed deer
  • O. v. mcilhennyi – Avery Island white-tailed deer
  • O. v. mexicanus – Mexican or Central Plateau white-tailed deer
  • O. v. miquihuanensis – Miquihuan white-tailed deer
  • O. v. nelsoni – Chiapas white-tailed deer
  • O. v. nemoralis – Nicaraguan white-tailed deer
  • O. v. nigribarbis – Blackbeard Island white-tailed deer
  • O. v. oaxacensis – Oaxaca white-tailed deer
  • O. v. ochrourus – northwestern white-tailed deer or northern Rocky Mountains white-tailed deer
  • O. v. osceola – Florida coastal white-tailed deer
  • O. v. rothschildi – Isla Coiba deer
  • O. v. seminolus – Florida white-tailed deer
  • O. v. sinaloae – Sinaloa white-tailed deer
  • O. v. taurinsulae – Bull Island white-tailed deer
  • O. v. texanus – Texas white-tailed deer
  • O. v. thomasi – Mexican lowland white-tailed deer
  • O. v. toltecu – Rainforest white-tailed deer
  • O. v. venatorius – Hunting Island deer
  • O. v. veraecrucis – Northern Veracruz white-tailed deer
  • O. v. virginianus – Virginia or southern white-tailed deer
  • O. v. yucatanesis – Yucatán white-tailed deer

    South America

  • O. v. cariacou – Llanos white-tailed deer
  • O. v. curassavicus – Curaçao white-tailed deer
  • O. v. goudotii – Páramo white-tailed deer
  • O. v. gymnotis – Venezuelan white-tailed deer
  • O. v. margaritae – Margarita Island deer
  • O. v. nemoralis – Nicaraguan white-tailed deer
  • O. v. peruvianus – Andean or South American white-tailed deer
  • O. v. tropicalis – West Colombian white-tailed deer
  • O. v. ustus – Ecuador white-tailed deer

Description

The white-tailed deer's coat is a reddish-brown in the spring and summer, and turns to a grey-brown throughout the fall and winter. The white-tailed deer can be recognized by the characteristic white underside to its tail. It raises its tail when it is alarmed to warn the predator that it has been detected.
An indication of a deer's age is the length of the snout and the color of the coat, with older deer tending to have longer snouts and grayer coats.
A population of white-tailed deer in New York is entirely white except for the nose and hooves – not albino – in color. The former Seneca Army Depot in Romulus, New York, has the largest known concentration of white deer. Strong conservation efforts have allowed white deer to thrive within the confines of the depot.
The white-tailed deer's horizontally slit pupil allows for good night vision and color vision during the day. Whitetails process visual images at a much more rapid rate than humans and are better at detecting motion in low-light conditions.

Size and weight

The white-tailed deer is highly variable in size, generally following both Allen's rule and Bergmann's rule that the average size is larger farther away from the equator. North American male deer usually weigh, but mature bucks over have been recorded in the northernmost reaches of their native range, namely Minnesota, Ontario, and Manitoba. In 1926, Carl J. Lenander Jr. took a white-tailed buck near Tofte, Minnesota, that weighed after it was field-dressed and was estimated at when alive. The female in North America usually weighs from. White-tailed deer from the tropics and the Florida Keys are markedly smaller-bodied than temperate populations, averaging, with an occasional adult female as small as. White-tailed deer from the Andes are larger than other tropical deer of this species and have thick, slightly woolly-looking fur. Length ranges from, including a tail of, and the shoulder height is. Including all races, the average summer weight of adult males is and is in adult females. It is among the largest deer species in North America, and is also one of the largest in South America, behind only the marsh deer.
Deer have dichromatic vision with blue and yellow primaries; humans normally have trichromatic vision. Thus, deer poorly distinguish the oranges and reds that stand out so well to humans. This makes it very convenient to use deer-hunter orange as a safety color on caps and clothing to avoid accidental shootings during hunting seasons.

Antlers

Males regrow their antlers every year. About one in 10,000 females also has antlers, although this is usually associated with freemartinism. Bucks without branching antlers are often termed "spikehorn", "spiked bucks", "spike bucks", or simply "spikes/spikers". The spikes can be quite long or very short. Length and branching of antlers are determined by nutrition, age, and genetics. Rack growth tends to be very important from late spring until about a month before velvet sheds. Healthy deer in some areas that are well fed can have eight-point branching antlers as yearlings. Although antler size typically increases with age, antler characteristics are not good indicators of buck age, in general, because antler development is influenced by the local environment. The individual deer's nutritional needs for antler growth is dependent on the diet of the deer, particularly protein intake. Good antler-growth nutritional needs and good genetics combine to produce wall trophies in some of their range. Spiked bucks are different from "button bucks" or "nubbin' bucks", that are male fawns and are generally about six to nine months of age during their first winter. They have skin-covered nobs on their heads. They can have bony protrusions up to in length, but that is very rare, and they are not the same as spikes.
Antlers begin to grow in late spring, covered with a highly vascularised tissue known as velvet. Bucks either have a typical or atypical antler arrangement. Typical antlers are symmetrical, and the points grow straight up from the main beam. Atypical antlers are asymmetrical, and the points may project at any angle from the main beam. These descriptions are not the only limitations for typical and atypical antler arrangement. The Boone and Crockett or Pope and Young scoring systems also define relative degrees of typicality and atypicality by procedures to measure what proportion of the antlers is asymmetrical. Therefore, bucks with only slight asymmetry are scored as "typical". A buck's inside spread can be from. Bucks shed their antlers when all females have been bred, from late December to February.