So as many of you know that I am working with whitetail deer this summer and I am planning on working with them for the rest of my life. This means that you all should be expecting a lot, and I mean a lot, of posts about deer this summer. I will be looking at many different species of deer as well as talking about my experience with them. I am going to start out by talking about one of the most prevalent cervids (deer and their relatives) in North America, the whitetail deer.
Whitetail deer are found from Canada in the north to Bolivia in the south. They are the most widespread species of deer in the world, including being introduced to some countries outside of the western hemisphere. In some of these countries, like New Zealand, they do more harm than good to native animal populations. In the United States many people hunt them, think they are pests, or hit them with their vehicles. There are six subspecies of whitetail that are determined mostly by geographic distribution. Whitetail in the north are generally larger than whitetail in southern areas. One example of an extreme size change is the Key deer of the Florida keys; they are the size of a large dog.
Key Deer
Whitetail deer are mostly browsers preferring to eat leaves off of trees and shrubs rather than grass. They are also ruminants meaning that they have multiple stomachs that utilize bacteria to break down plant matter.
Male deer grow antlers, not horns, each year. Antlers are bone that grow from the head where horns are keratin with a bony core. The antlers can grow to be very large and are shed each year after the rut which is the deer mating season. During the rut the males will fight for females and the antlers are their weapons; the buck that is stronger, can fight better, and generally has a larger set of antlers will win. Deer will breed in the autumn and fawns will be born in late spring and early summer after a gestation period of roughly 200 days. Fawns are spotted and they will lose this camouflage after about 60 days.
Whitetail deer are amazing animals that many people love. Some have chased after deer all their life and now many people raise them; it is a decent sized industry that promotes growing better deer as well as finding solution for deer diseases such as Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD). I love the deer that I have and am currently work with and look forward to continuing to work with and care for them even more into the future. I know many of you want fawn pictures so I will put in one, but you will have to look for a future post to see even more adorable fawns.
Pictures
Sweet!
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